Can John Ternus find Apple's next big thing?

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Learn more at Doppel.com, d-o-p-e-l.com. This Monday.com ad was created by a team of people and AI agents. Reese, our content agent, wrote the copy based on our best practices, like mentioning Monday.com three times. That was the second. Johnny, our coordination agent, built the timeline, and kept everyone aligned. Olivia, our human creative director, stayed in the loop. Because agents are great, but they don't always know when a joke lands. She had one note. Tell listeners it only takes minutes to build an agent. So, minutes. Create your own AI agent today on Monday.com. Hello, and welcome to Doppel. I'm Neil Appetale, Editor and Chief of the Verge, and Dakota is my show about big ideas and other problems. I'm talking with Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, who is the world's best-sourced Apple reporter. Earlier this month, Apple hosted the annual iPhone event, virtually every detail of which was reported ahead of time by Mark. But this event was special for a number of reasons. It was new Apple CEO John Ternes' first product launch since taking over for Tim Cook less than two weeks prior. It was also the debut of the iPhone duo, Apple's first foldable smartphone. The timing of those two things was not at all coincidental, as you'll hear Mark explain. Apple takes these events and the stories they tell extremely seriously. And this year's story says a great deal about what's happening at Apple. How Cook managed a wholesale change in Apple's leadership ranks over the past year. And how all of that might change Apple's culture. And what that tells us about Ternes' plan to navigate Apple from what you might call the iPhone era into the AI era. Okay, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman on the future of Apple. Here we go. Mark Gurman, you're the chief Apple correspondent and the managing editor of Consumer Technology at Bloomberg. Welcome to Dakota. Good to be here. Finally, thanks for having me. And it's been a while. So good to catch up on all things Apple. I'm really excited to talk to you. The team and I were talking, obviously Apple just had its big event. They announced the iPhone duo. It was John Ternes' first event as CEO. This is a Dakota episode. We got a new CEO. We got a new org chart inside Apple. There's been a lot of shuffles. You've been chronicling them very, very deeply over the past few years. I'll just start with the event. I have a very basic question for you. Do you ever get nostalgic for a time when you didn't know what was going to happen at the iPhone event? Do I ever get nostalgic for a time? Do you ever wish that you, Mark Gurman, were about to be surprised? Honestly, I never think about it that way. I'm just fixated on delivering the goods and delivering the news and people love their Apple, right? People want to know everything that's coming down to the last minute. So I'm here to provide it for them. And the thing with me, and I don't know if most people know this about me, but I hope people know this about me. I'm a huge Apple fan through and through. And I've always been. And I'm so lucky to be able to cover a company that I love and a company that I am obsessed with. And a company whose products I use, there are so many people who cover companies that they couldn't care less about. That's not me. And so I do what I do because I love Apple. And I love covering Apple. I love the community around it. And I love talking about it. And it's always fun to get a peek at the future and help keep not only myself informed, but people informed around me. That actually leads me to a lot of things because I've known you forever. We've been working in and around the same spaces forever. You got your start as an Apple blogger at the Apple rumor sites. Yep. There's a whole culture around Apple that has grown up and changed over the years. And you can kind of trace them to different eras of hardware to different CEOs to different sizes of the company. This was the first event, which on turn is the CEO, they announced a big new product in the iPhone duo. Do you sense that community is changing? How do you think that community has changed over the years? And do you think turn is is going to lead to a difference in what that community feels like I have to say this event really didn't feel much different. You know, then a Tim Cook event, right, if they felt like pretty interchangeable, it could have been Tim up there, introducing it, it could have been turn is up there, introducing it. The one thing I will say that did feel slightly different is that turn is came out swinging with the point of view on AI. The first thing he came out was about the intelligent personal hub. Now, here's the big difference between Tim Cook and John turn is in terms of their management style. You're inside Apple, you're an executive, you'll come to him with an idea, you'll come to him with a viewpoint, a decision opinion, and he'll just pepper you with more questions. He won't make a singular decision in many cases, it's very much communal decision making collaborative decision making, right? John turn, he comes to him, you want him to make a decision, he'll make a decision, he'll have an opinion. Now, you may hate his opinion, you may completely disagree with him, but he has a viewpoint, right, that's the big difference talking to people about. Turn is in Tim, okay? Turn is comes out talking about his view on AI, I may disagree with it, a lot of people may disagree with it, they may think the open AI and