533: iPhone Duo Development: Navigating Dual Screens and Layouts

00:00.39 James Oh. Welcome back, everyone, to Merge Conflict, your weekly developer podcast on all things in the wide, wide world of software development, new hardware, and... designing for new foreign factors. I'm one of your hosts, James Montemagno, live from Oslo, Norway, one of my favorite countries in the entire world. And with me, as always, the man in Washington on some random island, Frank Kruger. How's it going, buddy?

00:18.73 Frank Oh, it's going very well. We better record quickly because I believe there's only like two hours of daylight in Oslo during, well, actually, no, it's the opposite right now. It's still kind of summertime-ish. So I guess we can talk for 12 hours or something this time.

00:32.25 James Yeah.

00:32.50 Frank I don't know. Last time I was in Oslo, that schedule was wild.

00:36.25 James Yeah, it's actually pretty good right now. I would say like I think the sundown is at like 730 So it's about the same time as the Pacific Northwest.

00:41.57 Frank Okay.

00:42.65 James So pretty happy. I would say like the hotel room i have every light on here and it's pretty dark now i do have a light right in front of me that is like very bright so it's the best i could do i didn't bring decide to bring my setup so we're listening to my beautiful macbook air i will throw this through adobe podcast people see what i can do

00:59.56 Frank I like listening to you when you're in your tin can. You know, I like i like to think like you're you're in a little can in Oslo. Hey, I just appreciate you coming live, being our foreign correspondent. I love it when...

01:11.62 Frank both either of us is on a trip but you've been on all the trips lately i'm getting a little bit jelly over here

01:17.20 James As you should. Well, you got to come come and visit sometime again. so Well, let's see here. I don't think much happened in the last week and a half since we reported the Todd.

01:27.37 Frank No. I mean, there weren't any giant announcements that happened literally the day after we recorded.

01:29.77 James Cast.

01:34.59 Frank So, you know, there's there's probably nothing there. None of the major tech companies have been. They've all been really quiet. I think no one's doing anything.

01:42.13 James Yeah, that's right. I guess we recorded the last podcast on 9-8, and then Apple decided to have a banger of ah of a hardware event, which we knew about. we ah You and I have had on our little notes for a while.

01:53.80 James talk about the rumors talk about the rumors talk about the rumors talk about the It's definitely probably not a rumor, but it's definitely going to happen.

01:58.80 Frank yeah

01:59.26 James Like, okay, well, do we talk about it now?

02:00.38 Frank Wow. Yeah. Well, we can we can finally say... hashtag finally, because I have been waiting for a change in the iPhone.

02:10.80 Frank basically forever at this point. basically since the iPad. The iPad was the biggest change in the iPhone, even though it's not an iPhone. But it's a giant iPhone. And I've been waiting for something new since then. And all the other companies have been innovating. The Samsungs.

02:25.56 Frank the Microsofts. They've all been trying different form factors out there, but you know, the one company that makes all their money off of one thing, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I think that's been their philosophy, but we have a new.

02:36.70 Frank CEO, whatever, some kind of C-level person. And they decided, let's let's try breaking some of the working stuff.

02:42.97 James do you really think it was like hey my third day on the job okay like i think like we should probably make this device go prototype it really fast

02:50.67 Frank Um. Yes, but not exactly in that way. I think as a new CEO, you do want to have a new product launch. And so I wouldn't be terribly surprised if they had something vaguely ready last year that they could have pitched or maybe in the spring or something like that. They said, no, let's wait till the old guard is out, new guards in. Let's give them some kind of product to announce because.

03:12.85 Frank If he announced some Apple Music deal or something, I just don't think it would have been that interesting. Or, you know, some... whatever the iphone 18 pro beautiful phone that was announced but um Not that interesting. It's basically a 17 Pro, but one better.

03:30.19 Frank um So I think, yeah, and in some ways, I bet you there was a little bit of marketing scheduling. give the new guy something to announce.

03:37.75 James I definitely think it was completely planned. And maybe he did, you know, have the game day decision, which was like. listen, we're either going to go and roll this all out or or we're not. I imagine it was done you know before that, but like you said, they they probably aligned it.

03:49.03 Frank Hmm.

03:51.61 James But, you know, always good it's always good to have more time to bake ah software and to bake hardware, to be honest with you. so Obviously the thing that we're talking about is the new. The new duo, not the other duo the one that i owned six years ago

04:02.55 Frank Mm-hmm

04:04.07 James Um,

04:05.14 Frank And not the trio that you wanted. You wanted a trifold. I was excited for just two screens. Well, we ended up getting kind of three screens. You wanted the the trio. No trio. We got the duo. So what is it? It's a little pocketbook.

04:18.44 Frank It's a little chubby chubby short guy. I like it just for that. It's got a front screen. a hinge. The hinge opens up to... what i figured like seven-ish inch screen or something on the inside

04:31.91 James Yeah.

04:32.79 Frank ah Brand new out of the box. You can't see the crease. We will all see in a few months of whether you get to get a, I believe some people call it a nice smile at you after a few months to see if the crease shows up or anything like that.

04:46.59 Frank But yeah, it's exciting. It's a new, finally a new form factor. I would have been happy with an iPhone that just had a screen on both sides, to be honest, and get rid of all the buttons. um This is doing a...

04:56.10 James o

04:57.99 Frank Screen on both sides for half of the phone and then a screen on one side for the other because they kept the camera bump. Of course, they had to keep the camera bump. That's an important design and characteristic of all iPhones, sadly, these days. but I don't know it's it's a cute little form factor.

