WWDC 2026: Apple is Folding

The thing I liked most about the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 I had for a while was that I met a lot of interesting people because of it.

It broke like four times under warranty because the crease got gummed up with their glue strips in the summer or it got brittle when I travelled to Greenland because of the cold in the winter, it felt uncomfortable and often moved in the pocket you put it into in a way that would annoy you every time you sat down somewhere.

But once you pull it out, something magical happens. Foldables are still one of those items you will rarely see in the wild, and it peaks the curiosity of people in a way that will make them come over and ask questions.

You see them touch it really carefully and open it really, really slowly because they are afraid they might break it, and suddenly you have this magical, foldable screen right in front of you that turns this heavy slab into a form factor known by anyone who ever held a book in their life.

When it snaps open or shut with the satisfying noise and haptic feedback, it makes them genuinely happy and smile, and watching different people having the same experience over and over again is kind of satisfying and in a way justified the price for me alone.

I am sure the Apple foldable will have its downsides and is heavily overpriced, and if you buy it in the EU, you won’t be able to use half the features, but I am still going to get one because I will have a lot of joy watching people interact with new technology for the first time when I travel, and I love listening to how they think it could improve their life or how and for what they would get one themselves.

I can't see myself paying for foldables, but I think they are incredibly neat. I spend a ton of time on my phone, and the idea that the screen could get much bigger really tempts!

That said, I really wonder if this could be a shark jump move. I think one of iOS app's biggest wins is that developers have a relatively narrow set of form factors to target, that making bespoke interface layouts is the obvious choice & that that really allows careful crafting. I'm overselling this case a bit, but it feels like Apple is saying: ok, now make your apps responsive. Add more. Some folks will figure out each layout nicely, but I feel like in many cases, the responsive layouts are going to be less well crafted, not have such thought out intracacies.

I love responsiveness, but it generally pushes layout complexity down, requires simpler / plainer design languages, in my view. This pushes away from bespoke careful craft, and towards mechanized systems, and there's some design loss in this push.

Yeah, it's one of those things that's hard to describe, but the 10pf, despite being thicker and heavier, seems to be easier to hold

Since I sometimes like to walk and browse, I ordered one of the Qi rings that goes on the back of the device, since it's just magnetic, I can remove it for pocketing and such

What's huge about it for someone who doesn't own a PC laptop?

Every example I've seen or tried using a fold-able was just a regular smartphone with a screen that displayed apps that looked like the app doesn't fit on the phone very well. The few that did fit didn't seem to provide any real advantage.

That and the fold-able users I know all run into reliability issues with screens breaking over time.

Exactly. Considering you could buy an iPhone and a MacBook Neo for roughly the same cost … will be very interesting to see this device in action. Can iOS replace MacOS for a user that doesn’t need a local Xcode? Can I spend $2k for the device I use in my pocket and on my desk… and put the rest of my money into cloud/server infrastructure if I have that need?