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 fingers. It most likely gained’t characterize a breakthrough in AI analysis, and it won’t let individuals automate work or carry out duties any higher than a number of technically minded individuals are doing in the present day. It might or might not contain a brand new machine, 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, 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-compulsory for Ternus. Whereas AI is clearly the longer term and hundreds of 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 plenty, another person will. Present CEO Tim Prepare dinner, who announced last week that he’ll vacate his position in September and turn out to be the corporate board’s govt chairman, has accomplished 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 arduous 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 turned 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 an analogous low-key manner. Perhaps as soon as he’s within the prime 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 great fortune of engaged on lots of our merchandise all through the years,” he advised 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 a number of enjoyable banter between him and his crew.
Far 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 considered one 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 delivery a expertise,” he stated. “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 way in which we take into consideration AI.”