05:13.07 Frank And I'm excited for it. I'm not excited for the price, but I'm excited for the new form factor. And I think it's cute. And yes, it's a ripoff of. Samsung's and Microsoft's, but that's that's normal. And Apple, Apple doesn't go out there and create like a whole new product category anymore. Maybe they used to, but now they play it safe and they let other people test the waters.

05:35.52 James Yeah, no, I think it's ah it's a good point. I think that yeah foldables aren't necessarily new. And it's always about how you innovate on the foldable in general. And like they they have been around for a long time.

05:46.72 James and And, you know, I think Samsung has been doing a lot of work. Other companies have been doing a lot of work. There's different form factors, too. Like there is like this sort of. phone to small tablet form factor, which is what Apple's gone with. There's also like the the Flip, which is sort of like a little clamshell. I actually i'd think that one is really, really neat.

06:05.12 James uh like a razor the one that has like a little little screen on the front to kind of like

06:06.73 Frank Yeah.

06:09.52 James hide the thing more. I'm interesting i thought maybe they were going to kind of go that route with the app or the iphone air because that you know. that could have been a potential to fold that down.

06:23.04 James and still like keep that island of cameras there. um You know, I'm not really a foldable person. I'm not really a tablet person. I'm not really a...

06:33.31 James phone I don't want to be a phone person.

06:35.07 Frank okay

06:35.84 James uh in general so i would say like What excites me the most isn't necessarily the hardware. It's the idea that There is yet another.

06:47.14 James new challenge for me to overcome as a developer in this space, which we'll talk about for the majority of the pod.

06:51.18 Frank Yeah.

06:53.73 James But my high level thoughts on it is it looks nice. I did see a really funny graphic, which was that It is just a tiny bit thicker than the original iPhone.

07:02.97 Frank How funny. Yeah.

07:03.50 James So that's funny because you know our are you know our thin and thickness is ah you know convoluted in our heads now. Uh, You know, I think the only thing that really Let's say I was a foldable person.

07:14.51 Frank Mm hmm.

07:14.72 James And. I think the only thing that really would be keeping me back from my excitement because i do like the idea of of opening it on occasion just like when i have the duo and different things um the service duo and and other foldables is kind of like that bigger kind you know content consumption or like copying and pasting and doing these things and getting that that bigger view.

07:36.70 James But I think the one thing that ah disappoints me a bit. which I think it's probably with the majority of followers. I'd have to fact check myself on like the the newer Samsungs.

07:48.75 James but it's honestly the camera system. So I think.

07:51.59 Frank Hmm.

07:52.27 James that the back camera system, which does have the big island on it. uh is good but actually isn't like iphone pro quality so is there going to be a duo pro for example

08:04.54 Frank Oh no.

08:05.27 James down the road and then More than that, though, I think that's livable, but... from what I saw with MKBHD. Marquez is that the internal camera, which is actually a camera.

08:18.27 James Underneath the screen there is no face unlock which... that's crazy to me we're back to thumbprint reader which is totally fine but still just saying

08:24.90 Frank Yeah.

08:28.45 Frank Mm hmm.

08:28.49 James uh and the dynamic island's gone or no it's still there it's fake i don't know what it is i forget is it still there Is it fake?

08:34.90 Frank It. it's It's a... Oh gosh, now you got me. I thought it was gone, but now you have me questioning everything. As far as I know, there's no more island. There might be a fake one, absolutely, because we have to put our background apps somewhere and all that kind of stuff.

08:48.12 James well they have a whole gutter they can put it in the gutter you know what i mean so i don't know so that's

08:50.28 Frank Yeah. oh We'll get to it. That cutter is limited, though.

08:54.73 James Yeah, I'll be I'll be interested because I've been actually now that I have a phone that has a dynamic island on it

08:59.77 Frank Mm hmm.

08:59.66 James um I've been really incorporating it in all my applications. I think it's absolutely lovely for things in the background.

09:02.81 Frank Yeah.

09:04.82 James so I think for me, One of the main reasons we buy phones heather and i buy phones is actually for the camera i know that sounds silly because you could buy a beautiful thousand dollar camera a dslr that would be really awesome but it doesn't fit into my pocket nicely or heather's pocket the sinking all this stuff you know it has its purposes i know but How am I?

09:25.74 James you know family works with me and heather so our family the two of us Plus a million, plus three. is that Heather gets a new phone every... three or so years and then i get her old phone and then my old phone becomes my work phone right

09:36.74 Frank Yeah.

09:38.33 James And I got lucky this year because my iPhone SE. 2. that I have. It gets iOS 27, so that means I still can update it and intune it, which is good for work. So eventually my 11 Pro will have to get updated. push down so we'll we'll see how that goes so i think that's the only thing that really goes in and it would be expensive It's kind of on par with the Samsung though.

09:59.60 James Um,

09:59.71 Frank Yeah.

10:01.24 James you know there's It's just a crazy dollar amount for it. but it is the first year. So again, early adoption and type of thing. I think it will be here for the long run on like maybe Vision Pro. but I think the cameras.

10:13.61 James Just like the air kind of bums me out.

10:17.04 Frank Yeah, um let me address that price point first. So it's two grand starting with 256 gig, um which is a lot. But as you said, it's only... couple hundred more than the Samsung and you're getting the Apple Ecos.

10:29.02 Frank Apple ecosystem and all the apps, all our lovely apps, you and I, James, you can buy our apps and put them on there.

10:34.19 James Yep.

