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When the iPhone Duo launched, we shared a list of some of the fun apps developers created for the new form factor. Two weeks out, developers are continuing to come up with fresh ideas, so we thought we'd share some of our favorites. Games Marbles Unhinged ($2.99) - Marbles Unhinged is a marble maze designed for the Duo. When you fold it, the floor turns into a ramp. If you stand the top half up, you can bank a marble off of it. When you snap the hinge, the marble launches up. Midnight Fridge ($2.99) - Midnight Fridge turns the ‌iPhone Duo‌ into a tiny refrigerator. It's a memory game where the idea is to look at the magnets on the fridge and then find the items inside. Greens: Mini Golf ($2.99) - Greens is a mini-golf app made for the ‌iPhone Duo‌, and it's playable in any orientation. When folded like a laptop, you can putt on the half on the table, with the upright half serving as a caddie camera. Chirpfold (Free) - Chirpfold is a Flappy Bird-style app where you fold the phone to cause your bird to flap its wings. Valley Run ($0.99) - Valley Run is a neon-themed racing game where you fold the ‌iPhone Duo‌ to direct a marble down a series of challenging tracks. PianoFold ($4.99) - PianoFold is a rhythm game you can play with the ‌iPhone Duo‌ positioned like a laptop. Press and hold on the keys to match the song that's playing. It's free to download, but the full unlock is $4.99. Load Bearing ($5.00) - Load Bearing is a roguelite Tetris-style game that's meant to be played with the Duo half open. The controls are on the bottom, and the blocks fall at the top. It also has deck building elements, so you can put together a set of your preferred block pieces to beat each level. Who's at the Door? (Free) - Who's at the Door? is an app that turns your ‌iPhone Duo‌ into a door. Open it up to see who is on the other side, and if it's something scary, make sure to slam the Duo shut quickly before it gets you. Fold Match ($2.99) - Fold Match is a game where you're given a shape on one side of the Duo and a blank spot where the shape needs to go on the other side. The idea is to position the shape to get to that empty space, but you won't know how close you were until you close the iPhone. Battlefleet Duo (Free) - Battlefleet Duo takes advantage of the Duo's design for a Battleship-style game. In laptop mode, you can see your fleet on the lower screen and the enemy's waters in front of you. Simple But Clever Duo Aquarium ($1.00) - As the name suggests, this app turns your ‌iPhone Duo‌ into an aquarium. When in tent mode, it serves as a virtual fish tank and clock. You can choose your fish and your add-ins, then feed them. AltoPaint ($5.99) - AltoPaint is an app that turns the ‌iPhone Duo‌ into a tiny canvas with a paint palette. There are watercolor, oil, and gouache paints with mixable colors. Post Club ($4.99) - Post Club is a cute app where you can pick a typewriter, fold the Duo like a laptop and type up a letter. There are 10 typewriters and 14 paper styles to choose from. Halfpage ($2.99) - Halfpage is another app that turns the ‌iPhone Duo‌ into a typewriter when it's used in a MacBook-like orientation. The keys are at the bottom, and what you type is at the top. It has a simpler design than Post Club. Callsign ($1.49+) - Callsign turns your ‌iPhone Duo‌ into a sign that lets people know if you're free or busy on a call. Just set it up, put it in tent mode, and people can know at a glance not to bother you. It's free to download, and there are different visual packs to unlock with one-off $1.49 purchases. AskZine ($1.99) - AskZine is a Magic 8 Ball-like app where you ask a question, unfold the screen, and see your answer. Lullabox (Free) - Lullabox turns the ‌iPhone Duo‌ into a music box where you can wind the key, lift the lid, and watch a porcelain ballerina spin while soft music plays. The music gets louder as the ‌iPhone Duo‌ is opened further. DuoBook (Free) - DuoBook turns the ‌iPhone Duo‌ into a tiny Mac with a keyboard and trackpad that work like the Mac equivalent. You can also use it to send photos and files to the Mac. Special Duo Features Wakeout ($59.99/year) - Fitness app Wakeout was Apple's App of the Year back in 2020. It offers up workout games you can do in just minutes a day. You can put your Duo in tent or laptop mode to follow along with workout moves, playing games with your body. Faro (Free) - Faro is an app that helps you find movies to watch so you don't waste time browsing through Netflix without ever making a choice. On ‌iPhone Duo‌, you can see two films side by side to choose between them, or see your list of picks on one half of the display with details on each movie on the other half. CalibReader (Free) - CalibReader is an EPUB and PDF reader that turns