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Apple Investigating Options for Extending Web Content Under iPhone Duo’s Safari Controls→

Jen Simmons, writing at the official WebKit blog:

Safari 27.1 does bring one change to users. Now, when someone holds iPhone Duo partially folded like a book while looking at a PDF on the web, Safari 27.1 automatically shows PDFs as two pages side by side. When they open the screen flat or close it fully, Safari switches back to one page.

I didn’t know about that, likely because I prefer saving and reading PDFs offline. The most interesting tidbit from this otherwise (very) technical blog post, however, is the fact that Apple is actively looking into ways to let web developers extend their websites’ content underneath the Safari controls shown on the right side of the iPhone Duo’s screen:

You might have noticed the outer display of iPhone Duo is wider and shorter than other iPhone displays. To give content more vertical space, iOS moves controls to the side.

In Safari 27.1, web content does not currently extend to fill the space behind these controls. Just like on other platforms, Safari looks at the web page and extends its background color to fill the space.

We would like to give web designers and developers the ability to design and use that space in more creative ways. Perhaps you want to extend your header background across the full width of the display, for example. It might seem like there’s just one obvious way to make this possible, but really there are many possibilities.

Since getting my iPhone Duo review unit yesterday, this is what has annoyed me the most. I dislike how all kinds of websites are simply cut off on the right side of Safari on the outer display. You can see this in action on MacStories itself: while we have fully updated our website to take advantage of the iPhone Duo’s new viewport sizes, there’s nothing we can do to extend the toolbar and other elements under Safari’s controls on the right side of the display. The result looks like a poor implementation on our end, but it isn’t.

MacStories on the iPhone Duo's outer display.

MacStories on the iPhone Duo’s outer display.

I hope Apple’s Safari and WebKit teams can figure this out; once they do, we’ll update MacStories for the iPhone Duo again.

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A Day with the iPhone Duo: First Impressions

I spent Wednesday in New York, interviewing developers about their iPhone Duo apps. It was like a little slice of WWDC dropped among Manhattan’s skyscrapers, which was wonderful. There’s nothing I enjoy about what we do at MacStories more than talking to developers about their apps and the stories behind them.

I left the city with a much better appreciation for what it’s like to build apps for the Duo, which will be incredibly valuable as Federico and I work our way through the enormous list of Duo apps that developers have shared with us. I also left New York with a 512GB Night Sky iPhone Duo for testing. As I left the press event, I suddenly had a phone to set up, but hadn’t done anything to prepare and had no fast Wi-Fi to download gigabytes of apps and files. Long story short (listen to MacStories Unwind for the long version), I headed to the airport and by the time I boarded the plane, I was on the iOS 27.2 beta and had the core system apps installed.

So, suffice it to say that this is not a review of the iPhone Duo. I haven’t had it much more than 24 hours, so I haven’t fully settled into a routine with it. That said, I wanted to share my first impressions and some early surprises.

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Building for iPhone Duo, in App Developers’ Own Words

I spent yesterday in New York City interviewing developers about their iPhone Duo apps and the experience of building for such a new and different device. The depth and breadth of developers Apple assembled was excellent. I spoke to indie developers like Vidit Bhargava about Deck-Man and the team behind Notewise. I also interviewed developers from big companies about their impressive Duo updates, including The New York Times for its NYT Cooking app, Netflix, and Meta’s Edits video editing app. Plus, I met Mark Otero from Azra Games, whose team poured their hearts into UnGodly, one of the best-looking games I’ve seen on iOS in a while.

A few things struck me about my conversations with developers. First, every one of them was excited about the design challenges posed by the iPhone Duo and the many orientations and ways it can be used. Second, every one of them came away impressed by how smooth Apple has made the development process. That’s not to say the design challenges weren’t real, but getting from a design idea to an app that worked on the Duo went better than anyone expected. Third, after months of building and testing, everyone was looking forward to seeing which design choices land with users.

But that’s enough of my impressions. I’ll let the developers speak for themselves in this special bonus AppStories video. I came away from New York with some great interviews, which I’ve shared on the MacStories YouTube channel. Apologies for the sometimes rough audio. There’s only so much I can do with recordings made in a room packed with press and developers, but if you’re into apps, design, and how things are built, these interviews are for you.

Also, I left New York with a Night Sky 512GB iPhone Duo that I’ve only just set up and begun testing. I’ll be writing about the Duo soon, and we’ll start covering the best of the more than 300 Duo-optimized apps that developers have sent Federico and me. Stay tuned, because the busy fall season at MacStories is just going to keep rolling.

iPhone Duo Review Roundup: Great Hinge, Messy Apps, and Everybody Misses Face ID

iPhone Duo reviews are out today, and while I was hoping that this year I’d get to review this hybrid device under embargo, it hasn’t happened (I hope it will, someday!). I’ve spent the past few hours reading, annotating, and watching as many Duo reviews as I could, and I’ve compiled the most interesting bits and common themes in the roundup below.