10:35.85 Frank and Honestly, Apple's known for the kind of knocking it out of the park with just their little effects and fit and finish and all that stuff. But I will address you saying like. The price is never going to go down. Yeah, we hopefully we're going to have this phone for the next five, six years minimum so that app developers actually invest the time into making sure all our apps adapt to this form factor because there's changes we're going to have to do. but um

11:01.10 Frank this is going to be the cheapest the phone ever is apple doesn't really decrease prices like maybe there'll be an se version of it like this version i'll get relabeled the se maybe but I kind of even doubt that these screens aren't. free these days and they're having to put a decent amount of memory on it for

11:17.55 Frank to support all these things because it is also a new chip the a20 chip because we love to make new chips so you know it's it's top of the line stuff here that where you're not getting like an a18 or anything on here you're not even getting an a19 you're getting an a20 nice new chip and all that So.

11:34.69 Frank It's as cheap as it's ever going to be. In terms of camera, i yeah, you you bring up a good point. like Some would even argue $1 ,000.

11:43.67 Frank dlsr is still not even enough to get as good a camera as on these phones because you know at least i'm looking at my probe right now it has three cameras on it three different lenses that they're all there i don't have to take off a three pound lens and put another five pound lens on to change any of that stuff it's all kind of baked in there I don't really buy the phones for the cameras as you do.

11:59.09 James yeah

12:05.91 Frank I think the cameras in my mind have plateaued. maybe even 10 years ago, for my purposes of taking really blurry, bad photographs of things I don't really care about after a year.

12:17.75 Frank um Does anyone actually look back in their photo albums? I don't know. I don't.

12:21.31 James you gotta you gotta get the widget and the widget will do it automatically for those memory dividends that's what That's what we do so much that I have.

12:24.36 Frank Right.

12:27.92 James multiple widgets i have a google photos widget and then the apple photos widget so then there's different memories that they do um

12:30.22 Frank Ah.

12:33.63 Frank Yeah.

12:35.51 James But yeah, we were.

12:35.76 Frank I have my... Sorry, I have my Mac OS.

12:37.28 James Well, where are we?

12:38.62 Frank Sorry, go ahead.

12:39.40 James ah yeah Go ahead. I mean, we were we were recently. okay so i mean We were recently. going through our photo albums and we have a like a one for millie and millie's photo album has like 5 000 photos in it so i was like you know.

12:52.46 James We're not going to look at all of them. They're pretty cute. so Anyways, your Mac.

12:55.01 Frank Yeah. I set the screensaver to showing photos. So at least then, you know, before the screen turns off, there's a good hour of it just showing photographs. And that's actually the only time I ever review photos. And even then I have it set to the. automatic faces album.

13:10.73 Frank So all my landscapes and my billion pictures of my motorcycle don't show up, thank goodness. So it's all just people that show up on my screen. That's the only time I actually review photos. It's it's tough. I mean, just speaking from a personal standpoint, I just don't use my phone as much as I used to.

13:27.34 Frank And so. um we'll get into this device and why i probably will end up buying it even though it's it's honestly pretty reluctant at this point because i understand if you're bouncing around a city and you got a city job you want something that fits in your pocket really small but then like you're doing important businessy work and you want to open it up and read all the pages and all that kind of stuff it It makes a lot of sense in that case.

13:53.22 Frank But that's not my life. um I live in a little house on an island. um I basically always have access to my big computers. My iPads are... um kind of the big size if I want a big size. and I have my laptop. So I have to say, like as excited as I am for new form factors, as much as I've been begging for new form factors, this actually isn't really a device for me.

14:16.35 Frank um That said, it's it's kind of a perfect device for my apps. So um just because it's not for me doesn't mean it's not my my users wouldn't appreciate it and things like that. So it's definitely worth making sure my apps support because my apps definitely can take advantage of it. iCircuit, my main app. um

14:36.37 Frank I do my best to make it good on the iPhone, but it is just... begging for more real estate on the iPhone. It's definitely a much happier experience on an iPad or a Mac. And so a bigger iPhone screen, the app is just happier. So making my app support that new form factor is really important to me.

14:55.00 Frank and we'll see if it's two thousand dollars important.

14:57.70 James Well, there's going to be a little or a lot of work you have to do. And we'll talk about that. But I want to say one last thing too, which is that It may also not be for the US market. yet.

15:07.69 Frank Hmm.

15:08.40 James Uh, So some fun stats is that, you know, In general, foldables are not. extremely popular in the States. Even though with the Android iPhone divide, you know, is of like split. I forgot what it is, but it's it's not.

15:22.83 James it's like 80 20 right it's like more like 50 50 or whatever it is or 60 40 whatever it is Now, the interesting part here is that like I've been recently to Japan and then to Korea and foldable phones are much more prevalent in Asia.

15:35.30 Frank Okay.

15:36.28 James And. The number one, though. purchaser of foldable phones is China. and China last year purchased more foldable phones than the rest of the world combined.

15:48.22 James So.

15:49.15 Frank It's a big market.

15:49.10 James and China. It's a good market. and And China is a market that Apple definitely wants to be in. It's one of the biggest, if not.

15:55.04 Frank Yeah.

15:56.29 James the biggest market that you could be. so That is something to like not to say that our market won't grow and like Europe and all these other places But everyone adopts technology at different paces or different styles and things like that.

16:02.74 Frank Mm hmm.

16:07.82 James So That's really, really interesting. And and I'll be fascinated to see how it continues to grow over the next several years and how Apple plays in it. but to the point so not only did we announce they announced this phone they announced other phones which whatever but they also launched ios 27 watch os 27 mac os 27 all the things

16:24.52 Frank boom

16:27.23 James and obviously this device is going to ship with 27 in fact it may ship with 27 .1 if i if i'm getting any tidbits because apple at the same time I was putting out these.

