When Apple rolled out hardware chief John Ternus as the CEO to replace Tim Cook, the reaction was kind but muted. That’s because Ternus has said nothing yet to indicate he has a specific plan to position Apple for the future. (To be fair, he’s said next to nothing about anything — no easily found social media posts, no big speeches about anything beyond hardware, no major interviews showcasing his vision.
I have long been a fan of Apple, but the “i” people have a lot of problems. Their failure to make Apple an AI leader — not the leader, just a leader — has dominated headlines for two years now. But the truth is that Apple has spent years without the passion and drive that marked the second coming of Steve Jobs as CEO.
The clearest example involves the iPhone and the Apple Watch. I used to routinely upgrade my devices once a year, or at least every two years. I am sitting here now with an iPhone 13 Pro Max and an Apple Watch Series 7–the same devices I’ve had for almost five years.
Each year, I’d get excited about Apple’s new devices and look for just one clean reason to upgrade. I didn’t find it. The promise of AI was intriguing, but Apple didn’t deliver. The iPhone camera kept getting better, but my photos look just fine already.
Apple did deliver one feature that would have made me upgrade: allowing an iPhone to record and quickly transcribe calls. But the company then rolled it out to all devices, meaning it offered little to push new iPhone sales. (Of course, Apple never bothered to tell users the transcription feature has a roughly 30-minute limit. For a guy who often does hour-long interviews, that’s a problem; I’m forced to stop a recording at the 25-minute mark and reactivate it. *Sigh*)
As for AI, I would love for the iPhone to actually be intelligent about all of the data swimming within its case. For example, as a reporter, I have apps for a large number of news organizations. On one election night, I got 16 alerts that a Senate race had been called. I don’t need 16; I just need one. If Apple Intelligence were really intelligent, it would understand that. It should also understand that when I’m driving to an appointment, I don’t need a calendar alert 15 minutes before my meeting when the phone should know — based on my destination and routing in Apple Maps — that I’m on the way.
All those little missteps add up. One of the critical talents a CEO at a company as large as Apple needs is either vision or a passion that can pass for vision.
This brings us to the inevitable comparison between Jobs and Cook. Jobs was passionate, persuasive, inspirational and he truly had a plan for future products based on his gut feeling of what users would want or need. But Jobs was also undisciplined, harsh, and abrupt and someone who wasn’t always worried about the truth.
He was, therefore, a great business leader, but he had help. (Keep reading for more.)
Cook was nearly the opposite of Jobs. He was precise, methodical, detail-oriented and he for the most part treated people well and with respect. But his speeches were lackluster and I have yet to meet anyone who dubbed him electric or inspirational. He was privately passionate about his work, but that passion rarely surfaced in public.
Here’s my point about Jobs’ success: He did so well because he had Cook as a senior deputy. Having the ultimate technocrat in place allowed Jobs to focus on the bigger-picture future.
There’s been chatter on LinkedIn suggesting that Cook was a weaker CEO than Jobs. There’s a valid argument for that, but many do not give credit to Cook for helping Jobs perform as well as he did.
Earlier in Cook’s tenure, he did have one executive with a healthy chunk of the Jobs passion: Jony Ive. But Ive got tired of the technocratic nature of his boss and left in 2019 to work elsewhere. Turns out the best leadership duo is a visionary CEO with a technocrat deputy. It doesn’t seem to work the other way around.
Customers and employees also want to see passion and vision from a CEO directly. And that brings us to the upcoming change.Can Apple under CEO Ternus get its AI act together? That is the big mystery.
Apple certainly has the money and the clout to make AI work from either side of the buy/build path. But does it have a vision of what customers want — or more precisely, what they need?. Jobs had the knack for correctly guessing what customers would want once they got it, even if they didn’t yet know they needed it.
Justin Greis, CEO of consulting firm Acceligence and former head of the North American cybersecurity practice at McKinsey, sees Ternus as an executive “who has also [along with Cook] been heads down on execution mode his entire career and he’s an insider. He knows how to keep (Apple) in its lane.”
Greis goes with the crowd in pinning most of his Apple hopes on AI. “If you look at the big AI companies, Apple is not on the map. Everybody is outpacing them. Siri simply doesn’t have the power that is needed to be valuable for their end-users.”
The AI magic is really not about simply using AI on-device. It’s about the value that can be delivered by a sophisticated integration of literally every piece of information coursing through a phone, your watch, a Mac or an iPad.
A few years ago, people saw Apple as a gatekeeper controlling access to Siri. Back then, the assumption was that access to Siri would be worth tons of money. No longer. Plenty of people now use their iPhone to access generative AI offerings from a variety of Apple’s AI rivals.
Apple can still win the AI mindshare battle, but only if it can truly deliver intelligent integration of everything that interacts with the phone. That package could be offered solely through Siri, allowing Apple to again control the almighty gateway. Sure, an iPhone user can access Claude or Perplexity — but if only Apple’s knighted partner can analyze your calendar, your contacts, your call history, your travel plans, your bank account, your photos, etc.— companies will again be willing to pay for access.
That’s where Apple gold lies. The question is whether Ternus can mine it.