Apple Puts Foldable iPad on Ice to Focus on Crucial Memoji Pro Breakthrough
By Mark Gherman | Bloomberg Technology
Cupertino, California — July 2, 2025
In a display of the kind of courage only Apple can muster, the company has made the never-before-seen decision to pause development on its foldable iPad in order to double down on what truly matters: Memoji Pro.
Yes, instead of competing with Samsung’s bendy gadgets or Google’s origami-inspired tablets, Apple has apparently decided the future lies not in flexible displays, but in expressive, highly-rendered cartoon avatars with hyper-realistic eyebrow twitching and full-body twerking.
According to people familiar with the matter whose eyes didn’t roll when briefing us, work on the foldable iPad hit a “strategic reassessment disassembly” (translation: the hinge broke again), prompting executives to reallocate precious engineering resources to perfecting the sweat droplet physics on a Memoji doing hot yoga.
“This is a calculated decision,” said one Apple VP who asked not to be named because they’re still recovering from the Vision Pro SDK launch. “Foldables are a gimmick. What our customers really want is more immersive ways to raise one eyebrow in passive-aggressive confusion during FaceTime.”
Internally, Memoji Pro is being treated as a cornerstone of the company’s Apple Intelligence initiative, and is rumored to include emotion-aware rendering, AI-powered lip syncing, and a feature codenamed “SoulScan” that allegedly lets your avatar express existential dread in Dolby Vision.
Meanwhile, the foldable iPad — which was expected to launch sometime between “the 12th month of next year” and “eventually never” — will be revisited “at a later date,” which in Apple-speak roughly translates to “when Tim Cook personally gets tired of drawing attention to his avatar’s cheekbone shading.”
Sources suggest Apple’s industrial design team is “relieved” by the shift. One designer, speaking anonymously between double espressos, said: “We’ve spent 18 months trying to make a hinge thin enough to pass Jony Ive’s ghost approval. If I have to look at one more OLED stress test, I’ll replace myself with a memoji.”
For now, Apple is doubling down on what it believes is the future: digital avatars with the emotional range of Daniel Day-Lewis, animated in real-time and able to wear limited-edition Gucci for Memoji outfits (sold separately via iCloud+ Ultra).
Wall Street, naturally, reacted with irrational exuberance. Apple shares rose 3.6% on the news, with analysts citing “the memojification of human identity” as a major tailwind for services revenue.
So if you were hoping to see an iPad you could fold in half like a book, you’ll have to wait. But rest easy knowing your cartoon face will soon be able to roll its eyes in 120Hz ProMotion.
Mark Gherman covers Apple and occasionally questions his life choices.
