Someday within the subsequent 12 months 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 received’t signify a breakthrough in AI analysis, and it may not let individuals automate work or carry out duties any higher than a whole lot of technically minded persons are doing immediately. It might or could not contain a brand new gadget, although if it doesn’t, one ought to be in growth. But when all of it works out, that keynote will mark the second when Apple did to AI what it has performed for desktop computer systems, the web, cell know-how, wearables, and music distribution. That’s, it’ll supply an answer to a hard know-how that’s so pleasant and proper that it appears apparent looking back.
This isn’t optionally available for Ternus. Whereas AI is clearly the longer term and thousands and thousands of individuals use it, much more are suspicious of it. Highly effective new AI agent applied sciences similar to Claude Code and OpenClaw are nonetheless too dangerous or technical for most individuals to undertake. If Apple doesn’t decode this for the lots, another person will. Present CEO Tim Cook dinner, who announced this week that he’ll vacate his function in September and change into the corporate board’s govt chairman, has performed a superlative job guiding the company after Steve Jobs, however he left this necessary field unchecked. Apple Intelligence, rolled out with a lot fanfare in 2024, was underwhelming and uncompleted.
Can Ternus shepherd such a product? It’s onerous 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 grew to become 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 perhaps due to the same low-key demeanor. Possibly as soon as he’s within the high job, he’ll be liberated to achieve for the skies.
My very own interactions with him have been sparse. A decade in the past I spent a day at Apple’s Input Design Lab with him and his crew. “I began in 2001 and have had the nice fortune of engaged on lots of our merchandise all through the years,” he instructed me by the use of introduction. That day he bought deep into the weeds on topics like quantum dots, the environmental affect of cadmium, and the truth that “not all white gentle is created equal.” It was clear that he was likable; there was a whole lot of enjoyable banter between him and his crew.
Far more not too long ago, I quizzed Ternus and world 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 sort of inflection level,” however couched it as one among 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 delivery a know-how,” he stated. “We wish to ship superb merchandise, options, and experiences, and we don’t need our clients to consider what [underlying] know-how makes it attainable. That’s the best way we take into consideration AI.”
That’s fantastic, however I look again to the mid-2000s when everyone was ready for Apple to come back out with a telephone. When Jobs lastly delivered in January 2007, the product outlined the cell period. It’s a giant ask for Ternus to do one thing related for the AI age—nevertheless it’s a possibility that should be seized. AI threatens to disrupt your complete 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 dwelling. 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.”