16:38.78 James announcing it put out a bunch of videos on their YouTube and on their developer account called Tech Talks. all about designing. for the iPhone Duo. And I thought this was enlightening. I've only watched one or two of them so far, but I figured that we'd spend the next half of this podcast talking about this because...

16:58.98 James Like you would imagine if you do nothing.

17:01.74 Frank Hm.

17:01.84 James your apps are going to kind of suck.

17:05.77 Frank Especially if you lock your app into landscape mode is what I saw. um it nasty it nasty yeah so um where to begin um if you haven't been making your apps um

17:10.42 James Oh, yeah. yeah

17:19.20 Frank sizable, and adapting to different sizes. Basically, if you haven't spent time making sure your app is good on the iPad. then you're going to have some trouble because all the lessons we've been learning about writing iPad apps are basically coming to the iPhone. And it's really funny because from a developer point of view, Apple keeps saying, this is...

17:38.88 Frank This is iPhone OS. It's not iPad OS. I'm like, God, what is the distinction? Like there has never really been a distinction, but they love pretending that there's a distinction between these operating systems.

17:44.61 James No.

17:49.12 Frank but it really comes down to if you haven't made sure that your apps adapt to Mostly the size classes where you have your... um your wide horizontal, your tall vertical, your compact versus not compact UIs.

18:06.14 Frank It's going to matter because. they showed a slide of like all the permutations that your app can be in. You know, the phone can be vertical, even though it's a short chubby guy, it's still a vertical layout. And then you can flip that horizontal. Okay, that's one screen.

18:22.34 Frank Now we can open it up. And now it's a giant screen that can be vertical or horizontal.

18:26.92 James one

18:27.26 Frank Okay, fair enough. Portrait landscape, I should be saying.

18:29.95 Frank But now you can crack it in the middle and now it turns into two screens. And those two screens, guess what? They can be portrait or landscape. But you know what? The bottom screen in certain orientations, it just. flat out ignores your orientation requests and reports itself however it feels like reporting itself. So it is a lot of permutations to test. The good news is if we ever get a simulator, I mean, I'm sure we have a simulator, you'll be able to just knock through all of these and, you know, keep rotating the simulator around. But it doesn't change the fact that there's just. a large set of options you have to code for now.

19:06.68 Frank So just talking about size classes. um That's... That's probably the biggest one. And you should have been doing that already if you were trying to support iPad at all. in the past, but I know a lot of people haven't been supporting iPad. And so I think that's the big one. It's tying into all those big changes. and They talk about...

19:25.99 Frank Oh, UI screen. Let's talk about UI screen, but first I'll let you comment on the permutations.

19:31.46 James Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think that that is one of them. And in general, you said, have you already been designing for? uh the ipad hopefully it is is nifty or at least even if you are using controls and standard things that are built in and should adapt gracefully.

19:47.76 James to the iPad. I also want to point out though, that not only is it that your form factor of like how things are displayed in horizontal portrait, the different sizing is also.

19:59.38 James This is the first time on an iPhone that the camera is not I mean, in a while, at least I would say is like up. up there in the dynamic island the whole thing it's been a long time even without the dynamic island you have the bump down right so

20:09.74 Frank Mm hmm.

20:14.01 James the insets and all this stuff are are all different. And the... where your your app can go under. But I also want to point out the the toolbar.

20:23.34 Frank Yeah.

20:23.58 James And the restricted areas can be in many places. It could be on the left. It could be on the right. It could be on the top. It could be on the bottom. It could be anywhere, right? It can really be anywhere that it really wants to be.

20:29.65 Frank Yeah.

20:32.73 James So the idea of testing all these permutations are very fascinating. And I also want to call out, though. that more importantly, the very first thing that they said in the prepare your app is that If you do nothing, which is what I said.

20:44.68 James and you launch. Your app not building against. the 27 SDK, which Just released with Xcode 27. your application will just look like your iPhone app.

20:56.76 James in the middle of the screen and it will look. it will look terrible it will not adapt it won't do anything now if you just build against 27 then you're good to go. So like there's going to be a frantic update.

21:08.51 James you know, whenever this phone launches to make sure that you're. you know your app is tested against 27 SDK, things like that. So that's really important. but The funny part in top of all is what we'll go into is that.

21:21.03 James actually. that's not where it ends because. 27 .1 is the real SDK that has the real goodies, including new APIs.

21:25.31 Frank Yeah. Yeah.

21:28.47 James But I just want to point that out because if you remember, Frank.

21:30.22 Frank Yeah.

21:31.43 James do you remember when iphone 5s i think came out like did the big the tall boy

21:36.18 Frank Mm, yeah.

21:37.67 James So. That was in sort of a similar situation that you needed to not only. Build against the new SDK, but you also needed to include new sizes of your splash screen at that point.

21:47.65 James But you know what I mean?

21:48.36 Frank Yeah.

21:49.30 James You can imagine you need to do that. And if not, then you have those borders. on top and bottom and you stuck out like a sore thumb now that to be said

21:57.48 Frank A lot of apps still do by the way.

21:59.56 James That's oh gosh um And. The other thing I'll point out is that you know this is kind of unlike the icon changes. I think even if you don't have the newest icons and it's designed.

22:10.86 James Like almost all the apps are doing better at it. But this will be like really like. in your face going on here if your users are on one of these devices. So I do think that that is something that you should. everyone should probably get to testing pretty soon.

