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Apple Unveils Foldable iPhone Duo as Ternus Debuts as CEO

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Apple's launch event brought the folding iPhone Duo, the iPhone 18 Pro, and new Apple Watches with an always-on microphone, in John Ternus's first outing as CEO.

John Ternus introduced Apple's first folding phone, the iPhone Duo, in his first public appearance as the company's chief executive. The debut, staged at Apple's launch event, paired a high-profile product with a high-profile leadership change, giving the new CEO a marquee device to headline his opening act.

The iPhone Duo marks Apple's entry into a category that Android manufacturers have occupied for years. Rather than break new ground on the format, Apple appears to have studied its rivals closely, selecting the features it judged to work best from existing Android foldables and building around them. The Verge's Allison Johnson tested the new phones in Cupertino ahead of the event.

The iPhone 18 Pro and its variable aperture

Alongside the foldable, Apple introduced the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max. The headline camera change is a new variable aperture, which lets the lens open and close to different f-stops. But the standout improvement may be simpler than the mechanism suggests. The more meaningful gain appears to be the wider maximum aperture itself, which lets in more light, rather than the added ability to stop the lens down to narrower settings.

New Apple Watches that listen

Apple also refreshed its smartwatch line with the Apple Watch Series 12 and the Apple Watch Ultra 4. Both carry a new sensor array, raising the question of whether the added hardware delivers genuinely new health metrics or simply more loosely defined wellness data. Victoria Song tested the watches for The Verge.

The more striking addition is on the software and privacy side. Both new watches can keep a microphone switched on at all times, using it to summarize the conversations a wearer has throughout the day. The Series 12 pairs this with an always-on Siri capable of generating AI recaps of a user's day. Apple published a document explaining how the listening features are designed to protect user privacy, an acknowledgment that an always-listening wrist device invites scrutiny.

Local AI and the OpenAI math dispute

The event coverage extended beyond Apple's own hardware. In a separate segment, The Verge's Nilay Patel and David Imel spoke with AI researcher CJ Trowbridge about the current state of running local large language models directly on the Mac, a growing interest for users who want to keep AI workloads on their own machines rather than in the cloud.

Attention also turned to a controversy surrounding OpenAI. The company has claimed a significant mathematical breakthrough, but the announcement has unsettled parts of the academic community. Mathematicians are pressing OpenAI for proof that it did not rely on their existing work to reach the result, and the dispute has cast a shadow over what the company presented as a milestone.

Several shorter items rounded out the week's technology news. The so-called Trump phone was hit with a $250 price increase. Sony returned to one of its best-known audio products, revisiting the XM4 headphones six years after their original release. And Hori released an electronic take on the Ocarina of Time that, by design, requires no musical ability to play.

Together, the announcements point to a busy stretch for Apple and the wider industry. For Apple, the day carried added weight: a new foldable, a redesigned camera system, and a set of always-listening wearables all arrived under a new chief executive making his first impression from the stage.

iPhone Duo, foldable iPhone, John Ternus Apple CEO, iPhone 18 Pro, Apple Watch Series 12, Apple Watch Ultra 4, variable aperture camera, Apple AI features

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