foropic approach is superior, but at least he came out and had a viewpoint. And Apple's been at this, you know, AI game now for two years since they launched Apple intelligence at WWDC in 2024. And it's been a mishmash of things, they haven't really come out with a very strong narrative and viewpoint and they finally did it. And so, like I said, whether you agree with it or not, they did do that. And I thought that was a really interesting way to kick off the, the keynote. All right, we're just going to get into the weeds of Apple nerds disagreeing about things, because I sat through that event and I appreciated the same thing that you saw, which is, oh, we're telling a story. John turn is on the stage and the first thing he's doing is telling a story about this product and how it fits into the universe of technology. And then I took a beat and I was like, oh, but they're also just making sure that he's successful as first event by playing Apple's greatest hits. Because intelligent personal hub is just a replay of Steve Jobs saying the iMac was the digital hub. And at the very end of the event, he said there's one more thing and it was the iPhone duo. And there was just a part of all of that that to me felt like Apple saying, look, our new CEO can put on the clothes of the old CEO. Well, he can do this exact same dance that you're expecting. And underneath it, what I felt was, to your point, I don't buy this story about the intelligent hub. No, I don't buy the things we're seeing AI do happening in cloud service. It's the same week that metal launched mues, right? And you can feel what you want about metal launching mues, but they've Mark Suffolk is giving everybody eight gigs of storage and eight gigs of RAM in the cloud. And mues can go do a lot of things that AI and iPhone absolutely cannot do at this point in time. And I just felt like there was a part where they're playing it really safe with John by having him basically show up to me the new lead singer of journey, right? Like, you can't get it wrong if you're going to do lights. If you're going to show up on stage and do don't stop leaving it, you're going to be fine for a minute. And it's all the stuff that comes after that's going to this going to really show his real personality. But it sounds like you thought that that he that's his point of view. Well, it's a couple things. At a very high level, Apple's going to tell a story around what they have, right? If Apple invented chat, GPT, they would have invented chat, GPT, and they would have told a good story around that. Apple has gone as far as it's able to, at least for now, on AI. So it's telling the story. The best version that story that they can was what they have to work with, right? With the bird they have in the hand. So that's the one thing. And then I agree with you on the intelligent personal hub, how that compares to the iMac back in 98. And it feels like they're trying to sell this pivot from the Mac was the center of everything with the peripherals around it. Then you've got to iCloud, right? In 2011, the center of everything with the peripherals around it. And now it's this intelligence right at the center with everything around it. But what's so fascinating is Apple held a major product launch event in September of the year 2026 and did not introduce a single notable new AI feature. The first 15 minutes or so of the keynote was simply a replay, a re-narrativeization of what they introduced over the past two years with Apple intelligence. And so they try to just tell that story in a more concrete way. And then the other thing is they don't have any AI devices at the very core. And so they need to prop up the iPhone as their AI device because they don't have an alternative. But of course, they're only going to do that until they have that killer device. And then they're going to change that whole narrative. So it's a very narrative, ER, and marketing, driven company. And I'm not saying that to be critical. I mean, if I ran the company, obviously I'm going to tell what I have. I'm not going to fear from that. But it is interesting how they're playing this. And I agree. They did play it very safe. There's nothing safer than John Turner's introducing a new iPhone, right? It's like the safest thing you can do. No major new AI products, no smart home hub. Nothing in the in the spatial space just straight down the middle and it seems like that next wave of smart home products Which we're expecting later this year and I say we're expecting I'm expecting it because that is something you have Reported I'm expecting it. Yes. Yeah. Yeah Mark Irman is expecting new new products in Apple That is the first cut at some truly AI native devices, right that because you have Siri AI and it is functional now in a way that it previously Was not functional you can try some new classes of devices There's about a half dozen AI native Devices coming in the next year and a half or so the first will be the smart home hub Which is basically an Amazon Echo show, but Apple style a square screen and entirely new operating system The idea is what would a Siri AI operating system look like this is that intercom video conferencing Proactive intelligence so you walk up to it it recognizes who you are and it will show content personal to you It will know who is speaking obviously the Amazon Echo can do that that Apple is doing it in its own aptly way With AI based face ID They're working on a home security system They're working on another version of the smart home hub that I just talked about that is attached to a robotic arm So you