Mat Velloso, who spent four years as Satya Nadella’s technical advisor at Microsoft, says a thousand people who worked on the Surface Duo “screamed into their pillows” when Apple announced the iPhone Duo. Current and former Microsoft employees have been reacting on X ever since. Apple’s foldable arrives six years after the Surface Duo launched and three years after Microsoft cancelled its successor.
Windows Latest rounded up the reactions, including Velloso’s defense of Nadella over what happened to Microsoft’s dual-screen phone. Velloso spent more than 12 years at Microsoft and later led developer platform products at Google DeepMind and Meta, so he knows both the product and the politics around it.
Surface Duo veterans say the iPhone Duo name stung the most
Velloso wrote that the name was too painful and that he could not believe Apple called it Duo. When another user said everyone on the Surface Duo team knew Apple would do this six years later and be called geniuses, he replied that he had zero doubt the day would come.
Other Microsoft names added their own reactions:
- Scott Hanselman, a Microsoft vice president, posted “RIP Surface Duo. Always a bridesmaid…” and later reposted the Surface Duo launch video from September 10, 2020. Asked whether Apple stole the idea, he replied “Borrowed?”
- Hadjar Homaei, who worked at Microsoft, said she might have published her psychophysics experiments on how dual screens affect attention and multitasking if she were still there. She ran them seven years ago and could not talk about them publicly.
- Velloso recalled running Linux and VS Code locally on the Surface Duo five years ago.
Microsoft did not build the Surface Duo on a whim. When pre-orders opened, Panos Panay said internal research showed three out of four people struggle to complete complex tasks away from their computer, and that dual-screen devices need less cognitive effort. Microsoft also courted developers and creators before launch, with stylus improvements and Duo-optimized apps.
Developers are now building for the iPhone Duo before it ships. One example is Duo-Man, a virtual Walkman app that uses both screens, and that kind of creative app work is what the Surface Duo never attracted.
Velloso says the market, not Nadella, ended the Surface Duo
Many people blame Microsoft’s leadership for killing the Duo too early. Velloso does not. He said Nadella did not block anything, that the product launched and did not take off.
When another user argued that Nadella’s reshuffles moved Microsoft’s focus, Velloso said that confuses setting priorities with the market voting with its feet. He added that nobody blocked the product, which is why many employees still own one. Former Microsoft employee Jeff Fritz sees it differently and says Microsoft lacks the patience for a long game, with any product that does not deliver strong returns within two years getting dropped.
The record gives both sides something to point at:
- 2020: Surface Duo launches with Android software that had critical problems, and Microsoft spends months fixing it
- April 2021: an update causes a black screen bug in book mode
- Later in 2021: Surface Duo 2 launches with 5G and a better camera
- 2023: Microsoft scraps the Surface Duo 3, and Surface Duo updates end in September
Our Take
Most of the frustration in these posts is aimed at Microsoft for walking away after two generations. Nobody in the thread seems surprised that Apple built a foldable.
The iPhone Duo uses a single folding display, Apple’s own hinge and iOS, which is the platform developers already build for. Apple has also written software for the fold, including a fixed 50/50 Split View for running two apps side by side. The Surface Duo had two separate screens running Android that Microsoft struggled to polish, and I think that software gap did more damage than any decision in a boardroom.
Pre-orders for iPhone Duo start on October 16 with the phone reaching customers on October 23 starting at $1,999.
