Issue 773

23^rd October 2026

Written by Alex Ozun

Comment

Over the past few weeks, I’ve seen a massive push from developers to adapt their apps for iPhone Duo ahead of its launch date. I’ve been especially impressed by the indie dev and Build in Public communities, with many developers going well beyond what’s required for basic Duo support. There was also some interesting cross-pollination between iPad and Duo. Some developers capitalised on their recent efforts to add iPad support, extending it to Duo. Others went the opposite way and added iPad support alongside their Duo updates. But it’s not only the updates that caught my eye. There are so many interesting Duo-inspired ideas and apps floating around, like this retro-style Contacts index or this notebook app. Deck-man, the Sony Walkman app we mentioned in a recent issue, has gone proper viral, with big YouTubers featuring it in their reviews. It’s clear that skeuomorphism is making a strong comeback with Duo! Conveniently, someone built FoldHunt to capture these Duo-inspired ideas and track which existing apps have been adapted. This makes me feel like we’re back in the early days of the App Store, when we’d check in daily, eager to see what was new on the shelves. Hopefully, this feeling lasts for a while…

In fact, we might just have plenty of time to enjoy the anticipation. iPhone Duo starts shipping today, but significant supply delays mean that many developers won’t get their devices any time soon. Apple provided tech bloggers and YouTubers with review units ahead of time, which raises the question of whether a similar accommodation could be made for those developers who worked hard to provide Day One support. Perhaps Apple could allow developers to pre-order a device through their Apple Developer accounts, with some stock reserved for this purpose? I admit, I’ve no idea how the logistics of this would work, but there are many folks at Apple who are much smarter than me and could work something out. Granted, Apple is running multiple Optimize your app for iPhone Duo in-person workshops at Developer Centers around the world, where devs can get hands-on time with the devices.

Take advantage of these workshops if you can!

– Alex Ozun

News

Sean Allen shuts down his iOS Development online school

Sean Allen, a prominent iOS educator and YouTuber, announced that he’s shutting down his online school, putting some courses on sale and making others free to download. Sean explains: ‘iOS dev course sales plummeted due to AI’. I don’t know what the long-term effect of AI on online education would be, but losing the human touch that educators like Sean brought, could be devastating indeed! I hope Sean finds other ways to share his knowledge that are sustainable in this era of AI.

Code

Designing for iPhone Duo | Pockity Blog

Nikhil Nigade shares his design explorations adapting his app Pockity for iPhone Duo. This might be the first time I’ve seen someone use mesh gradients creatively to tie together a multi-screen app design. I think it’s a clever approach that also looks fantastic!

Getting your app ready for iPhone Duo: what actually broke

Most of the iPhone Duo articles I’ve seen focus on adapting iPhone-first apps. This article from Karolina Samorek stands out because it describes the experience of adapting an iPad-first app Lake (which, btw, is beautiful!). Starting with an iPad layout doesn’t automatically mean it’s iPhone Duo-ready. But it’s reassuring to see that the lift isn’t too heavy.

How to use layoutMarginsGuide in SwiftUI

I normally just skim through How-to articles unless I’m looking for something specific. But this article by Sarun I read very carefully, especially with the current push to adapt apps for iPhone Duo. Figuring out how to correctly set layout margins was one of the first things our team had to do in preparation for Duo, and believe me, it’s not as straightforward as it seems.

Tools

Explore SwiftUI Visually

Florian built exploreswiftui.com to visually showcase the native capabilities of SwiftUI ‘in its cleanest form’. It even has a dedicated page with iPhone Duo examples! Resources like this play an important role in the Apple Developer ecosystem because they fill the gaps in the official documentation (of which there are many!). Cheers, Florian!

ImageFlow | Node-based image editor

Did I ever mention that I love Mac-assed apps? 🙂 ImageFlow is a strong addition to the family of unapologetically native macOS apps. And it’s open source!

If you aren’t familiar with node-based editing, I highly recommend giving ImageFlow a try! I first learned about this concept when I tried Nuke a few years ago, and I remember thinking that it felt like visual functional programming. Great job, Daniel Fortes!

And finally...