I'm curious what you all would need from a £2.5k+ iPhone Fold to make it worthy of the price.
For me it's parity with what Samsung are doing, but in the realm of the Apple ecosystem.
It's possible and Apple could school Samsung on how to make these things work more seamlessly if they tried, but my concern is... if they did any of that, I'd not need an iPad and frankly for my personal use, maybe not even a Mac. Not because an iPad or 'DeX' experience is anything close to a Mac one, but for a lot of folks personally it's enough of a desktop experience to replace it outside of specialist heavy duty work apps. So I can't see Apple doing it.
Unfortunately for me though, a device costing more than an iPhone and iPad combined at a minimum would need to do the job of both with as few cutbacks as possible.
I recently pre-ordered a Fold 8 and passed it off to a Samsung obsessed family member whose paying for it now. It absolutely can do what I say above (minus pencil, boo Samsung). The device did absolutely nothing bad and met my wildest expectation such as being a mini tablet and plug in desktop, but for me it simply wasn't an Apple device, didn't play with my HomePods, Apple TVs, my MacBook Air nor iMac or iPad - had I not had that kit all sitting around, fairly new and with years of life in them perhaps it would have worked. Only an Apple fold that justifies its existence would truly do the job.
Until then it's multi-device, multi-charging, multi-compartments in the backpack, waiting for iCloud to sync, joining Wi-Fi, paying for iCloud. The day when one device can do much of this is near but its in Apple's court to decide when they want to provide what Samsung et al. do.
For me it's parity with what Samsung are doing, but in the realm of the Apple ecosystem.
- iPad like tablet experience meaning iPad multi tasking and windowing on the bigger inside screen. Out of the box iPad apps running on the inner display, iPhone version on outer.
- iPad / Apple Pencil support like an iPad mini
- Desktop mode like DeX to a monitor, TV or even Mac (I'd settle for mirroring too)
It's possible and Apple could school Samsung on how to make these things work more seamlessly if they tried, but my concern is... if they did any of that, I'd not need an iPad and frankly for my personal use, maybe not even a Mac. Not because an iPad or 'DeX' experience is anything close to a Mac one, but for a lot of folks personally it's enough of a desktop experience to replace it outside of specialist heavy duty work apps. So I can't see Apple doing it.
Unfortunately for me though, a device costing more than an iPhone and iPad combined at a minimum would need to do the job of both with as few cutbacks as possible.
I recently pre-ordered a Fold 8 and passed it off to a Samsung obsessed family member whose paying for it now. It absolutely can do what I say above (minus pencil, boo Samsung). The device did absolutely nothing bad and met my wildest expectation such as being a mini tablet and plug in desktop, but for me it simply wasn't an Apple device, didn't play with my HomePods, Apple TVs, my MacBook Air nor iMac or iPad - had I not had that kit all sitting around, fairly new and with years of life in them perhaps it would have worked. Only an Apple fold that justifies its existence would truly do the job.
Until then it's multi-device, multi-charging, multi-compartments in the backpack, waiting for iCloud to sync, joining Wi-Fi, paying for iCloud. The day when one device can do much of this is near but its in Apple's court to decide when they want to provide what Samsung et al. do.