the ‌iPhone Duo‌ into a book. The outer screen shows the title's cover, and when you open it, there's a two-page spread with page-turning animations. Retrocade ( Apple Arcade ) - Retrocade turns the ‌iPhone Duo‌ into a mini arcade machine and works on the Duo in multiple fold positions. Blankie (Free) - Soundscape app Blankie has a dual view with Now Playing on one side and Sound Mixer on the other. When folded in tent mode, it shows a view of what's playing. Camera Apps IncrediBooth (Free) - IncrediBooth turns the ‌iPhone Duo‌ into a little photo booth. Press the red button to capture an image, and your photo strip appears on the outer display. It's free to download, with five strips available per day. VNTG (Free) - VNTG is an instant camera app where you close the ‌iPhone Duo‌ to take a shot and then open it up to develop it. It's free to download, with in-app purchases to unlock camera lenses. Flipcorder ($4.99) - Flipcorder is a video recording app that turns the ‌iPhone Duo‌ into a retro camcorder. It's designed to be used for daily video diaries, and each tape is displayed on a shelf in the app. To film, just unfold the Duo. Recordings have classic VHS-style effects. Less Fun, More Serious Brim ($0.89) - Brim is a Safari extension that lets Safari use the full width of the ‌iPhone Duo‌'s outer display for websites. It reclaims the blank space Apple left in Safari and moves links and buttons out from under the side controls. Widen ($3.99) - Widen is another extension that expands Safari to take up the width of the outer display. It also hides cookie banners and works in Split View. There are multiple settings, so you can set just pictures to take up the full screen, or opt to have pictures and text expand. SPAN (Free) - SPAN is an app that turns the ‌iPhone Duo‌ into a project tracker and timer. It has different views for each ‌iPhone Duo‌ orientation. SPAN is free to use for the current week, with a $4.99/month pro subscription available for unlimited projects and full monthly and yearly reports. BrainDrain (Free) - BrainDrain is a 60-second brain dump app that helps you sort your thoughts. On the ‌iPhone Duo‌, different Duo orientations have different purposes. You can use it like a laptop in a half fold, type thoughts with the Duo closed, or put it in tent mode to use voice capture. More Apps Know of some fun ‌iPhone Duo‌ apps not on our list? Let us know in the comments. Be sure to check out our first iPhone Duo app article too. Related Roundup: iPhone Duo Buyer's Guide: iPhone Duo (Buy Now) Related Forum: iPhone This article, " More Fun iPhone Duo Apps: 30 New Picks to Try " first appeared on MacRumors.com Discuss this article in our forums
Happy touch your Mac day! Apple's new PROLED MacBook Pro is now in the hands of customers. We picked up one of the new machines to get our greasy fingerprints all over that pristine OLED display. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. It's been five years since Apple last redesigned the ‌MacBook Pro‌, so it was due for an update. The PROLED ‌MacBook Pro‌ looks a lot like the mini-LED model, but it's thinner and lighter. The 14-inch model is about half a millimeter thinner and weighs just over three pounds, while the 16-inch model is almost a millimeter thinner and weighs four pounds. Apple shaved off about half a pound for the 14-inch model and 0.7 pounds for the 16-inch model, and while that doesn't sound like much, it makes a big difference. You can feel how much lighter it is the second you take it out of the box. Apple brought back the glowing logo for the PROLED ‌MacBook Pro‌, so everyone around you will know you have the fancy new ‌OLED‌ model. The ‌OLED‌ display is the major new feature, and it looks as good as you would expect from a display in a laptop starting at $2,899. Blacks are true black, and since each pixel lights up individually, there's none of the bloom you get with mini-LED when viewing bright objects on a dark background. The PROLED ‌MacBook Pro‌ can get super bright too, and that brightness paired with the deep blacks, HDR content looks great. ‌OLED‌ sometimes isn't bright enough outdoors, but that's not the case here. The display bezels are thinner, and the 16-inch machine is actually 16.3 inches instead of 16.2. There's also an iPhone-like Dynamic Island that replaces the notch and houses Siri AI, Live Activities, and more. The ‌Dynamic Island‌ makes sense because you can now touch the ‌MacBook Pro‌'s display. It works like touching an iPhone or iPad , so you can swipe through webpages, tap buttons, drag and drop, and pinch to zoom. Touch isn't meant to replace the trackpad and keyboard, but it's there if you want it. Apple made some tweaks to macOS, so menu options expand a little more when you touch them than when you click them, and tiny