"Late", "copying homework", creases: Apple CEO John Ternus responds to all questions regarding the foldable iPhone

Apple's new CEO Ternus. Image processed by AI

"For us, this is almost a field that can be reclaimed from scratch, and many things can be rethought from the ground up." In the interview after the launch event, Ternus reviewed in detail Apple's 10-year journey of foldable phones.

This interview is not just a technical review after a new product launch, but more like the first "unboxing a mystery" after Ternus, Apple's new CEO, took office. Questions that the outside world cares most about, including late arrival, following others' designs, creases, UI adaptation and so on, were almost all responded to one by one:

1. Why did Apple enter the market nearly a decade after foldable phones were first developed?

Products on the market "didn't strike us as particularly inspiring"; Apple "will never rush to launch an immature product to the market just to meet a deadline". Apple was unwilling to make a large block that "stacks two phones rigidly together". The product was not launched until we could get large screen, portability, hardware and software all right at the same time.

2. How did Apple solve the long-standing problems of foldable phones such as creases, plastic-like feel and hinge durability?

Ternus said that foldable displays "must be designed as a complete system": the complex hinge is designed to make the screen as flat as possible, high-strength glass is added to both sides of the OLED panel, and the outermost surface is treated with a new nano-textured polymer material. When he first saw the solution, his reaction was: "Yes, this is it."

3. Why did Apple rebuild iOS for foldable phones instead of simply enlarging the iPhone interface?

Because Apple does not want the iPhone Duo to become an "enlarged phone". The control area is moved to the right to return the vertical space to the content, so that whether the device is closed or unfolded, the operation stays within the natural reach of the user's right thumb; the inner and outer screens maintain a consistent aspect ratio logic, allowing content to scale and transition naturally.

4. Do developers have to start all over again to adapt to a new device?

Joswiak's answer is: "Yes, it will indeed be much easier." Apple already has two ecosystems for iPhone and iPad, developers have long been dealing with different sizes of large canvases, especially teams that have completed adaptation for iPad mini have a better foundation. When talking about the new API, Joswiak almost blurted out the internal project code name and had to stop temporarily: "Now we have to get used to calling it by its official product name."

5. Is Apple Pencil coming to iPhone for the first time breaking Apple's past rule of "no stylus needed"?

Ternus said: "To be honest, I have never regarded it as a real rule." The iPhone Duo works perfectly fine without Apple Pencil; but when unfolded, it has a larger canvas, and the Pencil is no longer an unnecessary accessory, but a tool that some users will love and can use to do more things.

6. What exactly does an iPhone priced at nearly 2000 US dollars offer?

Ternus did not evade the price point: "Yes, it is more expensive than other iPhones." But he believes that this is a product with extremely complex structure and highly precise engineering design that still delivers "great value". Joswiak explained it more straightforwardly: it is called Duo because "when closed, it is the familiar iPhone you know; when you open it, you get a huge display area."

7. Will AI push mobile phones to the background and let glasses or other wearable devices take over the personal computing center?

Ternus said that the iPhone is still "powerful in performance, has great battery life, and has a screen". More importantly, all personal information is on "the device that you own and control"; "No one else can access it, Apple cannot access it, and we do not want to access it either." Apple Watch and AirPods will be extensions, but the iPhone remains what Apple calls the "intelligent personal hub".

8. Will Apple Watch become an all-day listening device?

Joswiak specifically responded to this privacy concern: the watch will not record audio continuously, and the original audio will only exist briefly when it needs to be processed to generate high-level summaries; "There is no full recording, and no verbatim transcript." He put it more thoroughly: "If the recording itself does not exist, it means no one else can get it."

9. After becoming Apple's CEO, what kind of "Ternus era" does Ternus plan to leave behind?

Facing the question of "will an engineer at the helm re-energize Apple's innovation", he did not talk about management style, nor did he put forward grand slogans. He said: "I love making products, and I love making products with all these people at Apple. I have been doing this for 25 years."

Talking about Apple, he said: "Apple is in my blood. I have spent almost half of my life here." As for what to do next, his answer still focuses on the most specific things: "The most important thing is to focus on getting things done and making great products."