put on your desk it it can move around. It's actually a category that's pretty popping In Asia and in China right now And then you've got the wearables the smart glasses. I still believe those are going to be introduced In ship in 2027. So not too far from now Trust me, you'll be wearing them within 365 days You will be wearing them and have video hands on of you wearing them at the Steve Jobs theater And if that is not the case either something went horribly wrong for you or something went horribly wrong for Apple Um, and then you'll also have the air pods with cameras That's an interesting thing that we should talk about but they'll have the air pods with cameras Uh, and then a few other wearables that I won't get into So this is what I was talking about when I when I said there were arrows at Apple and people's relationship really changed for the company The Steve Jobs era was defined by devices and in particular Steve Jobs himself getting up and doing a keynote and famously putting up pictures of all the existing smartphones and saying well He's all suck and here's the reasons they all suck and here's the iPhone and here's why it's better And that created one kind of relationship between apples enormous community fans It's leader and the products and I think that was very successful I think that Tim Cook era has been meaningfully different I think it is it's largely a story about scale to some extent it's a story about values to a huge extent It's a story about privacy right Apple is marketed itself as the privacy company It's fought the FBI to keep the iPhone encrypted. There's a lot there with Tim Cook's version of the company But it's more corporate It's certainly it's just a vaster company. It's safer. It's not as rougher on the edges as the Jobs Apple But it wasn't as device-based I don't think the Vision Pro has the same kind of mainstream cultural impact Is even like the hockey puck mouse the Jobs like put out like there was a thing that he could do with products Tim Cook Apple could not quite do with products and that just feels really different to me I'm gonna correct you on that because every time I put an article or post out about the Vision Pro being on like support I get what amounts to basically a notch or two below a death threat from like dozens of people so people are Doesn't about it. Well, I think honestly, I think that it is is that people have created businesses around spatial computing and apps and they're just pissed off that they've invested all this time and money on a category That's probably gonna die out and then give consumers spent for grand on this product and they're like I saved up for this thing I living with this thing and I'm pissed off to hear the realities, but I The comparison there. I think it's good right there people have invested in it. They care deeply about it The the comparison I'm making is the relationship people have to Apple in the cook era is as an institution Right, it's just like this big thing that spans the globe. Yeah, that has massive scale Yeah, and in the jobs era it was all about really really innovative new products that redefine categories over and over again You're describing a whole bunch of new products that came up in the cook era that John Ternis is gonna launch How do you expect the culture of Apple to change around its products or its relationship to the culture to change? As we go from one CEO to another, but think about what they did You've got the coolest new iPhone and Apple product in maybe 10 20 years Introduced one week after 10 cook steps down and then for the next 12 to 18 months you've got I don't know six or seven new product categories Maybe have 25 pretty breakthrough things And so Tim cook made a decision that even though his 10 year at a product company was pretty limited in major new things The Apple Watch turned out to be a success Even though it started as a complete dud as you remember The AirPods are sort of a unique beast in which they're an accessory, but it's not a you know a platform on its own yet It's gonna get there and in the vision pro is a failure Tim cook could have ended his 10 year CEO with the iPhone duo Right could have just waited Typical transitions at Apple they happen mid-October they happen mid-April they happen January 1st It was a specific decision that was made for John turnus to be the one to introduce the iPhone duo And it was a specific decision made for John turnus to be the one to introduce this whole new product program Even though as you know because of the the length of hardware developments like holes in R&D These things were in the oven for five to ten years And so it's really interesting that this decision was made to let turnus be the face of this whole new air of products Rather than allow Tim cook to take the credit for it And I think that's to your point where they're trying to draw the line of the sand of this new era If cook is already going to step down in the next three years Let's just do it now and let turnus take the credit for everything Support for the show comes from Upwork The most successful business owners don't do it all themselves. 