Xcode 27.1 Beta Release Notes
84 points by CameronBanga 3 hours ago | 46 comments

yreg 51 minutes ago
Finally! So we have a little over a month between getting the simulator and first customers running our apps in Duo.

I expect that most apps will look rather broken on release, but it will be smoothed out eventually.

reply
james_pm 4 minutes ago
[delayed]
reply
comandillos 36 minutes ago
"You are a experienced iOS Software Engineer, your task is to migrate this application to the iPhone Duo layout...
reply
thih9 31 minutes ago
“Here is your iOS app migrated to Surface Duo…”

Tongue half in cheek, my point is that agents may be unreliable with fresh libraries.

It looks like there are some fun edge cases too:

> A reserved region can be active or inactive. For example, a reserved region that represents the fold is active when iPhone Duo is partially open, but inactive when it is fully open.

source: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/technologyoverview...

reply
CharlesW 11 minutes ago
> Tongue half in cheek, my point is that agents may be unreliable with fresh libraries.

You may find Axiom (my FOSS project, updated for iPhone Duo) helpful. https://charleswiltgen.github.io/Axiom/

Note: I'm scrubbing it against the final 27.1 beta SDK as I type this, so it's likely that its Duo knowledge will get an update within the next few hours.

reply
yreg 23 minutes ago
Yeah, good luck with that.
reply
reaperducer 49 minutes ago
I expect that most apps will look rather broken on release, but it will be smoothed out eventually.

Sadly, many apps will continue to look rather broken.

There are still thousands of apps that still look wrong on iPad 16 years after its release, even with the 2x button pushed, for no good reason.

I think I heard that Instygram only recently figured it out.

reply
pkamb 44 minutes ago
Instagram released a Reels-first iPad app that is much, much worse than the old iPhone-on-iPad app.
reply
basisword 3 minutes ago
They finally released the full experience a few months back. I think their original excuse (years ago) was that 'people take photos on iPhone so iPad is unnecessary for Instagram'.
reply
c-hendricks 40 minutes ago
To me that's said more about Instagram than the feasibility of building an app for a tablet.
reply
ar_lan 2 hours ago
I think this is my main hesitation with picking up the Duo on the first release. I have no doubt the build quality is exceptional, but the chance that the apps I use are not well optimized for this new form factor is pretty high in the first year of its release.

I don't think they won't work, but I anticipate oddities to appear for a while, especially for older applications.

reply
puelocesar 55 minutes ago
I’m not sure about this, we already support resizing on our app for a while now because of our iPad/mac catalyst version, so I fail to see how different it would be on the Duo.

I assume other apps will have have the same, since our team is super small compared to everyone else.

reply
madeofpalk 17 minutes ago
Apps not rebuilt with the latest SDK will display in pillar-boxes mode, centred on the screen.
reply
Kwpolska 43 minutes ago
The small screen is so small they had to move controls to the right, I would expect glitches because of that, especially for custom controls.
reply
OCTAGRAM 2 hours ago
I presume this Xcode 27.1 beta will not want to launch on our Mavericks Forever, the last Mac OS we actually like and use.
reply
CharlesW 2 hours ago
Correct.
reply
CameronBanga 3 hours ago
Now available for testing apps on the iPhone Duo!

Here are some screenshots from getting my own app compiled, if anyone is interested:

https://bsky.app/profile/cameronbanga.com/post/3mvsrxk5q7b2j

https://bsky.app/profile/cameronbanga.com/post/3mvss5wmxej2l

reply
inshard 60 minutes ago
Waiting for my coding agent to have zero idea what I mean when I say build for iPhone duo (due to knowledge cutoffs in pre-training; happened when Liquid Glass came out previously).
reply
isodev 2 hours ago
It really feels quite irrelevant. Also, the amount of work to support this with zero support from Apple since WWDC is just absurd. And even if one does the work, Apple will just sherlock the cool features into their apps.
reply
CharlesW 2 hours ago
> Also, the amount of work to support this with zero support from Apple since WWDC is just absurd.

Resources:

https://developer.apple.com/search/?q=iphone%20duo

Axiom: https://charleswiltgen.github.io/Axiom/ (my FOSS project, updated for iPhone Duo)

