Apple’s next CEO needs to launch a Killer AI product

Sometime in In the next year or two, Apple’s new CEO, John Ternos, will take the stage and tell the world that his company has a revolutionary product. He will say that this product will put the full, wonderful power of artificial intelligence into everyone’s hands. This probably wouldn’t represent a major breakthrough in AI research, and it might not allow people to automate work or perform tasks better than many technically-minded people do today. It may or may not include new hardware, but if not, the hardware must be in development. But if everything works out, this keynote will mark the moment Apple does for artificial intelligence what it did for desktop computers, the Internet, mobile technology, wearables, and music distribution. This means that it will offer a very cheerful solution to an annoying technology right It seems clear later.

This is not optional for Ternus. While it is clear that AI is the future and is being used by millions of people, there are more people who are skeptical about it. Powerful new AI technologies, such as Claude Code and OpenClaw, are still too risky or technical for most people to adopt. If Apple doesn’t decrypt this for the masses, someone else will. Current CEO Tim Cook, who announced this week that he will vacate his position in September and become CEO of the company’s board, has done an admirable job of steering the company past Steve Jobs, but he left this important box unchecked. Apple Intelligence, which launched to great fanfare in 2024, was disappointing and incomplete.

Can Ternus sponsor such a product? It’s hard to say, because the current senior vice president of hardware engineering has spent much of his career out of the public eye. He recently began giving more interviews as it became clear he was the best candidate to take Cook’s job. People view him as a methodical worker like Cook rather than a visionary like Jobs, but that may be because of a similarly humble demeanor. Maybe once he reached the highest position, he would be freed to reach heaven.

My interactions with him were sporadic. A decade ago, I spent a day at Apple’s Input Design Lab with him and his team. “I started in 2001, and have had the good fortune to work on many of our products over the years,” he told me by way of introduction. That day, he delved into topics like quantum dots, the environmental impact of cadmium, and the fact that “not all white light is created equal.” It was clear that he was loved. There was a lot of fun banter between him and his team.

Recently, I grilled Ternus and Global Chief Marketing Officer Greg Joswiak about Apple’s future, specifically its plans to move forward with its shift to artificial intelligence. Ternos acknowledged that AI is a “massive kind of turning point,” but framed it as one of many leaps Apple has made. Every successful product — Apple II, Mac, iTunes, iPod, iPhone, iPad — had a predecessor. “We never think about shipping technology,” he said. “We want to ship amazing products, features and experiences, and we don’t want our customers to think about what [underlying] Technology makes it possible. “This is how we think about artificial intelligence.”

That’s fine, but I’m looking at the mid-2000s when everyone was waiting for Apple to produce a phone. When Jobs finally delivered in January 2007, it was the product that defined the mobile era. It’s a big ask for Ternus to do something similar for the AI ​​era, but it’s an opportunity that should be seized. AI threatens to disrupt the entire iPhone ecosystem. By the end of this decade, people are unlikely to swipe on their phones to hail an Uber or Lyft. They will always just ask their AI agent to take them home. Or that agent will have already figured out where to go, and the car will be waiting for you without the friction of ordering. “There’s an app for that” can be replaced with “Let the agent do it.”