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That's why CrowdStrike built AI detection and response Or AIDR AIDR helps organizations discover where AI is being used, monitors AI activity at runtime and helps teams detect, investigate and respond to threats involving AI systems As companies adopt AI, security has to be built in from the start More than 70% of the Fortune 100 trust CrowdStrike to protect their businesses Now CrowdStrike is helping secure the AI era You can learn more about AI detection and response at CrowdStrike.com/decoder You've obviously done a lot of reporting I think you were the first to break the news that cook would be searching for a successor I think among the very first to break the news would be Ternus Tell me about that process. This is a big decision cook is going to play a huge role at the company It has a massive compensation program Tied pretty much to have any talk to Xi Jinping and Donald Trump That's it seems like that's his job For 47 million a year I would talk to Trump and Xi Jinping on the phone every day I would need at least 50, but that's just me They're like that's his job Right, so go do politics Much of the same way that Eric Schmidt at Google was in charge of governments after Larry Page became CEO There's a whole pattern here of CEO Brad Smith, Microsoft, even though he wasn't CEO, but yeah. - He's the president of the company. Yeah, there's a parallel here. Tell you about this decision of Tim Cook wanting to elevate of making John Turner's the face of the products side of the company in this new role. The 2023 rolls around and Tim Cook starts every executive team meeting, all high level meetings with people at Apple, the executive levels. We need to start taking succession seriously. We need to start thinking about who the next people are. And at that time, there was a really a strong realization that many of the people at the top of Apple, either they had half a billion in the bank or there were billionaires, that this era is going to start to age out really quickly. And so Tim Cook knew that he wanted to take a step back. Jeff Williams, the number two, the COO knew he wanted to retire. The CFO, Luka Maestri, he wanted to retire. The General Counsel, Kate Adams, she wanted to retire, and they were all about the same age, right? Give her take a few years. And so they basically came up with this plan that we'd go one by one over the next few years. So it started with the CFO, Luka Repires, very end of 2024, he's replaced by the new CFO given prep. Then, 2025 rolls around, they have Jeff Williams, the COO, he retires, replaced by his deputy, Salvi Khan. Then into 2026, they have the transition for the General Counsel. And they got a great replacement for her from Metta, Jennifer Newsted, and then end of 2026, the big one, Tim Cook to John Ternis. And so they played this out very, very slowly. And what Tim Cook has done, and I do think this is going to change in the Ternis era as we progress here, is he came up with this strategy that I call hotel California, right? You never want to leave. Tim Cook, he's staying around his executive chairman. The General Counsel, he had her stay around an extra six-time months to run government affairs. Jeff Williams stayed around three, four months after stepping down a COO to just oversee the design team, the watch team, and the health teams, as part of a transition. The CFO, Luca Maestri, his CFO role, the vast majority of it went to successor, but he kept three things. He kept oversight of information systems and technology. It's basically like your IT department, corporate information security, which is security for the organization, and corporate real estate. So campuses and retail stores and facilities and what have you. It was kind of a BS job. I'll be honest with you. It was more so keeping him on the payroll and keeping around in case things at the fan, they had a financial issue, and they needed like the adult or the grandfather in the room to take the bull by the horn and fix things as they transitioned to the new guy. But now, Luca, he's still there, still getting paid, and he's teaching a class once a week at Apple University. So he's a professor there now. I'm not sure how much longer that's going to run for, but he's still there. And so all these old school Apple guys are either retired or semi-retired, or like a notch between semi-retirement retirement. And then we have Phil Schiller, who the same week that Ternis took over a CEO, I reported that Schiller is leaving his remaining responsibilities of running the app store and running Apple events. And he's at Apple now for the next little while working on special projects. They're not saying what that is, but he's there. He's reporting to Ternis. He's still on the Apple leadership website. And he's around if needed in sort of an advisory capacity. And we'll see how long that lasts. But really, this is just a gigantic end-to-end changing the guard at Apple. It's the biggest executive overhaul. I've certainly seen in my career reporting on Apple. Don't forget, when Tim Cook took over for Steve Jobs, there was no overhaul. Many of the guys under Cook were the same guys under Jobs. So a lot of them have been there for a while. So this is definitely a new era, new generation. And you're going to see more changes, right? The head of marketing, the head of retail, some of the other people. They're in their mid-60s almost. They've got hundreds of millions of dollars. They can't do this forever. They're talking internally about retirement. So you're going to see another wave of changes in the next few years as well, I believe. - You mentioned Phil Schiller, who I've known for ages at Apple because I'm old. He's transitioning out of his role running the app store. And you had a piece of reporting that suggests part of it is because John Ternis and Eddie Q want to extract even more money from developers. They want to keep that Apple tax high. They want to find more ways to have services revenue. And Schiller wasn't interested in