The broad strokes are consistent across all the reviews: the Duo’s hinge and the matte inner display are terrific; the lack of Face ID and a telephoto camera are serious trade-offs; and most third-party apps aren’t ready yet. But there’s plenty of nuance in the details, and even some disagreement (about the speakers, of all things).

Let’s dive in.

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Perplexity Computer’s Local-First Approach to Agents

Source: Perplexity.

Source: Perplexity.

Today, Perplexity announced a local-first mode for Computer where the model and agent work entirely on your Mac whether you’re online or not, sending data to the cloud only with the user’s approval. The new local mode complements Hybrid Compute, which was introduced last month and uses a combination of local models and cloud-based frontier models.

The result is that Perplexity customers now have a choice when they start up the company’s Mac app. They can choose to start agentic workflows in the cloud with frontier models, or they can flip things around and start locally, turning to cloud-based models as needed. The local model uses Qwen 3.6 or PPLX Pro, a post-trained version of Qwen.

The benefit of starting locally in a securely sandboxed code- and tool-use environment is twofold. First, data stays on your Mac, ensuring privacy. Second, Perplexity subscribers are able to conserve credits, making their subscriptions go further. At the same time, cloud-based models remain available with the user’s permission as needed and to perform tasks like browsing the web and accessing online apps.

Local Computer is available to Perplexity Pro, Max, and Enterprise subscribers now, and Perplexity recommends using Apple silicon Macs with at least 36GB of memory.

Apple Announces October 28 “Pro and Tell” Event

In a post by Greg Joswiak on X, Apple has said it will hold an ‘Pro and Tell’ in Los Angeles, California on Wednesday, October 28 at 10:00 am Pacific.

Judging from the ‘Pro’ in the tagline, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see the much rumored touch-screen MacBook Pro at the event. Other rumors point to a possible refresh of the iMac and the iPad mini.

Our very own Federico will be there in person to cover the event, and of course we’ll have written coverage here on MacStories and later on AppStories.

ChatGPT Dots Gain Widget and New Shortcuts Actions

Late Friday, OpenAI updated the ChatGPT app on iOS and iPadOS with a new widget for your Dot and Shortcuts actions that let you control it three ways. The implementation is really well done and adds automation options worth considering.

First of all, the Dot widget is about as simple as it gets, but also very useful. I have the ChatGPT app set up to drop me into its Codex view because that’s typically how I use the app. I open Codex, check on a long-running project, and provide whatever input is necessary to keep things moving.

The problem I’ve run into is that I’ve been using my Dot, Puck, more and more to kick off research, ask one-off questions and check in on things like my email. Landing in Codex means tapping around more, which I can avoid now with ChatGPT’s new small-sized widget. The widget has two modes. The first simply shows your Dot’s avatar, and tapping on it opens your Dot’s message thread. However, if you edit the Dot, you can toggle on the “Show shortcut button” to display messaging and voice buttons beneath your Dot, adding the option to start a voice call with your Dot. As simple as this is, it’s been great to have the option to start in Codex via the ChatGPT app or check in with my Dot thread using the widget.

The other interesting feature is a trio of Shortcuts actions to message, dictate, or call your Dot. Each action has two parameters: the name of your Dot and how you want to communicate with it. That first parameter is an interesting one because tapping on it opens a list with your sole Dot in it because currently, you can only have one Dot. However, it also strongly suggests that the ability to set up multiple Dots is on the horizon, which OpenAI clearly telegraphed during its DevDay. After all, why have a parameter that opens a list unless there’s more than one choice?

I've set my Action button up to call my Dot.

I’ve set my Action button up to call my Dot.

The actions can be used in your shortcuts, are accessible from Spotlight Search, and most interestingly can be tied to an iPhone’s Action button, allowing you to visit your Dot’s thread in any of three ways. I’ve set my Action button up to start a Dot call. I often think of tasks and have ideas for research topics when I’m out for a walk, and I want to see if having brief calls with my Dot is an effective way to get a jump on those ideas, so they’re waiting for me in ChatGPT when I get home.

These actions and widgets are an excellent addition to OpenAI’s app and a cut above Anthropic’s more barebones approach to widgets and Shortcuts. I would, however, like to see Dots integrated even deeper into Shortcuts. The Shortcuts actions only open your Dot thread in one of the three modes. I’d love to be able to connect Dots to other apps with actions that accept input from other sources and produce outputs that can be used in other actions.

While I’m making requests, I still think multiple Dots need to be supported sooner rather than later, and OpenAI needs to provide a better mechanism for switching between Macs if you use a Dot with multiple computers. Plus, Dots are still a little buggy, with scheduled tasks failing too often and for reasons that aren’t always clear.

That said, the latest update is worth checking out if you’ve found Dots helpful. The strength of Dots is that they’re everywhere you can access ChatGPT, and now with widgets and Shortcuts actions, getting to your Dot in each of those places is easier than ever.

SaneBox: Clear the Clutter, Keep What Matters [Sponsor]

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