Apple’s Other Recent ‘Duo’

I keep mentioning Apple’s 1992 groundbreaking PowerBook Duo series as a precedent for the iPhone Duo’s name. But of course in 2020, Apple released the MagSafe Duo Charger, a wonderful Lightning peripheral for charging an iPhone and Apple Watch at the same time. It even folded.

A brief note on the PowerBook Duo, while I’m at it. I got an email this month from Dave Rothschild, a now-retired former Apple employee who helped spearhead that project, and he emphasized that the internal motto was always “Best of Both Worlds”, abbreviated internally to just “BOBW”. At the time, laptops were just profoundly less powerful than desktop computers, but desktop computers of course were the opposite of “portable”. The Macintosh Duo was a terrific success, because it really did achieve that “best of both worlds” experience. Here’s a 2015 retrospective on the PowerBook Duo by Christopher Phin that captures and illustrates just how groundbreaking it was.

BOBW is exactly what the iPhone Duo needs to be. It needs to be a great iPhone on the outside, and a great mini tablet on the inside.

Bonus link: Rothschild’s daughter Gabby made a nice “This is not Apple’s first Duo” video, including footage of her dad doing the initial on-stage demo back in 1992.

★ Saturday, 26 September 2026