that. Schiller famously has always thought that Apple was squeezing its developers too much. There's reporting, there's emails from some of these lawsuits. What's going on there? - Yeah, it's very interesting. I mean, obviously one part of it is that Schiller is 66. He wants to spend more time with his family, but for real, when it comes to him, he wants to do more philanthropy. He's been involved in all sorts of stuff in that regard. But at the same time, this is a new era for Apple. Eddie Q has a firm grip of our all Apple services now, really for the first time in a while. And John Ternis, very close with Eddie Q. And they are looking at new ways to make more money on the app store, whether that's additional advertising slots, whether there's additional subscription opportunities. Obviously, there's going to be a reinvention of the app store coming in the next few years to make more use of AI and to fill in to Siri AI as well. And Phil Schiller, according to my reporting, believes regulators are still hot on Apple's trail. Developers are still unhappy with Apple. And as they go into this new generation, he wants to distance a little bit from it, but he still loves Apple more than anything. And he's still part of Apple here for the foreseeable future. And to be clear, there was no big blowup or anything between him and Eddie Q and Ternis or anything like that. Just with all these considerations, felt like a natural time for him to step off. And he's also stepping away from Apple events, right? So it's not just dropping the app store, it's dropping his two remaining responsibilities, which was a lot, right? He was part of the hotel California crew, but he had the most responsibility between the app store and Apple events. Those are big things. >> And worth noting, he's not wrong with regulators. There's still an outstanding department of justice and I trust case against Apple regarding the app store and car play and all that sort of stuff that was started under the Biden administration and has not gone away in the Trump administration. >> First of all, surprising that it hasn't gone away under the Trump administration, given the alliance between Donald Trump and Tim Cook. It has always been shocking to me. I thought that was gonna get blown up a year ago. And then the other thing is nobody knows any of this more than Schiller because he's the one at the center of every meeting, he's the one doing the depositions, he's the one on the stand. So if anyone has the pulse of these governments and the pulse of developers, it's him. >> The big decoder trope is that the structure of a company is connected directly to its culture. If you, Tommy, your company is roughly organized. I can tell you where about 80% of your problems are and that other 20% of the magic. And I ran out again, I get pushed back on this from the CEO. He says, "No, no, no, it doesn't matter. It's all about the people." And I feel like Apple is both, right? The structure of Apple has been the same for a long time Steve Jobs used to call it the world's biggest startup and then you just had these people who had been there forever. They're just the same cast of characters undercooked as they were under jobs and you could probably shuffle them any way you want it, but it was the same people, that's right. And so of course the culture persisted. And you're describing a wholesale turnover at the top and then it also seems like there's some structure changes happening underneath John Turnis, right? Johnny Ive was the chief design officer of the company which always felt to me like part of that hotel of California's strategy. >> Oh, that was his gone now. >> That was its own. >> That was like Hotel Pupertino. I mean, that was its own level. But they were afraid of him leaving 'cause he was so tied to a job's era and then they managed to work him out of the company. We can talk about opening it in a bit. Johnny Shuji is a chief hardware officer now. That's not a title Apple has ever had before. That also feels like potentially a transition in title of some time. >> We talk about Shuji for a minute. Right now, Shuji's the second most important person at Apple. He created Apple Silicon, which let's just face that you cover the whole industry, I cover the whole industry, that's their key differentiator. That's what allows them to do different stuff. That's their competitive advantage. Letting this guy walk out the door would have been a nightmare scenario, especially right now. Last year, last fall, late summer, early fall, he goes to Tim Cook, tells him he's done, okay? This is right when planning for turnips taking over is kicking into high gear. Tim says, I need you to stick around as part of the transition and have you go elsewhere and help you go to Nvidia or wherever he was thinking about going. Certainly not retiring. This guy's not ready to retire, I don't think. Here's what we'll do. When turnips become CEO, we'll make you chief hardware officer. So you're gonna keep your existing team and then you're gonna get all the turnips stuff and then you'll undoubtedly be the second most important person at Apple. Shoji agrees, takes a new pay package, I'm sure, and now is in that chief hardware officer role. I do not believe that is a long-term thing. I think that he's already back to wanting to transition to something new, transition out of Apple. He has really not a lot left to do, right? He conquered the map, like he dumped Intel. He dumped Qualcomm, right? What's left? This is a guy who wants new challenges and new things and he's done it all at Apple and there's no next