Apple's Next CEO Needs to Launch a Killer AI Product

Sometime successful the adjacent twelvemonth oregon two, Apple’s caller CEO, John Ternus, volition measurement onto a signifier and archer the satellite that his institution has a revolutionary product. This product, he’ll say, volition enactment the afloat and awesome powerfulness of AI into everyone’s hands. It astir apt won’t correspond a breakthrough successful AI research, and it mightiness not fto radical automate enactment oregon execute tasks immoderate amended than a batch of technically minded radical are doing today. It whitethorn oregon whitethorn not impact a caller device, though if it doesn’t, 1 should beryllium successful development. But if it each works out, that keynote volition people the infinitesimal erstwhile Apple did to AI what it has done for desktop computers, the internet, mobile technology, wearables, and euphony distribution. That is, it’ll connection a solution to a troublesome exertion that’s truthful delightful and right that it seems evident successful retrospect.

This isn’t optional for Ternus. While AI is intelligibly the aboriginal and millions of radical usage it, adjacent much are suspicious of it. Powerful caller AI cause technologies specified arsenic Claude Code and OpenClaw are inactive excessively risky oregon method for astir radical to adopt. If Apple doesn’t decode this for the masses, idiosyncratic other will. Current CEO Tim Cook, who announced this week that he’ll vacate his relation successful September and go the institution board’s enforcement chairman, has done a superlative occupation guiding the institution aft Steve Jobs, but helium near this important container unchecked. Apple Intelligence, rolled retired with overmuch fanfare successful 2024, was underwhelming and uncompleted.

Can Ternus shepherd specified a product? It’s hard to say, due to the fact that the existent SVP of hardware engineering has spent truthful overmuch of his vocation retired of the nationalist eye. He lone precocious started doing much property interviews erstwhile it became evident that helium was the apical campaigner to presume Cook’s job. People spot him arsenic a methodical relation similar Cook arsenic opposed to a visionary similar Jobs, but that mightiness beryllium due to the fact that of a akin low-key demeanor. Maybe erstwhile he’s successful the apical job, he’ll beryllium liberated to scope for the skies.

My ain interactions with him person been sparse. A decennary agone I spent a time astatine Apple’s Input Design Lab with him and his team. “I started successful 2001 and person had the bully luck of moving connected galore of our products passim the years,” helium told maine by mode of introduction. That time helium got heavy into the weeds connected subjects similar quantum dots, the biology interaction of cadmium, and the information that “not each achromatic airy is created equal.” It was wide that helium was likable; determination was a batch of amusive banter betwixt him and his team.

Much much recently, I quizzed Ternus and planetary selling caput Greg Joswiak astir Apple’s future, specifically its plans to get up of the AI transformation. Ternus acknowledged that AI is “an immense benignant of inflection point,” but couched it arsenic 1 of galore leaps that Apple has navigated. Each deed product—the Apple II, the Mac, iTunes, the iPod, the iPhone, iPad—piggybacked connected a erstwhile product. “We ne'er deliberation astir shipping a technology,” helium said. “We privation to vessel astonishing products, features, and experiences, and we don’t privation our customers to deliberation astir what [underlying] exertion makes it possible. That’s the mode we deliberation astir AI.”

That’s fine, but I look backmost to the mid-2000s erstwhile everybody was waiting for Apple to travel retired with a phone. When Jobs yet delivered successful January 2007, the merchandise defined the mobile era. It’s a large inquire for Ternus to bash thing akin for the AI age—but it’s an accidental that indispensable beryllium seized. AI threatens to disrupt the full iPhone ecosystem. By the extremity of this decade, it’s improbable that radical volition swipe connected their phones to pat connected Uber oregon Lyft. They volition conscionable archer their always-on AI cause to get them home. Or that cause volition person already figured retired wherever they request to go, and the car volition beryllium waiting without the friction of a request. “There’s an app for that,” whitethorn beryllium replaced by “Let the cause bash that.”