The Back Page: Know when to fold ’em

The verdict is in: It took only one thing to reignite enthusiasm in Apple’s product line-up, and that thing was apparently an only just barely visible crease.

Yes, just weeks after its announcement, the iPod Duo has taken the mantle of “most foldable Apple product”, besting the previous title-holder, iPod Socks.

But it’s the iPhone smushed together with an iPad in a laptop-ish form factor that has captured the imagination of the world at large, spawning countless breathless questions, such as “can I run iPad apps?”, “how many cameras does it have?”, “is it a taco or a sandwich?”, and “I’m sorry, it costs how much?” Everybody’s talking about the iPhone Duo, even your grandfather who still insists on force-quitting all of the apps on his “iTouch.”

“Honestly, if we’d known two displays was going to be this exciting, we’d have stuck screens on the outside of our laptops twenty years ago and called it a day,” said one source who was definitely not the retired Apple hardware chief Bob Mansfield looking rueful as he teed up his next round of golf.…