“When we were working on it, we knew that developers were gonna have a field day.”

That’s what Greg ‘Joz’ Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, told me when I asked how experiences like watching live baseball helped shape iPhone Duo. We were at MLB headquarters, looking at what happens when a sports app gets a phone screen with a little more room to play ball.

It was an optimistic answer, as expected. But whether developers are having a field day and whether buyers are getting their money’s worth are two different questions.

In early reactions to iPhone Duo’s splashy launch, app optimization has become a dividing line. Some see unfinished or inconsistent experiences as an obvious reason to hold off. Others think expecting every developer to have a fully realized foldable app at launch is unreasonable.

I understand both arguments. But after trying MLB’s app, I think there’s a more useful question: How much better does an app need to be on a foldable to justify the fold — and a $2,000 starting price?

Watching baseball (or really, any sport) on a bigger display is an easy sell. But that’s the least interesting part of what MLB has built for iPhone Duo ahead of the first pitch of the World Series between the Tampa Bay Rays and Milwaukee Brewers.

The updated @MLB app and iPhone Duo are ready just in time for the World Series! I saw a preview of the new experience today and they really hit it out of the park!

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