Last week, I was sitting on a plane, thousands of feet above the ground, making changes to a project running on my MacBook Pro at home. I wasn’t carrying my MacBook, and I wasn’t even using an iPad. Instead, I did everything from the iPhone Duo , and it made me realize how much Apple’s first foldable has transformed my workflow. I’ve spent much of this year figuring out how to make remote development work for me. I wanted to leave my MacBook Pro running at home, access it from anywhere, and continue working on projects without carrying another computer. The solution was Astropad Workbench , a remote desktop app that lets me interact with my Mac wherever I am. The only problem? It’s iOS-only, so I’ve been using it on the iPhone 18 Pro instead of on one of the best Android foldables . Whenever I’ve needed more screen real estate, my iPad Pro has been the natural companion, offering a more comfortable on-the-go desktop experience. That is, until the iPhone Duo arrived. Apple’s first foldable finally brings together the two things I’ve wanted: an iPhone’s portability and the larger iOS screen I’ve relied on my iPad for. The result is the best balance of portability and screen size I’ve found for coding on the go. The Duo hasn’t fundamentally changed the type of work I’m doing, but it’s made the experience of working so much more convenient that I reach for my iPad far less often. And thanks to a remarkable new feature in Astropad Workbench, it’s arguably become an even better way to interact with my development environment. My Mac does the work, but the iPhone Duo puts it in my pocket
Astropad Workbench has been fully optimized for the iPhone Duo (Image credit: Astropad / Future) An important note: I’m not writing code directly on the iPhone Duo. Instead, I use Cursor, an AI-powered code editor, to make changes to my projects through its built-in chat interface. It’s a fundamental change I made to my workflow earlier this year, and one that’s crucial to maintaining and building three large platforms and four mobile apps simultaneously. My MacBook Pro stays at home, running Cursor, the local development servers, and everything else my projects need. With Workbench, I can access that desktop remotely, ask Cursor to make changes, scroll through its summaries with two fingers, review the results, and check the running build in Cursor’s built-in browser. On a Mac or iPad, Workbench feels like a fairly traditional desktop development experience. Its unified display mode resizes your Mac’s desktop to fit your remote device’s resolution and form factor, aiming to offer a more natural, single-app experience. However, switching between apps isn’t particularly straightforward, and navigating the interface can sometimes feel a little jittery. (Image credit: Nirave Gondhia) On the Duo, I generally keep unified display mode disabled, which lets me pinch and zoom into different areas of the remote desktop. It’s a surprisingly effective way to navigate a full macOS interface on a smaller screen, particularly when I want to focus on Cursor’s chat or inspect a specific part of a project. I can also open Chrome to check a locally running website, although I generally find it easier to do everything within Cursor when using the Duo. The workflow is essentially identical to what I was already doing on my iPad; the difference is that I now have access to it on a device that folds into my pocket. That sounds like a small distinction, but in practice, it’s enormous. The big unlock is being able to leave my Mac at home and check progress on any build, including previewing it, without needing to configure every device with my login credentials, SSH keys, or local codebase. Instead of waiting until I’m settled on a plane or pulling out my iPad Pro and Magic Keyboard, I simply unfold my iPhone Duo and keep coding. The only problem? It’s so convenient that it’s taken up even more of my life. Workbench’s new terminal is an absolute game-changer
(Image credit: Nirave Gondhia) If you’ve ever tried to use a conventional desktop terminal through a remote desktop app or on a touchscreen, you’ll know how frustrating it can be. Tiny text, awkward cursor placement, keyboard shortcuts, and interfaces designed for a mouse and keyboard can make even simple tasks unnecessarily difficult. Add in a Delete key that doesn’t always work — a common problem I’ve encountered across several apps — and text that fails to render properly due to input lag, and even the simplest tasks can quickly become incredibly frustrating. That’s why a new feature recently introduced in Workbench’s Duo-optimized app has quickly become one of my favorite parts of this setup. Workbench now offers a native terminal interface that lets me interact with the terminal on my Mac remotely, without navigating a traditional macOS Terminal window through the screen viewer. Better still, I can display the terminal alongside the remote desktop in a split-screen layout. It’s brilliant. I can interact with the terminal using an interface optimized for foldables, but with a familiar Terminal design, and then glance across at Cursor or the running build without constantly switching views or changing apps on the remote Mac…