reply
isodev 31 minutes ago
What is your point? That they eventually released something? The simulator came out today... on Friday afternoon lol
reply
CharlesW 23 minutes ago
I don't understand what you mean by "eventually" when you can't even pre-order it yet.
reply
nozzlegear 2 hours ago
Why does it feel irrelevant? And what kind of support should Apple be providing beyond releasing Xcode and an iPhone Duo simulator?
reply
isodev 26 minutes ago
And when did Apple decide to grace us with tools to support the Duo? Yeah, 3 hours ago. This should've been out in June so they can also get the feedback about all the silly design choices the Duo brings (and the bugs in that simulator). Too bad I can't just send them an invoice for all the wasted time.
reply
madeofpalk 7 minutes ago
Honestly if they were really serious about this they would have released this back in December. Shame. Steve Jobs is rolling in his grave!!
reply
khoury 2 hours ago
I'm just gonna ignore this thing and continue as if it never existed. Worked with Vision Pro that no body uses and will work with this.
reply
devin 2 hours ago
I'm not fangirling over it, but comparing it to Vision Pro is ridiculous.
reply
matsemann 2 hours ago
But will you gain anything by building for it? Will you see noticeably more users or people choosing another alternative because you didn't specifically building the app for Duo? At least if it doesn't outright break.
reply
cschep 40 minutes ago
I would get a little bit of joy if a duo user noticed the effort I put into making my app work well on their device. Why put effort into anything? Your take is bordering dangerously on cynicism. :)
reply
wat10000 32 minutes ago
As a user, this attitude makes me sad.

As a professional programmer, it at least gratifies me to know this is the attitude I'm competing against.

reply
busymom0 33 minutes ago
Duo users also likely have disposable income to spend on in app purchases, maybe click on ads to purchase things, and other monetization. So I do think it's worth building for it.
reply
reaperducer 43 minutes ago
But will you gain anything by building for it?

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Will you see noticeably more users or people choosing another alternative because you didn't specifically building the app for Duo?

I haven't done iOS development in a long time, but my understanding is that if your iPhone app is designed well and uses all of Apple's recommended methods, adjusting for different screen sizes and orientations is fairly easy.

If you decided to go cheap/easy/dumb from the outset, then you made your bed, and now you get to lie in it.

reply
BiteCode_dev 2 hours ago
It is exotic, and bring only a little to the table for a stiff price increase.
reply
whatever1 2 hours ago
It is indeed a niche product. Its price reflects the sales expectations of Apple.

But its form factor has been validated for almost a decade now from other manufacturers. So iPhone Duo will do fine. It will not surpass a slab iPhone but fine.

Vision Pro was a completely new beast, the hardware was not there, the market was not there.

reply
isatty 44 minutes ago
I know exactly one person who has a foldable phone and I live in sf. I’ve never even considered getting one and I like new tech.

I’m not doubting that there’s demand for it but I wonder who/where?

reply
MSKJ 16 minutes ago
All over China/Asia, anecdotal statistic
reply
reaperducer 42 minutes ago
I’m not doubting that there’s demand for it but I wonder who/where?

I spend a lot of time in hospitals, and I see doctors with them.

That may also explain why Apple isn't too worried about the price.

reply
fg137 57 minutes ago
The form factor of Vision Pro has also been validated for a decade from other manufacturers.

And that means nothing. Because other manufacturers are not doing well either.

reply
CharlesW 2 hours ago
> It is indeed a niche product.

It's worth noting that "niche" in this case means ~10M in its first year, comparted to an estimated 250M Apple smartphone shipments in 2027. So far, Apple has sold ~600K Vision Pro in total.

Also, supporting Duo is not an enormous lift if you're already supporting resizable windows, as developers are required to do for OS 27.

reply
dozerly 2 hours ago
The price, hardware, and market was not there for the Vision Pro. There was no reason to buy a VR headset that couldn’t play games.
reply
testing22321 2 hours ago
> Its price reflects the sales expectations of Apple.

People famously said that of the first iPhone, expensive at the time.

Then about the $1k iPhone X.

Apple have made phones a fashion accessory and status symbol. I won’t be surprised if the Duo sells extreme well, even by iPhone standards.

reply
selectodude 2 hours ago
My only concern is that they'll sell out so quickly for so long that I'll have to wait for the iPhone Duo Two-o because they won't be easy to get until like May 2027.
reply
Razengan 2 hours ago
I had the 1st-gen Vision Pro, and then sold it.

I really wanted to use it as my primary computing display, but as is almost always the case with Apple, the amazing hardware was hamstrung by the crippled OS.

Even just being able to use it as a generic display i.e. with a Nintendo Switch would have been amazing.

reply
yieldcrv 2 hours ago
taking the Apple strategy with the Apple ecosystem, genius
reply
busymom0 2 hours ago
Developer here. Apple often rejects app submissions if the app doesn't look optimized for some iPhone device or iPad device. So won't be surprised if they reject new apps and updates for not being optimized for the Duo. This could be their way of getting developers to comply.
reply
devin 2 hours ago
That seems like a tough road. They've never been able to enforce that iPhone app makers build an iPad-compatible version or vice versa, and this looks exactly like that scenario.
reply
CharlesW 59 minutes ago
It's mostly enforced, the only exception being apps with a legitimate iPhone-only hardware dependency.

iPhone apps must function on iPad in iPhone-compatibility mode, apps must support window resizability as of OS 27, and apps can't detect iPad and refuse to run. And I don't think this is new, but setting the target to iPhone-only doesn't prevent iPhone apps from running on iPad.

reply