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Comment by gyomu | Hacker News Reader

Apps that support iPad are 95% fine unless you do crazy custom things (which Apple has been telling developers for decades now that they shouldn’t do), and apps that are phone only are letterboxed, but still entirely usable.

How many customers do you expect to be running on Duo for the first year of its existence?

I’d be surprised if it was >0.01% for anyone. Apple wants you to drop everything to support all the bells and whistles for their new device, but even if you take 3 months to fix minor layout bugs, I don’t think it’s that big of a deal.

I have friends who dropped everything to support the Vision Pro, and I don’t think any of them felt like it was worth it in retrospect. Even the ones that got featured by Apple as a result didn’t see more than a few thousand downloads.

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> How many customers do you expect to be running on Duo for the first year of its existence? I’d be surprised if it was >0.01% for anyone.

How do you figure? Assume the average Apple cell phone replacement cycle is somewhere between 3 and 4 years. At the longer end, you’d need the sell-through rate of the Duo compared to other phones to be less than 0.04% to hit your number. We know from the Mini and other phones that Apple tends to avoid designs that it expects to have less than a 5% sell rate, two orders of magnitude higher. Even if you assume they’re aiming for 5% of dollars instead of units, and you take into account the non-Apple market (which certainly should not be unit-weighted for folks thinking about app revenue), you’re off by well over an order of magnitude.

If he is off by an order of magnitude and it's 0.1% still no developer (unless a fanboy) should bother

Although maybe they should because someone willing to buy a $2000 phone on launch is probably more willing to buy a lot more things versus someone who keeps phones a long time.

Why? If you’re spending 2000 hours a year servicing your current customers, surely it’s worth 20 hours to add on 1%, even ignoring that that 1% is probably more valuable than your average customer, and the halo effect of giving a good experience to existing users migrating devices.

What does being a ‘fanboy’ mean in this context?

Usually just compiling with the new SDK will get apps basic support if they have been following Apple standards.

> I have friends who dropped everything to support the Vision Pro

The VP was a niche device for a niche market. Phones are not that. I think the Duo will do very well. The one knock are the cameras do not match the Pro. I don't think will care though.

Apple does many crazy custom things in their own apps. Their advice is not sacrosanct. It just means you must prepare for less notice than they had if you want to compete with the frontier UI aspects that Apple apps achieve.

> I have friends who dropped everything to support the Vision Pro, and I don’t think any of them felt like it was worth it in retrospect. Even the ones that got featured by Apple as a result didn’t see more than a few thousand downloads.

They should remember that they got quite a bit of social capital within Apple by doing that and hopefully they're keeping those relationships warm. But yeah Vision Pro hasn't turned out to be a big ecosystem so far.

> a bit of social capital within Apple by doing that and hopefully they're keeping those relationships warm

That social capital and $5 will buy me a cup of coffee.

Because Apple has always treated its developers so well!

Vision Pro will be cancelled at some point, it’s just nowhere near popular enough and never will be - the air has gone out of that VR bubble.

I wouldn’t be surprised if duo is also cancelled because it is another copycat move which is not central to Apples business and will not be mass market.

It's going to be mass market and I wouldn't be surprised if it sells out on launch day in the US.

Based on what? At that price tag, I doubt it will be mass market, but perhaps I’m wrong.

So far I have seen mostly positive reactions.

I believe there is a large market of consumers in the US who can afford a $2000 premium phone compared to the $1300 iPhone Pro Max.

In China, reportedly JD.com's Apple store received more than 1.13 million registrations of interest for the Duo, at a starting price of ~$2400.

I could be wrong also, but I wouldn't be surprised if the iPhone Duo sells like hot cakes.

I could imagine that premium smartphone buyers, instead of upgrading their phones for minor camera and battery improvements, go for the device that unfolds into a tablet.

Yeah I think East Asia will drive alot here. That's where the large screen phone trend started as well. I'm also suspect of a $2k phone that also has had to make a number of compromises to support the new format. But the market will tell us who's right and it was worth it for Apple to try. If they fail it's really not the end of the world and they can pivot back to traditional form factors or find another.

Interesting, thanks for the explanation. Especially the China argument is promising.

I don’t think a $2k phone is anywhere near mass market, esp given the likely downturn ahead.

> apps that are phone only are letterboxed, but still entirely usable

How is that possible? iPhones have had varying screen sizes for more than a decade, how could any app still have a fixed size?

There are many. We have an online supermarket with an app (Picnic) who don't support iPad, don't support landscape, don't support dark mode, etc.

I bet it's due to product managers not caring about those.

Because despite Apple having clear guidelines a huge number of developers think their 'custom UI' is what customers really want. When they don't. The best apps use system components and follow the HIG. Always have, always will. Your custom tab bar is stupid.

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