Someday in 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 full and superior energy of AI into everybody’s arms. It most likely received’t characterize a breakthrough in AI analysis, and it’d not let folks automate work or carry out duties any higher than plenty of technically minded folks are doing at this time. It might or could not contain a brand new system, although if it doesn’t, one needs 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 accomplished for desktop computer systems, the web, cellular expertise, wearables, and music distribution. That is, it’ll provide an answer to a hard expertise that’s so pleasant and proper that it appears apparent on reflection.
This isn’t elective for Ternus. Whereas AI is clearly the future and thousands and thousands of individuals use it, much more are suspicious of it. Highly effective new AI agent applied sciences akin 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 Prepare dinner, who announced this week that he’ll vacate his position in September and turn into the firm board’s govt chairman, has accomplished a superlative job guiding the company after Steve Jobs, however he left this essential field unchecked. Apple Intelligence, rolled out with a lot fanfare in 2024, was underwhelming and uncompleted.
Can Ternus shepherd such a product? It’s laborious to say, as a result of the present SVP of {hardware} engineering has spent a lot of his profession out of the public eye. He solely lately began doing extra press interviews when it turned obvious that he was the prime candidate to assume Prepare dinner’s job. Individuals see him as a methodical operator like Prepare dinner as opposed to a visionary like Jobs, however that may be due to an analogous low-key demeanor. Possibly as soon as he’s in the prime job, he’ll be liberated to attain 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 success of working on lots of our merchandise all through the years,” he advised me by means of introduction. That day he acquired deep into the weeds on topics like quantum dots, the environmental affect of cadmium, and the incontrovertible fact 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 crew.
Rather more 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 form 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 delivery a expertise,” he mentioned. “We would like to ship superb merchandise, options, and experiences, and we don’t need our prospects to take into consideration what [underlying] expertise makes it attainable. That’s the approach we take into consideration AI.”
That’s fantastic, however I look again to the mid-2000s when all people was ready for Apple to come out with a cellphone. 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 the total iPhone ecosystem. By the finish of this decade, it’s unlikely that folks 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 may have already discovered the place they want to go, and the automotive will probably 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.”
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