I play in two fantasy football leagues, one that uses the ESPN app and the other that uses Yahoo. I find it interesting how opinionated both apps are in terms of how they are used on tablets and phones. On iPads the apps only work in landscape orientation no matter which way one is holding the iPad, which I find frustrating because they are literally the only apps on my iPad that does this. On my smartphones the apps only work in portrait, again no matter how you actually hold the phone.

The smartphone behavior is even more interesting on the Microsoft Surface Duo. I have the two apps in a group so they both launched, one on each screen, and they look fine when I am holding the Duo in “book” or landscape orientation, but when I rotate the Duo into portrait orientation the apps rotate to maintain portrait while the individual screens are landscape.

Regardless of the platform, I find it very hostile to me as a user that the app only works in one way as this is completely unlike any other app. It’s as if the developers don’t actually use the platforms for which they are developing.