Apple has announced a slew of developers who have updated their apps to fit the iPhone Duo, but despite some surprises, there are still so many more who haven't had time.

Greg Joswiak has said he's proud of how well Apple managed to keep the iPhone Duo secret, and that did lead to there being so many surprises when it was announced. But it also meant that for the giant majority of developers, there has not been time to update their apps for the new device.

This is why amongst generally glowing reviews, two criticisms keep coming up. One is about the iPhone Duo's weight, which nothing can be done about, and the other concerns apps, which can be fixed.

Right now the majority of iPhone apps look a little squashed on the iPhone Duo's front screen. They also look a little lost in the middle of the opened-out inside screen.

This will change and not only will developers fit their apps to the iPhone Duo, they will find ways to exploit its new form. So the Omni Group, for instance, has its OmniFocus and OmniOutliner apps ready in compact form for the outer screen, and adapted to exploit the wide inner one.

Apple itself has redone its own apps for the iPhone Duo, when it still hasn't for the Apple Vision Pro years after that launched. And now Apple has shown off more third-party apps that are also ready.

"The response to iPhone Duo from our developer community has been incredible," Susan Prescott, Apple's vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations, said in a statement, "and we're inspired by how quickly they've embraced its larger display and new ways to interact."

"From watching popular shows and content on the expansive inner display to multitasking across windows or playing console-quality games, developers around the world are reimagining what their apps can do," she continued. "We can't wait for users to discover these experiences beginning this Friday, with many more app experiences to follow."

Tablet and smartphone screens showing a task management app with calendar, dated to-do lists, colored tags, and icons for inbox, search, calendar, and settings on light and dark themes

Powerful To Do app OmniFocus has been updated to give an expanded widescreen view (left) and a new compact one for the iPhone Duo's front screen (right) - image credit: Omni Group.

The apps that Apple picks out include ones it has already shown, such as Netflix. But it's also said that other video apps are coming:

  • Amazon Prime Video
  • Paramount+
  • MLB and PGA Tour on Apple TV

"People watch Netflix in all kinds of moments, and we built our new experience to move with them," Netflix's senior director of Engineering, Tom Richards, said. "From browsing Clips on the outer display to settling in with a favorite show on the inner display, the experience adapts as iPhone Duo opens, closes, or turns, so discovering something new and sitting down to watch it feels effortless."

Then some key productivity apps like Bear, Things, and Notewise have been updated. Plus there are longtime Mac and iPhone developers such as Flexibits, the maker of Fantastical and Cardhop:

"Fantastical has always been about seeing your day at a glance, and iPhone Duo gives us more room to do that than any iPhone before it," Flexibits CEO Michael Simmons said. "With calendars, tasks, and menus visible together on the inner display, it feels like the full Fantastical experience from Mac and iPad, right in your pocket."

App Store surprises

Given their history on Apple platforms, you would expect Fantastical and the Omni apps to be ready promptly. But if you've been around Apple long enough, there are apps you'd think might never come.

Yet they have. Netflix is one, since the company will seemingly never support the Apple TV app, despite tantalizing hints it will.

But the real surprise is that Microsoft is on board with the iPhone Duo. Apple says that both Microsoft Word and Microsoft Outlook will come to the iPhone Duo in the coming weeks.

Foldable phone screen showing a dark monthly calendar on the left and a light daily schedule for October 8, 2026 on the right, with multiple color-coded events and times.

Fantastical has been updated for the iPhone Duo - image credit: Apple/Flexibits.

That Microsoft is coming at all is good, given how it delayed supporting the iPad for several years. In that case, what kept Microsoft away was seemingly that it believed it could prevent the iPad becoming a success.

So the fact that Microsoft is supporting the iPhone Duo is excellent. Except there is that matter of it taking another few weeks.

Updating apps is not a tick box job

If developers followed all of Apple's strong recommendations about coding their apps in certain ways for the last few years, they'd be in great shape. They'd genuinely not have an immense amount more to do to perfectly exploit the iPhone Duo's screen size, if not its extra features.

But Apple will never say why it is recommending something. Although savvy developers can often guess, it's also never for a reason that is urgent.

Apple may see it as giving developers time, but instead it's always giving them a dilemma.

Smartphone screen showing an action video game battle scene with a character fighting a flying monster in a fiery lava landscape, on-screen controls and health bars visible

Zenless Zone Zero has been updated too - image credit: Apple/Zenless Zone Zero

Developers have to decide whether and when to devote resources to reworking their apps to fit Apple, or to add new features. Typically reworking an app means affecting things users never see, so there will always be a pressure to do the more visible work.

Then, too, one of the reasons that Microsoft is a surprise is that it is a huge company. You might expect that a large firm would be better able to adapt apps than a one-man or one-woman band, but it may not be.

A lone developer can make the choice to support something and work on it immediately. A large firm will have its own goals for its apps and will have teams working toward release schedules.

For them, choosing to support new Apple features means pushing back their own plans. It also means liaising with multiple team members across departments from coding to marketing, where each already has their hands full.

Apple did not give enough time

If you were waiting to order an iPhone Duo, the time between its announcement on September 9, 2026, and its at least partial availability on October 23, seems like an eternity. But even with generative AI assistance and similar tools it is not nearly enough time for every developer to work through plans and update their apps.

That's especially so because with the exception of firms whose apps were shown at the launch, few or no developers had an iPhone Duo to try. Even those developers who began work immediately, couldn't actually submit their apps to Apple until October 8.

Plus it wasn't until a week after the launch that Xcode was updated to let developers build iPhone Duo apps. Even then, they could run it in the Xcode simulator, but nothing beats testing your software on actual devices.

So the job became understanding the differences with the iPhone Duo, redesigning and coding apps to fit that, then producing the apps. And then submitting to the App Store and hoping the app gets passed in time for the first real users on October 23.

Consequently, there will be developers who have simply decided not to do anything until they could get an iPhone Duo or three. There will be others who were racing to be ready for October 23, and simply couldn't make it.

And there will be still other developers who will never update their apps for the iPhone Duo.

The good thing is that most developers will, and also that for them and us as users, it is only a matter of time. If your pre-ordered iPhone Duo isn't coming until January 2027, you may well never see an app that isn't updated for it.