Issue 774

30^th October 2026

Written by Alex Ozun

Comment

I don’t normally enjoy throwing shade on other dev communities, but it’s hard not to be a little bit smug around our Android friends these days. Foldable phones have been around for 8+ years, but it took iPhone Duo, and more importantly, the Apple Developer Community, to fully open the floodgates of creativity and get the general public excited about the new experiences that foldable devices enable.

I check aggregators like beardfm.app and foldhunt.com daily, and new Duo-inspired apps just keep popping up. Granted, not all of them are great. In fact, a lot of these apps rely heavily on the hinge gimmick and arguably don’t offer much long-term value to users. But that doesn’t concern me that much. We’ve been living in bleak vibecodetown for a while now, and it’s in those gimmicks and that whimsy that I still find a spark of humanity. So keep them coming!

Speaking of gimmicks, the new MacBook Pro with a touch screen was announced on Wednesday. And I feel…a bit conflicted about it. The hero image on apple.com, with a person playing the piano on the MacBook’s screen, is outright ridiculous. But I can certainly get behind the use case of interacting with the simulator using touch input. This can be especially helpful when testing document-based apps with multi-touch workflows. And the PROLED XDR Display specs do look impressive. I really want to see it in person!

Just don’t expect me to play the piano on it 🤏

– Alex Ozun

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News

As I already mentioned in the commentary section, Apple just announced its first MacBook with Touch. Conveniently, the announcement is accompanied by 3 new Tech Talks. I think these talks will be interesting both to developers who maintain macOS apps and want to adapt them for touch input, and to those who are looking at the new Macs as consumers and want to better understand the new touch-enabled affordances they offer: Design for touch on Mac, Bring Touch to your Mac app, Bring Live Activities to Mac

Federal Court of Australia has ordered Apple to open up its devices to other app stores as it ruled that the restriction was anti-competitive.

Our Aussie editor Andyy Hope shares his thoughts: ‘Personally, I don’t think this is going to be that big of a deal in the day-to-day life of Australians, nor do I think that “Aussie App Store™” will ever take off. But I’m always open for more free market ideas.’

Design

Jeff Johnson shares his thoughts on the design philosophy (or lack thereof) behind the new touch-enabled Macs. I concur with his point that touchscreens on Macs have more in common with the frustrating touch interfaces in cars than the well-motivated ones on phones and tablets.

Alex Grebenyuk, whom many readers will know as the developer behind the popular Nuke library, shares his experience adapting Pocket Casts for iPhone Duo. I really appreciate the generous number of screenshots that demonstrate the multitude of design decisions that went into the adaption process. And the Harder Than It Looks sections contains an important insight: ‘Duo also exposed a bigger gap: parts of the app needed more love on a big screen […] That will take more than one release’.

I think all the recent Day One support announcements have made us somewhat desensitised to the fact that adapting our apps isn’t always feasible in a single one-shot release.

Code

When Daniel Saidi writes about open-source vs closed-source development, both areas in which he’s found success, I pay attention. In this article he shares what motivated him to archive his popular open-source OnboardingKit library, and create a separate closed-source version with a commercial license. To nobody’s surprise, the decision was largely driven by the impact AI is having on open-source development. I respect Daniel’s decision, and recommend giving the article a read to get the full picture.

Business and Marketing

Many developers are working on new apps right now, perhaps looking to ride the Duo hype wave, and will soon face the challenge of catching their audience’s attention. Jordan Morgan offers timely tips on how to launch your apps in an environment where everyone and their mother is shipping apps and competing for attention.

Tools

As you can probably imagine, I’m subscribed to tons of RSS feeds. Despite being a long-time user of NetNewsWire, I’m always on the lookout for interesting new RSS readers. This Feedler launch announcement caught my eye. As far as I can tell, it was developed largely in ‘stealth’ mode, so I was pleasantly surprised by how polished it is at launch. Kudos to the developer!

And finally...

Ok, can we please be serious and stop cracking jokes? 😅