thing to go after. They've really done it all. So it'll be interesting to see how quickly that happens, I think a year or two. And then when that happens, this recombination of the hardware engineering teams into one group, they're gonna have to break that up again because there's no successor to Shoji who has that industry cloud and that leadership capability to be a singular hardware figurehead at the company. - If you have managed to acquire Intel's disastrous modem business and fix it, what worlds left are there to conquer? - Exactly. - It was the hardest thing you could have possibly wanted to do and he did it. Those modems are shipping and the new phones. - And no complaint. - That's right. If I were to place a bet with you two years ago, how is this Apple modem thing going to go? So I would have guessed it's going to be a disaster, but they did have to slow down the Qualcomm modems to make their modems look fine, but there are some stuff in there for sure. But I'm talking about articles, about people's calls dropping, not being able to load web pages and whatnot, like all things considered pretty seamless. True. So this is the question that I'm really getting at is we're talking about a lot of new people, and inside of it, return to form in terms of just what that leadership page looks like, right? There's no chief design officer who's a legend in his own right. You're saying soon there won't be a chief hardware officer who's a legend in his own right. The heads of design listed on that page, Alan Dylaft and went to meta. Now they're just vice presidents together, not even SVPs of design, but they report to John Ternis. We're headed back towards a more functional apple. They've gotten to some kind of divisional structure as they try to keep all these powerful people. What do you think that's going to do to the company, or is that just going to be more of the same? You know, so interesting. You look at the number of things and then out of stock that each of these reports to John Ternis has, it's a lot. And I also think you have a problem where there are vice presidents. So a tier below the SVPs who want to grow. But you have these senior VPs who are going to be there forever, right? Like Eddie Q, he's been there for almost four decades and you've had people under Eddie Q who've left to newer jobs and big things outside of the company because they want it to replace Eddie internally, but they know that he's never leaving, right? They knew that he was going to stick around for a long time. And so you're losing good people at the VP level. So I think eventually you're going to see an additional layer, right? I think you're going to see this chief hardware officer idea become some new thing they're going to try like, for example, could they make Craig Fittery who runs software like chief software and AI officer or something at one point and then elevate some of the people under him to that senior VP level, give them more responsibility, give them more money to keep more people around. So I think that leadership structure is going to be in a fluxer a while till they figure out how to do this. I mean, the old old Apple, they had VPs, they had senior VPs, they had executive VPs. You can imagine they're going to play with these things in order to keep people because I think one of their biggest problems, other than AI at this point, is retention of people. I actually would draw the connection between retention AI, not having that bench of younger people with new ideas or disruptive ideas, I think prevented them from seeing AI for what it was. That's a really good point. I think about what came to be known as the cook doctrine where Tim Cook would often say, we want to own and control every foundational technology that goes into our funds. And this is really just a statement of Apple's own paranoia about being chained to Intel for a long time or whatever it might be. They couldn't see a way to owning and controlling AI because it's just massive investment. They had just blown a bunch of money trying to make a car and they kind of missed it, right? They don't have a model of their own that it competes at the frontier. And so they've distilled Google's model and this feels like a pretty big jump away from the cook doctrine. Do you think they're going to have to compete in AI by making their own investments on the frontier? Or do you think they're happy where they are? One of the craziest things that I've ever heard is ragging these other executives and these interviews over the last year saying that we never own search. We don't need to own AI. First of all, two completely different things. Second of all, to your point, they have spent so many tens of billions, hundreds of billions and talking of their mouths off of owning something as simple as a cellular modem. And when I say simple, I mean something is commoditized as a cellular modem, spending billions to buy, trying to fix the Intel modem business. So you're willing to do that to own something like a modem, but you're not willing to own AI. It's ridiculous. And they know that. That's why they tried to own their AI until they're from the ground up. They ran into a wall and they had no choice but to partner with Google and fixing up their models. The idea internally has always been that we are going to work with Google as a stopgap solution until we're able to do our own models from the ground up, okay? Let's put that aside. At the same time, I've seen absolutely zero evidence that they're actually working on that plan A again. I've seen no evidence that they're hard at work on