First But Flawed is Fine! Late But Great is Also Fine!

Greetings from this fully armed and operational battle station for Apple Event Punditry. Apple Events are almost always a three-screen situation. One is for video, one is a collage of notes and reference materials, and the MacBook’s built-in display is Center Stage, i.e., “where the magic happens,” i.e.e. the workspace where I’m just trying to stay focused on pushing the cursor to the right.

I enjoy performing my aprés-lunch, avant-dinner work session at the local library, if I can. Now that I own a mobile external display, I can upgrade my library setup from “a little much” (MacBook plus iPad) to “cripes, now he’s just flaunting his nerdity.” The extra screen is genuinely helpful today and I’ve plenty of room in my bag…so why not replicate my desktop setup?

(Twenty years ago, this respected, meticulously researched multi-volume reference on literary criticism would have considered it an insult to be used like this. In 2026, it’s just glad it gets to spend an afternoon off of the shelf.)

I’m still chasing down some details and writing up my full reactions. But here’s the AI Summary (AI for “Andy Ihnatko,” natch) of the “Surprise and Shine” event:

• iPhone Duo looks great. Love the name. I’m relieved that I can lay down the sword and shield that I’ve been carrying ever since “iPhone Ultra” became the leading rumor.
• Can’t wait to get my hands on an iPhone 18 Pro and see if the variable aperture feature creates meaningfully-improved photos.
• Hey, it’s a new Apple Watch. Good for you, Apple!
• Dang, I wish AirPods Pro worked better with Android phones. They’re hella nice.
• My reactions to Apple Intelligence require further beard-stroking.
• My commentary about the actual streamed event is still a little bit too snarky. Ihnatko Dot Com is a very serious tech site, not a project affiliated with Mystery Science Theater 3000 or Rifftrax. (I’ve offered. As I should have anticipated, their response was funny, super-sarcastic, and just short of actually hurtful.)

I definitely want to get one thing off my chest right away.

I haven’t read any reactions from fellow journos and pundits. But during my usual skims through Reddit and social media, I’ve seen way more tribalism about the iPhone Duo than I’m happy with. What is this…the 1990s again? I thought we’d all gotten bored with this kind of “my platform can beat up your platform” nonsense.

The pro-Apple faction is haughtily pointing out that 2019’s Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 1 was a disaster. That it couldn’t stand up to daily use and it was definitely not ready for release. Whereas Apple surveyed this chaotic landscape from its heavenly bower and declared “The idea of a foldable phone has merit…but we must not and shall not ship a folding iPhone until we can make one that’s flawless in every regard. Our users deserve nothing less!” And that this is why Apple is clearly the best. Where does Samsung get off thinking it even deserves to share a market with the iPhone?!

(The pro-Apple faction got so worked-up that they failed to credit Tom Servo for that line.)

The pro-Samsung (which kind of equates to “pro-Android”) faction huffs and scoffs. Apple is boring and conservative. If Apple and Samsung were vacationgoers, Apple would be the couple who takes the same Disney Cruise every year and they spend the entire week on Disney-owned properties. While Samsung’s the adventure-seeking maverick who books a berth in a cargo ship to whatever port city a dart thrown at a map landed on. They will seek out sketchy clubs and they’ll take any drugs offered to them without even stopping to ask if the dude writhing and twitching and vomiting up green foam nearby took the same stuff. Risk-takers, man! Yeah, fine: the Fold 1 was so bad that Samsung pulled it before it even shipped to consumers. But, hey: you can’t enjoy the thrill of diving off a bridge unless you’re willing to risk spending a few months with your head immobilized in a halo brace, right? Look, Apple never makes a new product unless Samsung and everybody else has already gone there and proven it’s safe and profitable and there’s already a Starbucks on every corner!

(And then the pro-Samsung faction collectively crushes an empty Red Bull can on its forehead).

All of you know that this kind of thing is rubbish. It bums me out because it’s such a terrible waste of passion.

It’s also an example of that weird phenomenon where we sometimes fashion a headcanon that forces our complex and often contradictory reality to collapse into a simple, linear story. John Lennon was the laid-back, spiritual thinker, philosopher, and artist. Paul McCartney was the success-driven vulgarian who inflicted ruthless pressure on the Beatles to produce and succeed; like a beautiful bird, Lennon refused to be contained and went where he could fly…et cetera. Yeeks. The most dangerous lies are the ones we tell ourselves.

Yeah (1), the iPhone Duo is entering an established market for folding phones. Its development benefitted from (required, even) the years and years of engineering knowledge gained outside of Apple, in labs, factories, and in the hands of actual daily users. It’s fine. The person who buys one doesn’t care that the Duo wasn’t a 100% Apple internal jam, nor should they. They just want an awesome folding phone (ideally, one that runs iOS). We can’t gauge the awesomeness of the Duo just yet, but people who were able to gather first impressions in the demo area at the event seemed…impressed.

I wish Apple took more risks. In part, they don’t because they can’t. Apple is the only company in the world that manufactures iPhones. What happens if they produce a model that’s radically different — a curved, banana-shaped phone? Sure, why not? They could call it the iPhone Nana, maybe even produce a Minion-colored edition — …and people don’t want it? Then:

• One-fifth of the entire worldwide iPhone product line is a phone that people don’t want.
• Every 1,000,000 iPhone Nanas that leave the factory are burning up components and manufacturing capability that Apple could have used for a million iPhones that people do want.

The only truly risky iPhone (maybe the only one that will ever be) was the very first model. Its buyers paid the same Early Adopter tax as anybody. Unlike competing top-tier smartphones of 2007, the original iPhone didn’t work with new high-speed mobile networks, didn’t support third-party apps, and couldn’t even cut-and-paste. And yet nearly all of its buyers were very, very happy with it. Everything turned out OK.

Yeah (2), the Samsung Galaxy Fold 1 was an epic disaster. But there had to be a first foldable phone, and there’s only so much that engineers could learn before sending thousands of production samples into the real world. This hard-won knowledge let them develop the next generations of Galaxy Folds, as well as the battle-tested displays that Google, Apple, and others use in their own foldables.

Let’s mention the Samsung Galaxy Note 1, too. Would people actually buy a smartphone with a ridiculous, impractically huge 5.3” screen? In 2011, nobody knew. There wasn’t any market data for a thing that didn’t exist. Samsung closed its eyes, commended its soul to its higher power, and shipped the Note 1. It only upended the whole smartphone category. The iPhone freaking Mini’s display measured 5.4”!

So, it’s good to be first, and it’s good to be flawless. No product is going to be both at once. That’s perfectly fine. You just don’t want to be late to the game, with something a little squirrely. Isn’t it embarrassing when companies with real vision — pros, I mean — make that kind of error?