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# We must dream bigger
- URL: https://birchtree.me/blog/we-must-dream-bigger/
- Published: 2026-09-13T15:51:56.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-13T15:51:56.000Z
- Author: Matt Birchler
- Tags: Apple

Very often, we in the Apple community expect the bare minimum from Apple. We doubt they'll ever make new product lines, we assume any software feature they lack is actually a choice to omit it, and we predict when they do enter a new market, they'll phone it in. The iPhone Duo should be a wake up call that not on can Apple do more when they want to, we as a community must dream bigger.

I find all too much Apple commentary (both professional and amateur) is steeped in "nothing will change, everything will just get 5% better every year" energy. I think the touch Mac conversation over the past few years is a perfect example of this. First, it was an argument that Apple would never put touch input on a Mac because it was never going to work. Then once rumors cropped up it was really happening, the convo moved to "okay, they're doing it, but begrudgingly and they'll probably only support Apple Pencil input". Or maybe the assumption was you could swipe to scroll and pinch to zoom, but nothing else. Or maybe the Mac could toggle into a full iPadOS mode when you want to touch it…maybe even with a full device reboot. All the while, there is a growing concern that making macOS work well on a touch-capable device would make macOS worse for everyone not using a touch screen.

The iPhone Duo should make all of us think less defensively about topics like this. Apple didn't just slap iOS as is on a folding phone. Instead, they asked themselves, "now that we have an iPhone that has two screens and folds and has all of these distinct characteristics from a traditional iPhone, what can we do?" They pulled on that thread and made what looks to be a really compelling product.

Not to get on my reliable soap box, but what if we thought this way about touch Macs? What if we dared to dream instead of defaulting to timidness? Okay, you have a Mac with a touchscreen. What does that enable you to do? Does this unlock the possibility for more types of software than before? Does this unlock more interaction options than before? Does this enable new Mac form factors? I think the answers to all three of these are emphatically yes, and I would hope that this is how Apple is thinking about this as well. The iPhone Duo sure shows that they can.

I think one of the reasons the iPhone Duo hit so hard with a lot of people is because it reminded us that not everything has to be a bare minimum effort. [I wrote about how this phone shows Apple at their best](https://birchtree.me/blog/the-iphone-duo-shows-apple-at-its-best/), and I believe we are holding the bar too low when we don't think like this as well. Frankly, it's also just more exciting commentary to dream of something meaningfully better than what we have today. Sure, most product updates will be relatively minor and predictable, but I think we've lost our spark when we can't imagine Apple doing anything more than that.