10. Apple has been developing foldable phones for so long, what is its most proud achievement?

Apart from the product itself, what Joswiak was most excited about was: "We actually kept this secret." He revealed that the project has a "very funny" internal code name, but he refused to disclose it; Apple kept it extra confidential because the outside world had already guessed from leaks that it was working on a foldable phone, and some people even guessed the screen aspect ratio correctly.

The following is the full transcript of interviews by TechRadar and Tom's Guide, edited by Tencent Technology, with deletions and adjustments made without altering the original meaning:

01. Why did the foldable iPhone arrive so late?

Q: You are not the first player to enter this category, you have had time to observe and study the market. So what exactly makes the iPhone Duo different from previous foldable phones? And at what moment did you realize: "We are ready, and the market is also ready for an Apple-style foldable iPhone"?

Ternus: For us, the key has always been: when do we truly have a product concept that meets Apple's standards. It must meet our requirements for quality and durability, and it must also meet our design requirements. I think one of the most brilliant points of the iPhone Duo is that it perfectly demonstrates how hardware and software can be combined to create a truly distinct product.

For us, this is almost a field that can be reclaimed from scratch, and many things can be rethought from the ground up. You can see this rethinking in the hardware, and you can also see it in the software and the overall design. Eventually all these factors come together, and we think: this is the right product.

Joswiak: What we said at the launch event is actually very close to the way we have been discussing internally all the time. The concept itself is simple: you want a big screen, and you also want it to be foldable so you can put it in your pocket. But as Ternus said at the launch event, the products made by other manufacturers before didn't strike us as particularly inspiring. In Apple's history, we will never rush to launch an immature product to the market just to meet a deadline.

I have always been amazed that I am surrounded by a group of very outstanding engineers and designers. They will take the initiative to think: what should we do? How can we really do this the Apple way? In my opinion, the answer mainly has two aspects — "two fold", which is not a deliberate pun on foldable phones.

The first is to change the aspect ratio of the screen. We don't want to make two phones rigidly spliced together, which unfolds into a large square, resulting in a device that is big, bulky, and not really in line with the way people use phones. So we adopted a different aspect ratio, which is more in line with our understanding of mobile phones.

The second point, I think everyone will feel it very clearly after seeing the real device yesterday, is that our software team has invested a huge amount of work in design and execution. The final experience is completely different from other foldable products on the market. Many existing products have poor software experience, while the iPhone Duo feels like: this is exactly the kind of product Apple would make.

02. Creases, Hinges and Nano-Texture

Q: When it comes to foldable phones, one of the most discussed issues is creases. You adopted the nano-texture treatment this time. As far as I know, no other manufacturer has fully adopted the same method so far, although many brands have tried different solutions. How did you come up with this direction? After you decided to make a foldable phone, facing the crease problem that is widespread in the industry, why do you think nano-texture is a simple and natural solution?

Ternus: I think our overall approach to the display and hinge is very "Apple".

We will go back to first principles, start thinking from the most basic question: how can we make this as good as possible? You must design it as a complete system. For example, we designed an extremely complex hinge system, one of the goals of which is to make the screen as flat as possible when unfolded.

The layered structure of the display itself is also very unique. We added high-strength glass to both the top and bottom sides of the OLED panel to improve durability and help the screen maintain a flatter state.

As for the nano-texture, everyone already likes the nano-texture display technology on iPad and MacBook Pro, but on the iPhone Duo, we actually found a brand new way to implement it. Interestingly, the innermost surface of the foldable inner screen is not glass like traditional phones, but a polymer material.

If you have seen some previous foldable phones on the market, you will find that the surface of some products feels like relatively cheap plastic: the touch is not good, and it may appear wavy, wrinkled, and not flat enough. The nano-texture treatment can greatly improve these problems. It looks very flat, feels great to the touch, and also has very high durability.

Q: What did you feel the first time you saw this solution?

Ternus: At that moment, I felt like: "Yes, this is it." We often suddenly realize that the direction is right when we first see a design model or prototype, and you think: "This is exactly what I want." Once you get that feeling, the next thing to do is: okay, now how do we actually make it, turn the concept into reality?

Joswiak: There is another thing I am particularly proud of: we actually kept this secret.

We took extra confidentiality measures for this project and did not disclose it to the public. It also has a very funny internal project code name, but I won't tell you, and that code name has nothing to do with the product itself.

