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Skip foldable. How about a tablet you can fold like a piece of paper and put in your pocket? Something like the old TV series Caprica on the Syfy Channel.
 

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This is ridiculous. Just an excuse to lure people with useless, Porn grade tech at outrageous prices. That said, Steve would probably have never done this. We shall see and time will reveal everything... Apple, surprise me if you can.
 
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Being the owner of a 13" M2 MBA and a 12.9 iPad Pro, I REALLY don't see the need for this.

What Apple needs to release is a magnetic, slim, and light kickstand for the iPad similar to the Magic Keyboard. I find the folios to add a bit too much weight (REALLY noticeable when you take it off).

Folding devices are cool and I'm in awe of the tech, but I don't see the problem they're trying to solve by folding until the tech is paper thin enough to fold an iPad into something that fits in my pants pocket WITHOUT looking like badly applied screen protectors when unfolded.

I want my iPad be able to do this:

7447524
 
A phone that unfolds to an iPad mini…

A mashup of the latest iPhone Pro Max & a "Pro-ified" iPad mini is what I would find exciting...!

A roll-up screen...

Like the roll-up smart paper in Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age"...?

stultified

Making me highlight, right click, and search with Google... ;^p

...Ray Ban-sized Vision devices?

Kinda like the 12th Doctor and his Sonic Sunglasses, only different...?!?
 
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The issue I have with every foldable screen I’ve ever touched / interacted with, is the fact that the finger-feel of the screen isn’t as smooth and rigid as a conventional glass faced screen. Ultra-thin glass just can’t provide the same feeling as the screen glass used today, and because the backing of the foldable screen isn’t typically a solid rigid panel, you end up with being able to feel variations in the surface.

The crease can be resolved by developing a hinge that has a flat backer sections that come together in the middle of the crease and fill in the unbacked section, or slide over from one side to fill in for the missing backing plate in the hinge area. Doing this will require additional depth, so like with most new technology, there will have to be trade-offs.
 
I keep reading that it’s dumb, “why?”, there’s no need for it, etc.

From my point of view, just because you don’t feel you’d use it, doesn’t make it a bad idea.

Just like with iPads and some other products, the use cases starting popping up after the product was released.

Will it be a hit? Who knows? I do know that I’ll be first in line for this and I could see myself using this much more than a Vision Pro - To me that’s more of a useless gimmick that a foldable but that’s just due to my use case.

I think what many people here forget (or maybe they just don't realize).... Apple is a 3 trilion dollar corporation that can afford its R&D department to spend millions and millions of dollars researching and testing "concepts" that may never appear any time soon.

For a huge company to have such a successful R&D department.... the employees in that department need to always be open to new concepts and ideas..... good ideas, bad ideas, old ideas, new ideas, existing ideas, and even (potentially) STUPID ideas. At the very least, they need to consider all possibilities, and eventually sort out the good (hardware) ideas from the bad.

Myself? I'm not attracted to current Samsung-styled foldables, I've seen them. I'll pass. I don't see how it would benefit me.

But that doesn't mean Apple should completely ignore the concept or idea of future foldables. After all... Apple needs to remain open minded, because only open minds can lead to future innovation.
 
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Yes making a foldable iPad is definitely the solution to fix the iPad lineup. Not improving iPadOS, not making the iPad more Mac like to justify buying an iPad Pro, but making a folding iPad, that will win people over.

Man, what happened to you iPad?
Most of us don’t want a more Mac-like iPad. That’s why we use iPads AND Macs. There’s a reason why Microsoft sells around 3 million Sueface Pros a year vs the 50-70 million iPads Apple sells.
 
Most of us don’t want a more Mac-like iPad. That’s why we use iPads AND Macs. There’s a reason why Microsoft sells around 3 million Sueface Pros a year vs the 50-70 million iPads Apple sells.
Agreed. Making the iPad like a Mac would be a big mistake. Making it fold would also be a big mistake. The iPad can be improved upon without either of those things, and it already is with things like Logic and Final Cut. iPadOS and MacOS has become more similar in the ways that are beneficial, like how thanks to Apple Silicon you can easily develop software that now runs on everything. I'd like to see some kind of iPadified XCode so you can actually develop and run Apps with just an iPad. Maybe that would be too difficult, but I thought the same of Logic and Final Cut until they actually did it.
 
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