22:26.44 James because that's going to unlock the other features that you can do in the app.

22:31.21 Frank Right. So nuts to bolts. it's It's going to be a safe area in sets. um If you've been doing any modern iOS programming, you know and love and hate these things, um but they are the most important thing to live by because, yeah, in the past, um you know, the toolbar would change shape, it would change size, but it would stay at the bottom.

22:36.57 James Yep.

22:51.95 Frank At least nowadays that toolbar is going left, right. I'm sure it'll go to the top eventually. Why not? Put it anywhere, Apple. Put it right in the middle of the screen. Who cares? As long as you obey the safe area insets. So that's going to be the fun one. I'm actually curious under what conditions, like the toolbar goes to the left-hand side and things like that. but you can at least count on the toolbar going from the bottom to the right-hand side from now on. so you're going to have to check through all of that code. So you're going to have to check.

23:20.31 Frank your size classes. That'll tell you if you're in compact or kind of normal form factor. and then you're going to want to check your um safe area insets and You know, if you're writing a modern app, with a fresh code base, all this is going to be taken care of a lot for you.

23:36.79 Frank But if you're like me and have been writing the app since iOS 2, I have tons of code that actually looks at the parent view to see how big it is, and then it makes decisions based on that.

23:48.15 Frank If you're going to keep supporting, let's say iOS 18, you know, or not. Yeah, whatever. I can't even do their versions anymore ever since the 20 skip. um an older version, then you're it's going to be even more fun because you have to support all these variations. The good news is safe area insets have been there for a while. so Hopefully most apps are supporting it. But it's that toolbar going off to the right. Because let me tell you.

24:12.07 Frank I have some apps where... I am. I very much care what the... keyboard. state is the soft virtual keyboard on this thing and you know the big problem of making a wider shorter device is that keyboard

24:27.86 Frank is going to take up. a lot of space. And you'll notice in none of the Apple event that they ever show us what this phone looks like when you bring the keyboard out. And let me tell you, from developing iPad apps, that is one of the hardest modes to support is landscape with the soft keyboard up. And this thing is not going to be good in that mode, just given its aspect ratio and its size, like that they are going to make that keyboard a certain size. And I bet you it's going to eat up at half, if not more. of the screen with that stupid keyboard and in the past handling the keyboard was always a little bit tricky

25:05.33 Frank because it doesn't it doesn't always affect the safe area insets the way you would expect it to. So you always have to add some weird animations on top of that. And then if you're in like my case, where you have keyboard accessories on top of the keyboard, and then there's keyboard options for like the predictive text and the copy and paste and all that stuff that goes on the keyboard also.

25:24.25 Frank I could very well see Kalka taking up 90 % of the screen with just the keyboard. So I'm going to have to take like a real hard look. at all of those interactions. So yes, you could get by with just making sure that you obey the size classes, making sure you obey the safe margins, but...

25:42.04 Frank you're going to have to test that keyboard. That keyboard is going to be nasty. And unlike the iPad, where a good percentage of people have cases, keyboard cases. No one has a keyboard case. for their iPhone. So you have to expect that keyboard coming up constantly, especially go figure. If you have text entry in your app, you are going to definitely, and most apps do, you are definitely going to have to test that scenario. And Apple not showing that scenario.

26:09.34 Frank tells you about all you need to know about how terrible it's going to be and how much work we're going to have to do as app developers to make sure that that all looks good. I fear the keyboard, basically.

26:20.90 James No, I mean I always feel the keyboard in general and in fact like one of the things that's very common in my apps, but also in many apps is a lot of people. Add a little button.

26:32.61 James above like a done button pretty much because it's

26:34.62 Frank Mm hmm.

26:36.26 James been known forever how actually nearly impossible it is to program the scrolling and the viewing and the optimizing. So as your users are going through, it's like really hard to close the keyboard.

26:49.62 James I mean, you get, I mean, we get stuck sometimes and I i get stuck in iMessage where like the keyboard will just not close. There's like no way to close it. So the only way to do is like force close out of it and then boot it up again.

26:57.18 Frank Yeah.

27:00.05 James Right. Or like go back out of our conversation back for, so I always like added like a done button basically at the top, which is like, you're not supposed to do, but I do it because it's like a better user experience.

27:09.52 Frank Yeah.

27:09.97 James And sometimes there is a button that's like close keyboard, but I don't even know how to do that. So anyways. it's one of those things i totally agree that that's going to be a little bit of a nightmare in general.

27:22.10 James to do just because you have to test all those orientations on all of your screens in addition to just testing the orientation so the the real thing that you want to do is remove all entry fields from your application and then you want to worry about it at all so whenever you have a text box just make it a label and then you'll never have to worry about text entry ever again

27:32.91 Frank Yeah.

27:41.50 James No?

27:42.29 Frank Yeah, um good advice. Honestly, on a touch UI, it is good advice. if if If a little slider will work. or a little numeric selector would work. Yeah, definitely. ah Text entry is horrendous on all of these kinds of apps. Now, I will say um in one of their cute clamshell modes, it goes into like baby's first laptop where like the bottom screen becomes the keyboard where it's literally taking half of the screen real estate to be just a keyboard. But it's not going to be like a laptop because it's still only a few inches wide. So you need to like.

28:15.60 Frank tiny little picky fingers to go in and type at it. But I'm excited for that mode of little clamshell and using my two little index fingers to attempt to type on it.

28:18.61 James Yeah.

