$2K starting price is rough. I’ve upgraded my iPhone every year since my first phone, the 3GS. It’s one of a few “splurge”-type things I allow myself. It’s a hobby and just fun to play with the new hotness. This year might break the cycle.

I don’t care for the 18 Pro colors, I still love my orange 17 Pro, and I’m not sold on the Duo (functionality or price).

I might still end up with a Duo but I’m very much on the fence. I’ll tell myself it’s for development/testing reasons, or just to play with the newest offering but I’m just not sure. I worry this will suffer from the same lack of developer interest as the AVP did. Yes, it’s very different from the AVP and SwiftUI will almost certainly make this process easier but I’m still not sure.

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alwillis 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> I worry this will suffer from the same lack of developer interest as the AVP did

Pretty sure that developer interest is not to be a problem. The Duo will sell more units in a month (or less) than every AVP ever sold.

Apple told developers in June at WWDC to not assume fixed screen sizes. Well-written apps will work on any screen size thanks to Apple's APIs.

Some apps will need to be tweaked to take advantage of some Duo features no doubt, but I suspect that's not going to be a deal breaker.

	▲	getsprite 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Agree - this is going to have pretty wide adoption.

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deergomoo 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I’m in the exact same situation. Been upgrading every year for a long time (via the Upgrade Programme, making doing so more or less “free”). I was absolutely jazzed they finally did an orange phone, and this is the first year in a while that…I just don’t care. The Duo is far more expensive than I could ever entertain (plus buying a first-gen Apple product has never been a good idea), and there is quite literally nothing in the 18 Pro that makes me want to upgrade.

I may be swayed by a second gen Air in the spring, as I would like a lighter phone that feels less of an imposition in my pocket and my life in general. But it almost certainly won’t have the zoom camera, which has unexpectedly become one of my favourite and most used features of the 17 Pro. Why the two-camera phones all come with the ultrawide instead of the telephoto is baffling to me. Perhaps I’m an anomaly, but I never use the ultrawide lens.

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happyopossum 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> making doing so more or less “free”

except for those monthly payments you never get to stop making, yeah it's free.

	▲	deergomoo 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Why do you think I put “free” in quotes? Realistically I was never going to keep the phone longer than the two year finance term anyway, because back when I started doing it a two-year old phone would be really starting to show its age running newer software. So I could either pay monthly and get a phone every two years, or pay monthly and get a phone every year. Of course, these days a three or four or more year old phone is often still perfectly usable even for a tech enthusiast.

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alwillis 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

To get close to the same functionality as the Duo, you'd buy an iPhone 18 Pro ($1199) plus an iPad mini ($599); that gets you to $1,798. If you want more storage than the entry level iPhone 18 Pro or iPad mini, you're going to surpass $2000 pretty quickly.

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gumby271 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> I worry this will suffer from the same lack of developer interest as the AVP did

Apple can force iOS devs to do whatever they want. It may be basic support, but Apple devs will do whatever Apple tells them to do.

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newman314 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You could do the leasing route if you upgrade every year. Might pinch less.

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beAbU 7 hours ago | parent [-]

If leasing a fucking phone isn't a sign of the times then I don't know what is.

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nozzlegear 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

People have been leasing phones since at least the mid naughties, they just did it via their carrier. I distinctly remember standing in the Alltel store in 2006-ish, before it got gobbled up by ATT, and wondering if I could afford the extra $15/mo that the new Nokia candybar phone would run me. The only thing that's new is that Apple is offering it directly.

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beAbU 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Leasing, as in long term renting, required to give it back after the lease period, in near perfect condition, or face a penalty?

Or financing, paying it off over a fixed term, after which you own it outright?

The latter, I understand. And I'm also familiar with it.

But the former, I find hard to believe. Although, I'm not from the US. Are you telling me people rented nokia bricks in the aughts?

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nozzlegear 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You could and still can do both from your carrier, it's pretty standard. In my experience, it's somewhat uncommon for people to actually buy their phones outright unless you make a lot of money (like the folks who tend to frequent HN). Every two years, my wife and I would sign up for a new 24-month contract, which would include two new phones. After those 24 months, we could keep paying off the remainder of the phones and keep them, or we could return them and start a new contract with new phones.

> Are you telling me people rented nokia bricks in the aughts?

Myself and my family did, for sure. My parents made me pay my own phone bill too, so I spent a long time in the Alltel shop staring at the different phones and probably annoying the clerk.

	▲	officeplant 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> it's somewhat uncommon for people to actually buy their phones outright unless you make a lot of money Or like many of us, you buy cheaper phones outright for your prepaid phone plans. The fact that people still go for contract phone services and finance a new phone every two years blows my mind. Especially when I can get all the data/minutes/texts I need for $15 a month on a service like Tello, and just get a phone for $200-400 that I can use until it dies. Which is currently a used iPhone 11 I recently opened up to replace the battery.
	▲	beAbU 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		See my comment elsewhere in this thread, but you are blowing my mind. I'm not from the US and I did not realize that renting a mobile device was actually this common. I'm one of the lucky 10,000 today, thanks!

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stillpointlab 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I mean, you might find this hard to believe since you have a fixed view, but I'm old enough that we had one of those old-school rotary phones. My family literally leased that phone as part of our phone bill up until the late 90s. I recall at one point we were forced to trade the rotary for a push button since the telecom was discontinuing support. When "caller id" became a new feature it only worked for the first while on the rented phones.

To this day, I suspect many people have a line-item on their Internet bill for their modem/router rental/lease.

Why you would find this hard to believe is actually the curious thing to me.

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what 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

1. You can buy it outright at the end of the term by paying the remainder of the sticker price if you really want to keep it.

2. If you’re upgrading your phone on a one or two year cycle, you end up paying the sticker price minus the trade in value at the end of the term.

I don’t really see an issue in either scenario?

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Danox 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Most people are short-term thinkers if you talk to anyone around you at work, school or at home and if you merely suggest saving and controlling their spending briefly to buy something in the future good luck. I have given up.

I just buy more shares of blue chip companies and let them pay in the future for anything I want to buy.

	▲	cesarvarela 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		A little bit of this, a little bit of that, we know the average, but we don't know how much time each of us has on this earth.

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reaperducer 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If leasing a fucking phone isn't a sign of the times then I don't know what is.

People have been leasing and renting phones since the 1930's. I guess you missed out on the Ma Bell century.

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beAbU 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I honestly did not know this was a thing until today. I'm not from the US.

Where I'm from, it is common to finance a phone as part of a mobile contract: your monthly payment includes a device payment and the network subscription cost. Typically 24 months, but in recent years I've seen 36 month contracts as well. But at the end of the term the device is yours outright. No further down payments needed. Usually the device payment is effectively 0% APR over the 2 years, so it's a pretty lucrative deal. I've purchased all my phones this way over the past 20 years.

	▲	what 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Then you’d like the upgrade program? The only difference is there is a final balloon payment for it to be yours. You end up paying exactly the same as paying up front.

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upupupandaway 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Just checked the price in my home country (Brazil) and it's fantastic: the Duo starts at BRL 21999, which is roughly USD 4300.

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fchicken 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Wait for 2nd gen, always

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fragmede 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's high, but Apple's financing arm has it at $84/month, which is a bit more stomachable if you really want it.

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basisword 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don’t think it’ll face the developer interest problem. Devs go where the money is and consumers seem to love foldables.

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MBCook 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I like that blue though.

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Hamuko 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I don't know, $1999 seems almost kinda reasonable considering how much an iPhone Pro costs and how utterly fucked the current memory prices are.