Someday within the subsequent yr or two, Apple’s new CEO, John Ternus, will step onto a stage and inform the world that his firm has a revolutionary product. This product, he’ll say, will put the total and superior energy of AI into everybody’s palms. It in all probability gained’t signify a breakthrough in AI analysis, and it won’t let folks automate work or carry out duties any higher than numerous technically minded individuals are doing at this time. It might or might not contain a brand new gadget, although if it doesn’t, one ought to be in improvement. But when all of it works out, that keynote will mark the second when Apple did to AI what it has executed for desktop computer systems, the web, cellular expertise, wearables, and music distribution. That’s, it’ll supply an answer to a difficult expertise that’s so pleasant and proper that it appears apparent on reflection.
This isn’t elective for Ternus. Whereas AI is clearly the long run and tens of millions of individuals use it, much more are suspicious of it. Highly effective new AI agent applied sciences equivalent to Claude Code and OpenClaw are nonetheless too dangerous or technical for most individuals to undertake. If Apple doesn’t decode this for the plenty, another person will. Present CEO Tim Cook dinner, who introduced this week that he’ll vacate his position in September and change into the corporate board’s government chairman, has executed a superlative job guiding the corporate after Steve Jobs, however he left this vital field unchecked. Apple Intelligence, rolled out with a lot fanfare in 2024, was underwhelming and uncompleted.
Can Ternus shepherd such a product? It’s arduous to say, as a result of the present SVP of {hardware} engineering has spent a lot of his profession out of the general public eye. He solely not too long ago began doing extra press interviews when it turned obvious that he was the highest candidate to imagine Cook dinner’s job. Folks see him as a methodical operator like Cook dinner versus a visionary like Jobs, however that is likely to be due to an analogous low-key demeanor. Possibly as soon as he’s within the prime job, he’ll be liberated to succeed in for the skies.
My very own interactions with him have been sparse. A decade in the past I spent a day at Apple’s Enter Design Lab with him and his crew. “I began in 2001 and have had the great fortune of engaged on lots of our merchandise all through the years,” he advised me by means of introduction. That day he obtained deep into the weeds on topics like quantum dots, the environmental affect of cadmium, and the truth that “not all white mild is created equal.” It was clear that he was likable; there was numerous enjoyable banter between him and his crew.
Rather more not too long ago, I quizzed Ternus and international advertising and marketing head Greg Joswiak about Apple’s future, particularly its plans to get forward of the AI transformation. Ternus acknowledged that AI is “an immense type of inflection level,” however couched it as one in all many leaps that Apple has navigated. Every hit product—the Apple II, the Mac, iTunes, the iPod, the iPhone, iPad—piggybacked on a earlier product. “We by no means take into consideration transport a expertise,” he mentioned. “We wish to ship wonderful merchandise, options, and experiences, and we don’t need our clients to consider what [underlying] expertise makes it attainable. That’s the way in which we take into consideration AI.”
That’s advantageous, however I look again to the mid-2000s when all people was ready for Apple to return out with a telephone. When Jobs lastly delivered in January 2007, the product outlined the cellular period. It’s a giant ask for Ternus to do one thing related for the AI age—but it surely’s a possibility that have to be seized. AI threatens to disrupt your entire iPhone ecosystem. By the top of this decade, it’s unlikely that folks will swipe on their telephones to faucet on Uber or Lyft. They may simply inform their always-on AI agent to get them house. Or that agent could have already found out the place they should go, and the automotive shall be ready with out the friction of a request. “There’s an app for that,” could also be changed by “Let the agent do this.”
