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 arms. It most likely gained’t signify a breakthrough in AI analysis, and it may not let individuals automate work or carry out duties any higher than plenty of technically minded persons are doing right this moment. It might or could not contain a brand new machine, although if it doesn’t, one must be in growth. But when all of it works out, that keynote will mark the second when Apple did to AI what it has carried out for desktop computer systems, the web, cell expertise, wearables, and music distribution. That’s, it’ll supply an answer to a hard expertise that’s so pleasant and proper that it appears apparent on reflection.
This isn’t non-obligatory for Ternus. Whereas AI is clearly the long run and hundreds of thousands of individuals use it, much more are suspicious of it. Highly effective new AI agent applied sciences resembling 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 Prepare dinner, who introduced this week that he’ll vacate his function in September and turn into the corporate board’s government chairman, has carried out 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 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 just lately began doing extra press interviews when it grew to become obvious that he was the highest candidate to imagine Prepare dinner’s job. Individuals see him as a methodical operator like Prepare dinner versus a visionary like Jobs, however that is likely to be 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 Enter Design Lab with him and his staff. “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 acquired deep into the weeds on topics like quantum dots, the environmental impression of cadmium, and the truth that “not all white gentle is created equal.” It was clear that he was likable; there was plenty of enjoyable banter between him and his staff.
Way more just lately, 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 type of inflection level,” however couched it as one in every of 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 prospects to consider what [underlying] expertise makes it potential. That’s the best way we take into consideration AI.”
That’s effective, however I look again to the mid-2000s when everyone was ready for Apple to come back out with a cellphone. When Jobs lastly delivered in January 2007, the product outlined the cell period. It’s an enormous ask for Ternus to do one thing comparable for the AI age—nevertheless it’s a possibility that should be seized. AI threatens to disrupt all the iPhone ecosystem. By the top of this decade, it’s unlikely that individuals will swipe on their telephones to faucet on Uber or Lyft. They are going to simply inform their always-on AI agent to get them residence. Or that agent could have already discovered the place they should go, and the automotive will likely 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.”