We decided at the time that this project should be kept extra confidential. Because through various leaks, the outside world already knew we were developing foldable products.

Unfortunately, some people even guessed the aspect ratio correctly, and later you will see that some products that "happen to" adopt a similar ratio have also appeared on the market. So we decided that we must lock down the information completely for this part, and in the end it turned out that we did it.

03. Not Just an Enlarged iPhone

Q: What about the software side? I think one of the most ambitious and also somewhat risky points this time is that you rethought iOS for foldable phones, for example, moving many control elements to the right side of the screen. How did this decision come about? What is the difference between the software experience of a foldable phone and a traditional bar phone?

Ternus: This is exactly what I said earlier: when you face a brand new device form, one of the most exciting parts is that you can rethink a lot of things.

From the very beginning, as Joswiak said, we started from a very simple principle: since we are making a foldable phone, its unfolded state should be as perfect as possible. Obviously, we have accumulated a lot of experience in large screen experience on iPad, so we know very well what we want.

Then you get a device form with an aspect ratio similar to a "passport". The software team quickly realized that we could move the control area to the right, so as to return as much vertical space as possible to the content.

Later we found that this layout is actually very intuitive: when the device is closed, the controls are naturally within the reach of your right thumb; when you open it, it is still near your right thumb.

So, a very key question for iOS is: now that there are two screens, the inner and the outer, how to keep the experience between the two screens continuous? We made the inner and outer screens adopt a consistent aspect ratio logic, so that content can be scaled proportionally. The software team can therefore allow applications to map and transition naturally between the outer screen and the inner screen.

Q: I want to follow up on that, because I am a heavy user of Procreate (note: a drawing app). Procreate now has two versions: Procreate Pocket for mobile phones, and Procreate for tablets. The iPhone Duo is a phone, and when unfolded, it is more or less like a small tablet. So for this kind of application, when you open the iPhone Duo, will it automatically switch to an experience closer to the tablet version? Or will it remain in a mixed state between the mobile phone and tablet experience?

Joswiak: I really like the point Ternus just mentioned: we already have a very mature iPad experience. You know, some other tablets are essentially just "giant phones", but Apple has been building iPad and iPadOS experiences that are truly designed for large canvases from the very beginning.

So as Ternus said, we can bring these experiences to our own apps, and third-party developers can do the same.

This time we reached out to some third-party developers earlier and more extensively than usual, letting them think ahead: how to take advantage of the new form factor of the iPhone Duo? You can see that they combine the experience they have accumulated on iPhone and iPad. Some apps show the familiar iPhone experience when closed; after unfolding, they are closer to the interface they have already made for iPad. I think the effect is amazing.

What's even cooler is that for developers, this is not something that needs to be completely started from scratch.

They already have mature iPhone versions and iPad versions. We have long provided a lot of APIs to help apps easily adapt to different sizes and aspect ratios. This time we added some new APIs for the iPhone Duo — I almost blurted out the internal project code name just now, now we have to get used to calling it by its official product name.

The adaptation work of developers is progressing very fast, and the effect is very good. You have already seen many examples, the adaptation of Netflix alone is very cool.

Q: So if a developer already has an iPad version, especially an app adapted for iPad mini, will it be relatively easier to adapt it to the iPhone Duo?

Joswiak: Yes, it will indeed be much easier. Part of the reason is that they have actually thought about it before: how should the app be presented when it is at a similar size and aspect ratio. This is a big advantage.

We have a huge ecosystem of iPad apps, which means that developers are not facing this larger interface space for the first time. In contrast, if another platform has mostly only mobile apps in the past, developers often just try to enlarge the mobile app interface. So from the very beginning we have a certain advantage.

Ternus: And I think the excitement and enthusiasm our internal development team showed when exploring "how to make this new experience great" will also be seen among third-party developers. We have many very outstanding developers. I am especially looking forward to what the Procreate team will do, they are very good, and I believe they will definitely make something amazing.

04. Developer Adaptation Before October Launch

Q: The iPhone Duo will not be officially launched until October. Does this give you some advantages instead, because developers can get more adaptation time? For example, Slack was used as an example yesterday: it does not simply enlarge the mobile interface, but uses the larger screen to create a two-column, two-pane layout. Is this very important?

Joswiak: Of course, this is very important to us