Will Oremus iPhone Duo criticism has drawn a rebuttal from John Gruber, who says the dispute comes down to whether a costly foldable phone should be judged against a laptop or as a buyer’s main computer. In a September 18 Daring Fireball post, Gruber responded to Oremus’s recent Atlantic column with a defense of the device’s category and price. The available material does not independently establish the product’s specifications, price or prospects.
Oremus, a staff writer at The Atlantic, described the phone as Apple’s new iPhone Duo and treated it as an unconvincing entry in the company’s “one more thing” tradition. According to passages Gruber reproduced from Oremus’s article, the Duo is a book-style foldable with a 7.6-inch interior display, usable folded or open, with split-screen and full-screen options. Oremus acknowledged the apparently seamless open display as an engineering accomplishment while questioning the everyday value of a phone that expands into a small tablet.
Price sat at the center of that argument. The quoted Atlantic passages put the entry price at $2,000 and compared it with a MacBook Pro. Oremus’s conclusion was that the format was unlikely to alter many people’s lives, particularly at that cost, and that it felt like a dud among Apple launch-event reveals.
Why does Will Oremus doubt the iPhone Duo?
Oremus’s stated objection is practical rather than mechanical: a foldable handset that becomes a tablet-sized screen may not justify its premium, even if its hinge and display execution are technically sophisticated. His criticism also placed the Duo in a market where Samsung foldables have been available since 2019, suggesting the form factor does not carry much novelty.
Gruber accepted the narrower historical point that Samsung has sold foldable phones since 2019. He objected to describing the category as “popularized,” however, arguing that availability is not evidence that foldables have reached broad popularity. The supplied material offers no sales, shipment or usage data that could settle that claim.
How did John Gruber answer the price criticism?
Gruber argued that comparing the Duo’s cost with a MacBook Pro assumes the laptop is the more important purchase. For many people, he wrote, a smartphone is their primary and most personal computer. He suggested that some buyers could prefer spending $2,500 on a phone and $700 on a lower-cost laptop rather than reversing those amounts.
That is a consumer preference argument, not evidence of demand for the Duo. Gruber also said a new iPhone form factor should qualify as an Apple-style major reveal, pushing back on Oremus’s verdict that the product falls flat. Neither writer’s assessment establishes whether the device will sell or become useful to a wider audience. It establishes a familiar Apple argument: whether novelty in hardware earns its price by changing what people can do, or merely changing the shape of the bill.
This story draws on original reporting from Daring Fireball.