28:24.26 Frank It's not going to work. It's going to be terrible, but it might be good for thumb typing because it'll be a nice bigger thing. And I'm pretty sure it's small enough that most people's thumbs can reach from both sides and all that kind of stuff.

28:35.95 James Yeah.

28:36.56 Frank So, yeah, and that's one of the many permutations you're going to have to test. So what happens when you're in split mode? You put two bits of live content on the phone and then you put it horizontal and then the keyboard comes up.

28:49.22 Frank So basically take every permutation I mentioned before and add keyboard on and off to all those. All right. Oh, this thing's going to be fun to test.

28:56.92 James Yeah.

28:57.52 Frank Oh.

28:57.44 James And the best part is that on top of this, you have to make sure, and especially if you have a legacy app or even an app that's not that long. you really need to make sure of how you're testing and measuring like they pull it out a good a lot of good points which is people make a lot of assumptions that the left and rightt left and right, like...

29:15.35 James you know safe areas are the same or top and bottom like the pixel counts are the same or a lot of people still relying on like UI controller views and scenes and windows or sorry, windows and.

29:31.16 James uh screen the the yeah so they're people are still relying on ui screen ui window Yeah, UI windows.

29:31.31 Frank Scenes are good.

29:37.12 Frank Right.

29:38.30 James But what they really need to rely on is. scenes, correct. is basically what they said um which most apps have a scene

29:42.57 Frank Yeah. because they Yeah. One, one, because you know what? It's a pain to support multiple, honestly, even coming from iPad. I've studied the heck out of this.

29:53.02 James but

29:53.11 Frank It's a pain.

29:53.99 James but You could. ideally now have one scene on one side and the other scene on the other side of this device.

30:00.70 Frank Yes, yeah. so But it's not iPadOS. Let's not call it that. um

30:04.25 James It is definitely not, no.

30:05.56 Frank No, the big warning they give you, and this is going to take me auditing my own code, is you cannot rely on UI screen. main screen.

30:14.95 James Yeah.

30:15.05 Frank Because on a device that has up to basically three screens that I'm talking about, like the front screen and then clamshell mode and toggling between them. There is no main screen.

30:26.34 Frank They are in fact going to deprecate main screen. I mean the majority of apps out there create one window. for the main screen. That is that was the recommended entry point for your app delegate finished loading or whatever stupid thing it's called. um We all did it. We all, we all asked for the main screen. We all created a big window that matched that screen size and then brought it up. And that has been...

30:54.02 Frank Not deprecated, but it's been frowned upon. We were all supposed to... switch over to scenes a while ago. But on. iOS, especially iPhone OS, there's really not much benefit at all to supporting multiple scenes. On an iPad, there were technically benefits, but all the UI restrictions they put on them, most people didn't do it anyway. but If you have legacy code, you are 100 % gonna have to go through and audit it. And I'm a little bit nervous about that because... um

31:23.87 Frank My apps definitely are old enough that they they mention UI screen all the time. And don't forget, like... This phone, you can plug external monitors into them also. so Just want to remind you, there are still many, many screen opportunities for your apps to share and all that kind of stuff.

31:42.64 Frank I'm a little bit nervous

31:44.39 James Well, I'm nervous too because, you know, I... I... I fear is of that gutter. is also... you know something we rely on but like you said that gutter now is not only the toolbar but it's also the tab bar and then like what happens if you have a fly out navigation but then just like i don't know which way we're going on it they mostly show fly out but i'm a little

32:05.10 James worried there just like what this will look like and then or maybe you go across all you know it's it's really a lot happening of how you're gonna measure it and again we don't really know until

32:10.91 Frank Mm hmm.

32:15.87 James um we actually get our hands on it so there's that but i think that there's yeah there's There's that. Save inset region. There's the layout margin that's happening on it.

32:26.32 Frank Yeah.

32:26.94 James And then also like they are. creating a new thing called like reserved regions that's brand new that like you can't put stuff in or you can check for basically which would be like the camera and any like OS items on it. like It's, you know, this this was... um This was one of the problems that Any. you tablets, but then also dual screen devices, even on Android have, which is like.

32:54.32 James That's a lot of work. for how many users right at the end of the day and obviously until you have a bunch of users you're going to be saying that same thing so the more

32:57.46 Frank Yeah.

33:05.79 James that Apple can do for us out of the box, which I guess is using standard controls. that adapt to be. 80 % there. so if it creates an 80 good experience for most users

33:16.74 Frank Yeah.

33:17.62 James that's pretty good so if they give us that easy button which i believe is there today i believe it is Recompile your app. Check it on the simulator. Make sure it's good. Maybe change a few.

33:28.63 Frank Mm hmm.

33:28.50 James insets if you haven't been doing your safe area insets. Hopefully call it a day. And then for some apps like yourself. Right. Where you're like. I really want to.

33:40.28 James really make this a first class experience, then there's going to be special APIs and more work that you can do. But I think if they make it more complicated than that. for eighty percent for the for every app to be 80 % the way there, I think that's sort of a recipe for disaster. So until I actually compile my app.

33:57.66 Frank Hmm.

33:57.36 James against 27, which I will not be doing for. probably several weeks because i'm on holiday and i'm giving a presentation tomorrow so that would be bad news um so until i have to do that then i'm not going to right but I think that's a...

34:11.01 James kind of interest. in general.

34:13.60 Frank Yeah, and we have a tiny bit of time because as we record this, there's still going to be about a month before this device is released. So it should give us plenty of time to play with it, at least on the simulator and to figure out what are going to be the quirky things.

34:23.73 James Yeah.

