This Is How Apple Rolls
Most of the announcements at Apple’s “Surprise and Shine” event were great examples of the way Apple rolls.
That phrase comes from John Gruber’s 2010 essay, “This Is How Apple Rolls.” Apple is rarely the first company into a product category or technology. Instead, it tends to enter with a carefully considered, high-end offering and then iterate, iterate, iterate. Over time, those successive improvements accumulate into something much more capable than the original product.
The iPhone 18 Pro, Apple Watch Series 12, Apple Watch Ultra 4, and AirPods 5 all fit that pattern. These are established products receiving significant, demonstrable improvements in usability, features, and capability: improvements that the people who actually use and value these products will appreciate.
Apple Watch
If you already think the Apple Watch is overpriced because of the “Apple tax,” the new models probably aren’t intended to change your mind. You didn’t buy an Ultra 2 or Ultra 3, and you probably won’t buy an Ultra 4. But for someone who values the product, longer battery life and features such as Max Extended Workout mode are real improvements, not meaningless specification bumps.
The new Health Sensing System in Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 may be the clearest example. Other wearable companies have moved toward a more holistic understanding of health, combining readings from multiple sensors, interpreting those signals together, and turning them into a comprehensible picture of the user’s condition.
Apple looked at that approach and asked what it could contribute: sophisticated software, unusually capable custom silicon, deep integration across its devices, and an ability to translate complex data into something ordinary people can understand and use.
The resulting readiness system analyzes activity, training load, vitals, and sleep data and synthesizes them into a simple score with an actionable recommendation. More important than the score alone is how Apple is delivering it: in a way consistent with the company’s core values of privacy and usability.
iPhone 18
The iPhone 18 Pro is another iteration, and that’s not a criticism. It offers better battery life, better performance, better thermal management, and a better camera. It’s a better iPhone.
Most people buying an iPhone 18 Pro are buying it, at least in large part, to be their camera. They may not care that its camera lenses now have apertures that physically open and close. Most normal people don’t want to think about variable apertures. They care that their pictures look better. That is precisely the point: Apple uses complicated, market-leading engineering to produce an improvement that users don’t need to understand before they can appreciate it.
AirPods
AirPods 5 tell a similar story. Features that once belonged to Apple’s more expensive earbuds have continued moving down the lineup. The new models cost $129 and $149, and both now include active noise cancellation in an open-ear design.
For years, getting Apple’s best noise cancellation meant buying AirPods Pro and accepting silicone tips inside your ears. Some people dislike that sealed feeling. They can now get noise cancellation without it, and the people who have been waiting for exactly that are going to be delighted.
There are broadly two kinds of wireless-earbud shoppers. Some care deeply about the overall experience and are willing to pay for design, battery life, support, effortless device management, and integration throughout Apple’s audio ecosystem. Those people often buy AirPods. Others prioritize price and are willing to trade away some of that integration and convenience.
AirPods 5 are for the first group. Those customers are likely to be very happy with them, and I would expect AirPods to remain the most popular wireless earbuds in the world.
And Then There’s the iPhone Duo
The iPhone Duo is different.
It is the most drastic redesign of iPhone hardware since the original iPhone. The iPhone X previously held that title, but in retrospect, even the iPhone X wasn’t radically different from what came before it. The Duo introduces an entirely new usage paradigm. For Apple, it is effectively a new product category.
I am as excited by what the iPhone Duo can do as I am by what it implies.
Of course it is Apple’s most expensive phone. It is also the most difficult iPhone Apple has ever attempted to manufacture. It takes the almost movie-prop thinness of the one-year-old iPhone Air and puts two such halves side by side. Opened, the Duo is just 5.2 millimeters thick—the thinnest iPhone Apple has ever shipped. That is mind-blowing.
It combines that thinness with a huge 7.6-inch inner display, capable performance, and all-day battery life. More important, it approaches the foldable form factor in ways that no competing phone quite does.
Apple waited for the foldable market to emerge. It did not dip its toe into that market until it believed it had a compelling product—one that is at least competitive with every existing foldable and, from my perspective, superior to them.
This is what Apple does over and over again.
The Duo rethinks the iPhone’s form factor, hardware, and software together. My opinion is necessarily based on Apple’s preview, published photography and video, and reports from people who have handled it; I have not yet held one myself.
Even with that caveat, the engineering appears remarkable. The precision hinge supports the display so that it lies flat, while the nano-texture inner screen minimizes the visibility of the crease. Apple has created what early observers describe as an extraordinary display—not merely for a foldable, but for a phone, period.
Then there is the software. Apple has reconsidered what happens as the phone changes orientation; as you move between, combine, and pair apps; and as you open or close the device. The transitions and animations aren’t ornamental. They explain what the device is doing and make an unfamiliar form feel coherent.
Some people will say animations don’t matter. Other people will say, “Every time I open this phone, it makes me smile.” For those people, that delight is worth paying for.
I expect the iPhone Duo to sell as fast as Apple can make it. Its complexity and price mean Apple won’t manufacture it in anything like the quantities of a conventional iPhone, so it won’t outsell the mainstream models. But that isn’t a reflection of demand. I think Apple will sell every Duo it can produce for as long as it chooses to make it.
What the Duo Implies
The iPhone Duo is more than a new phone. It is the foundation of a new Apple hardware platform.
Apple has now invested in the display technology, hinge engineering, component miniaturization, multitasking model, and adaptive software needed to make a foldable device work. The obvious question is what happens when those technologies move into larger products.
I cannot wait to see a foldable iPad: a device that begins larger than an open iPhone Duo and unfolds to become the size of an enormous iPad. Such a product could combine the portability of a notebook with a canvas large enough for serious creative work, complex documents, side-by-side applications, and new classroom experiences.
That product would sell in smaller quantities than an iPhone Duo, which is one reason starting with the iPhone makes sense. Apple can recover research-and-development costs, improve manufacturing, and gain economies of scale through its largest product business before moving the technology into more specialized devices.
Putting on my education hat, the possibilities for a large foldable iPad in schools are especially exciting, even if the specific applications aren’t clear yet.
This part is a prediction, not an announcement. But if I were a betting man, I would bet that Apple is already working on it—and that we’ll see it within the next few years.