window resizing buttons get larger. Apple put a sturdier hinge in the PROLED ‌MacBook Pro‌ so the display won't move as much when you tap it, but it's not perfect. It does still jiggle depending on where you tap. The touch feature is fine, but it's probably not a reason to go out and get the PROLED ‌MacBook Pro‌. It has the potential to be useful in some situations, but it's not going to dramatically change the way most people use a laptop. New chips weren't ready in time for the PROLED machines, so they use the same M5 Pro and M5 Max as the mini-LED models. That's a disappointment in a laptop that starts at almost $3,000. Since Apple is still selling the mini-LED models, you're basically paying a $400 premium for the higher-end ‌OLED‌ display, the thinner and lighter design, and the touch functionality. The better display and the lighter weight are going to be worth the price for some people, and the touch is just a bonus. Related Roundup: MacBook Pro Tag: OLED Buyer's Guide: MacBook Pro (Buy Now) Related Forum: MacBook Pro This article, " Hands-On With Apple's New OLED Touchscreen MacBook Pro " first appeared on MacRumors.com Discuss this article in our forums
watchOS 27.3 arrived this week in beta alongside iOS 27.3, with a major new feature for the latest Apple Watch models: Siri Recap, which I’m already really loving. more…
Once a common sight in lecture theaters and coffee shops everywhere, the glowing emblem of an Apple logo featured on the lids of many Mac laptops launched in the early 2000s. In a nice touch, the new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with PROLED XDR displays bring back the much-loved logo. It's lit up whenever the Mac is awake, and it automatically dims or brightens based on your screen's brightness level and the ambient light in the room. Image credit: MacRumors forum member sniffies If you'd rather keep the logo dark, Apple has shared a way to turn it off. Unusually though, there's no switch in System Settings. Instead, you need to enter a command in the Terminal app. If that sounds intimidating, don't worry – it's a single line that you can copy and paste. Note that the following command only works on MacBook Pro models with a PROLED XDR display. Open Terminal on your Mac: it's in the Applications ➝ Utilities folder, or you can search for "Terminal" using Spotlight ( Command + Space ). Type or paste the following command, then press Enter : sudo defaults write com.apple.CoreBrightness LEBacklightMode -int 0 When prompted, enter your administrator password and press Enter . (Terminal doesn't show the password as you type it.) After performing the steps, the logo illumination should turn off immediately, no restart required. The change applies to all macOS user accounts on the machine, and it will carry over even if you start up from macOS Recovery. If you later migrate to a new Mac, the setting even transfers across with the rest of your system. Relight the Apple Logo Reinstalling macOS turns the illumination back on, but you can also turn it back on yourself at any time by entering the following command in Terminal: sudo defaults delete com.apple.CoreBrightness LEBacklightMode Remember to press Enter ! Backstory The first Mac laptop with a lit-up Apple logo was the third-generation PowerBook G3 launched in 1999. The glowing symbol proved a mainstay through consecutive Apple notebooks for the next 16 years. The only change in that period was that the logo got flipped upright, so that it no longer appeared upside-down to onlookers when someone was sat in public with the lid open. According to former Apple employee Joe Moreno , the original orientation was deliberate: Apple's design group had found that users kept trying to open their laptops from the wrong end. "Steve Jobs always focused on providing the best possible user experience and believed that it was more important to satisfy the user than the onlooker," Moreno recalled. Ironically, Jobs later reversed the decision. "Opening a laptop from the wrong end is a self-correcting problem that only lasts a few seconds," said Moreno. "However, viewing the upside logo is a problem that lasts indefinitely." The earlier orientation, seen in Sex and the City (Image: HBO/Everett/Rex Features) In 2015, Apple began nixing the illuminated insignia from its laptops, starting with the ultra-thin 12-inch MacBook, which had a polished metal logo instead, like iPads before it. In 2016, a new generation of MacBook Pro models continued the unlit trend. Apple hasn't launched a Mac laptop with a glowing logo since – until now. Related Roundup: MacBook Pro Buyer's Guide: MacBook Pro (Buy Now) Related Forum: MacBook Pro This article, " Control the Glowing Apple Logo on Your New MacBook Pro " first appeared on MacRumors.com Discuss this article in our forums