34:26.17 Frank But I do want to address your whole like. How many apps, even today, don't obey the safe area inset? Like. the the amazon shopping app they pay their engineers six figures there's a million people working on this app and they still can't get the safe area insect correct for when they switched it for face id and all that stuff when when we remove the home button, basically. There are apps to this day.

34:54.07 Frank They still jam. functioning controls like buttons are supposed to be able to click in an area that you absolutely cannot click on. So yeah, even if Apple um made it super easy, I know there's just a lot of those. legacy apps and honestly legacy developers out there who um just refuse to adapt to the modern time so don't be one of those the good news is if you have been adapting to the modern times and you have taken the ui stuff seriously i think you will be in that 80 group that you were talking about at least i'm relying on it because like on ipad os

35:30.05 Frank Especially in the last few years, you've been able to switch between normal wide mode and compact mode. pretty easily within it you're just dragging the corner these days no weird gestures to do or anything like that so i think it's been pretty easy to test that you get an ipad out and you keep resizing your screen and you see how it adapts to all those different modes so i think anyone who's But again.

35:53.85 Frank put the time and effort into making sure their iPad app is good. Or if you've tried running your app on Mac OS, God forbid, you've you've run into all these scenarios also where you can easily switch between compact mode and wide mode.

36:07.79 Frank So I think if you've been a good developer out there and you've been testing in all these form factors, I think you're going to be kind of okay or at least in a good place to be adapting. If you've been a holdout since even the since the days we lost the home button, then I think it's going to be okay.

36:22.87 Frank quite a bit rougher for you. And I'm looking at you Jeff Bezos. You've been naughty. Make your app better.

36:28.98 James Oh. I think that there's i mean there's a lot of work for folks to do. if you're using custom UI. toolkits right something like uh react native a flutter

36:35.77 Frank Yeah.

36:38.89 Frank Yeah.

36:38.94 James Avalonia, things like that, where you're drawing things and not using native controls. Nothing wrong with that. The toolkit has work to do, right? Because they're going to need to get in.

36:45.96 Frank Mm hmm.

36:47.17 James So if you're using their tab bar. it works correct. Whereas... you know, I hate to say it. But we can ring a Miguel bell, but you know your native apps.

36:58.41 Frank Ding.

36:59.90 James Just saying.

37:00.07 Frank Yeah.

37:01.57 James like You know, I...

37:01.08 Frank it Turns out.

37:02.57 James I hate to say it.

37:03.44 Frank Native UI.

37:03.81 James you know Native UI, native, yeah, native UI, right? so Yeah.

37:07.40 Frank Yeah.

37:08.17 James Native UI. um is is something and You know. for For like a lot of the... ah you know ah you Maybe not inside of the specific area. If you're drawing a graph or something like that, that's okay. But when we're talking about the core elements like those.

37:26.97 James fly out navigations and like the tab bars and the core

37:28.79 Frank Mm hmm. the chrome.

37:30.69 James the containers.

37:32.51 Frank Yeah.

37:32.84 James Right. What did you call it?

37:34.44 Frank chrome you know that's the old term before google stole the term from all of us

37:35.53 James Chrome.

37:38.89 James Yeah, the the the chrome, the containers and the chrome. uh, That it becomes fascinating. Now, of course, the toolkit. You know, they can do anything and I'm sure all those things are going to be updated there, but it is kind of nice, which we've had the advantage of, of using either like.

37:53.11 James native UI toolkits or like, you know, Xamarin and then, you know, .NET MAUI now is like the They are native UI controls at the end of the day that they're rendering.

38:00.89 Frank Mm hmm.

38:02.01 James So my assumption, I haven't tested it, is that... you know i don't know if the maui team needs to cut a new release or we can just recompile against the new one and bingo bango things light up and see what happens ah But my hope is that.

38:14.30 James I ain't got to do anything, right?

38:16.02 Frank Yeah.

38:16.01 James I don't know if they're going to need to do a cut of Xamarin .iOS against the new ones for it to happen, but... We'll see what what that looks like. My assumption is no, but like maybe, right? i don't I don't know what that will look like. But my hope is that I don't have to do much in general for that.

38:32.76 James um and obviously my new my swift app so i don't have to worry about it either but that's uh you know, these things only happen every so often, um obviously, but it is kind of a hope, hopefully, fingers crossed that you knock on.

38:41.79 Frank Yeah.

38:46.64 James knock on Norwegian wood here that, uh, that uh

38:50.45 Frank Yeah.

38:50.81 James that it's gonna go okay we'll see but yeah i'm really fascinated to see like what happens down the road i did i did uh tweet out a link funnily enough to the like dual pain ah control.

39:04.43 James from like the duo and android stuff

39:05.78 Frank classic. Yeah.

39:07.52 James uh but

39:07.84 Frank Bring it back.

39:09.16 James and I mean, technically it worked everywhere. So I'll be.

39:11.60 Frank Yeah.

39:11.89 James What I'm also interested in is like if there's any rejuvenation in that control to be like a new. dual pain control now. It's the one thing I will say that Apple. didn't do which i guess maybe as good as there was no like new control i mean there is some like new like Controls for like. some certain things and some certain things. but I don't think they released, I could be wrong. It was like, here's a brand new.

39:35.05 James you know, container thing to put your control thing in. I think it's just like, hey, use the standard controls. We adapted automatically to this.

39:45.23 Frank Yeah, I agree. I haven't seen any talk of any new controls. I think they were just in a good place from their iPadOS work where they were already accustomed to putting up two different windows from your app. So, you know, the foundations were there. They knew it kind of worked and all that stuff. I'm sure there'll be refinements. Like you're saying.

40:02.63 Frank Yeah, I bet you if you compiled against the new SDK with current MAUI, you would Be in your 80 to 90 % there. Now, you will have to do that override because the build system is so picky about its versions of X codes these days. But fortunately, you can just override that. how it Shut up. Go away. compile with what I tell you to compile with. So you could totally do that and get testing right now. I'm sure there will be a release of Maui just because.

40:26.60 Frank There's always going to be some refinement. You know, when you don't have a thing to test on, you're going to make mistakes or assumptions and those assumptions will be proven wrong.

40:28.41 James Yeah.

40:36.29 Frank So that's why. Even if you are in the good developer category, I've been putting everyone in. the we We all make assumptions. and That's just how it is. Or if if you have a bug in your code, but no device ever exposed it, then you're just not ever going to see it.

40:45.88 James Yeah.

40:52.12 Frank um so I look forward to that kind of stuff a little bit. um i'm ah I'm a little worried about... um screen real estate and all that because with ios 26 all of a sudden you could fit far fewer buttons onto the toolbar.

41:08.65 Frank um and all the different areas. So I think we all went through a lot of pain with iOS 26. The good news is with iOS 27... it's It's just a lot of... um shader refinement.

41:20.82 Frank Doesn't look like they changed anything too fundamental from iOS 26. This is really a kind of a minor update. If it wasn't for the new phone, this would be a very minor update. so Good news is I think we'll mostly just have to test for the new.

41:30.35 James yes

41:34.62 Frank phone and not so much for the new OS on every existing phone. If you've already gone through your iOS 26 work, I feel like you're going to be in a pretty good spot.

41:43.62 James Yeah, I'll also say that one thing that I think... hopefully apple does in the future or someone's going to do this maybe it's already done Now it's been a few days and maybe the SDKs are out, especially for 27 .1.

41:56.92 James Is what we really need to be perfectly honest with you is some custom skills and maybe some custom agents that, you know, the down in Maui team has done this, you know, they.

42:02.46 Frank Yeah.

42:05.49 James in this sort of prepare your apps they did a very cute demo which i mean come on apple you can step your game up where the very last 10 seconds are like hey if you're doing agentic coding here's what you can do and he literally just writes a prompt which is like make my app follow all resizability best practices and it's like Bro, like one.

42:22.33 Frank Wow.

42:23.14 James that thing has to work so hard to figure that out what is it going to use the built-in mcp to pull every single one of your documentations but it's in entire context over and over and over again like

42:24.24 Frank Good luck. Yeah.

42:31.99 James I think that that is a huge miss. like obviously if you're an xcode i don't know maybe they do have this But. If Apple really wanted to step this game up, they would have released a series they wouldve released an agent plugin.

42:44.70 Frank Mm hmm.

42:44.87 James for for the the Duo or or you know iPhone skills or whatever it is.

42:48.03 Frank Yeah. itemizing.

42:50.80 James And it would have had. the mcp server built in it would have agent skills built in and what it would have had your custom agents built in that's compatible everywhere obviously first class in Xcode because that's what they care about. But.

43:03.55 James They should know, obviously, there's tons of developers not using that. And and their goal should be to make as many. you know things successfully as possible here so I do think that's sort of a mess. And I really hope, because I've been using the MAUI agent and the WinUI agent and their plugins like nonstop.

43:20.27 James and they're very, very good. you know, I don't have to ever really worry about figuring out. craziness with collection views because like they it just figures it out it knows how to do it knows how to

43:31.01 Frank Yeah.

43:31.73 James craftfully coated up or fix my old collection views into beautiful collection views. swipe views, all this stuff. So I think that is a little bit of a miss. And again, I could be wrong. I'm just watching this video. I haven't seen anything else. other so I'll report back.

43:46.01 James next week or whenever we find anything out there, or let us know in the comments on YouTube. but I'm excited that there is a new form factor. and you know I'm not that excited, I guess, because I'm not like a foldable person. But in general, I'm excited and and to to kind of get my apps.

43:59.21 James gives me a It's a reason to get ready for this this fall, I guess. so

44:04.19 Frank It's also a good reason to fully adopt a mobile canvas and all your plugins and get your agent game in because like, hopefully we'll be able to just prompt and be like, hey, please try out these 18 permutations of user interface.

44:08.93 James Okay.

44:17.93 James Yeah.

44:17.90 Frank and hey just let me know and do you see anything crazy going on on this screen or anything overlapping in a weird way it'd be nice to just kind of automate that test a little bit because i don't know the joke is developers make the worst testers and i think that this is one of those times where it is good to have like a third part of being like hey try to break my app in this new simulator new simulator Have fun.

44:38.48 James Totally.

44:40.02 Frank Tell me.

44:40.42 James Totally. That'd be great. All right. Well, it's getting late here in Norway, so it's going to wrap up this March conflict. Let us know what you think. Head to youtube .com forward slash at merge conflict FM, where you can watch us every single week.

44:52.54 James um, from wherever Frank's at and wherever I'm at and usually at home, but sometimes not. Um, and of course you can like, and subscribe there. You can also subscribe to the podcast on any of your favorite podcast applications to share with all of your coworkers, anyone that's interested, let us know if you're going to get a duo or if you're going to update your apps, or if you're already done, done it, let us know in the comments. That's going to do it for this week's merch conflict. So until next time, I'm James. is about to mag now

45:14.89 Frank And I'm Frank Krueger. Thanks for watching and listening.

45:18.33 James Peace.