building fresh Apple-made models from the ground up. I've seen no evidence that they're running around to make big AI acquisitions. I've seen no evidence that they want to start throwing huge pay packages at AI researchers for MetaGoogle andthropic and OpenAI. And so right now, it feels like we are at a standstill. It feels like they want to see how this Google deal and how working with third parties goes for the next several months. And then they'll make a decision if they want to go back to sort of building and competing with the other guys. I think they want to see helpings play out. I think they want to see the Anthropic and OpenAI IPOs. I think now with all the news about AI safety, they want to see how this all plays out. And maybe they'll make a decision in six months of where they want to go. As of right now, I've seen no evidence that the transition of moving back to in-house stuff is happening. And to be fair, it's an advantage that there's no chance that Siri will kill us all. It simply is- But again, it's not capable enough to- Neelay, they fell backwards into that. It was not a strategy. This was not Apple's current AI products was not the result of good work. It was right. It was the ultimate failing upwards. Let me ask you about that because right next to that, I mentioned Johnny Ive, he's obviously working with Sam Altman. They're going to build some set of products at OpenAI. A lot of Apple designers have gone over to OpenAI. There's a very contentious lawsuit between the two companies. Apple accuses OpenAI of stealing internal information and product plans. OpenAI says this is just the normal course of business. We're just having conversations and job interviews. We'll see how that plays out. The threat is that Ive will design the next class of products using natural language input is the next generation user interface, the same way that the multi-touch screen was the next generation user interface on the iPhone, and that will disrupt all the old paradigms. I know that that's what he's thinking because when he made his very romantic launch video with Sam Altman, he described the phone in the laptop as legacy devices, which I thought was a very powerful thing for him to say given that he designed the paradigmatic examples of those things. Apple makes the best legacy devices, and they don't want that to be their final chapter. They want to make the best new generation AI devices. Here we are, them trying to continue to make the best legacy devices, but they really need both. I see it two ways. One, Apple has to get ahead of the curve somehow. If they don't have the frontier AI model, they can literally listen to anything you say and do anything you want, then what are they going to make this device out of? On the other side of OpenAI, if they don't have an Instagram app, everyone will still carry their iPhone with them. They will just use their iPhone because it has a big screen and potentially unfolds into an even bigger screen. They're pointed at each other, each missing the thing the other one has. How do you think that gets resolved? I think Apple is terrified of whatever OpenAI is building, and we can talk about that. It's a hockey-pucked-sized AI computer type of device that you talk to without a display or whatnot. I think Apple is terrified. In fact, the latest development in their lawsuit is Apple wants the court to show them and give them access to the upcoming device so they can analyze if it has any of their materials in it. Good luck to them on that one. At the same time, I do think Apple has the ability to fast follow anything OpenAI does. If OpenAI puts out some remarkable product and it gets the team, Apple is just going to copy this thing and follow pretty fast. Unlike the smart glasses where they're coming five years, seven years after everyone else, I think if this donut or hockey-pucked thing is a successful Apple will follow them just immediately. I think the models are getting commoditized to a point where they can fast follow and have a very effective product. If Apple goes to Anthropic and says, "Do you want to copy this OpenAI device?" And obviously, they're not going to give us their secret sauce and models. Will you partner with us on this? Yes. If they come to Google, we need even better models. Will you partner on this? Yes. Google has no legitimate hardware business that's going to be destroyed over partnering with Apple and hardware. Anthropic has no hardware business. Apple can get this done. So yes, they're afraid on one hand, on the other hand, I really don't think they need to be that worried because if it's a success, they can just copy it, which is, I guess, this is what they're accusing OpenAI and doing from beginning anyways. In terms of the lawsuit, it is very clear that OpenAI employees have done some shady things. I am surprised that the iPhone engineer or former iPhone engineer at the center of the lawsuit, this is the one who they've accused of taking material with him and sharing it with people and whatnot, I'm sure that OpenAI has not copied on him and moved forward. I think their fear is if they copied on this guy, employees are going to revolt. How could we trust working at a company like this if you are going to get sued by Apple even to company that big and you're just going to copy it on someone, right? So we'll see what happens. We'll see what happens. They've done shady things, but a lot of the stuff, like you said, is common business practice, stuff that Apple probably even does too. It's very notable to me that none of the filings in the case so far have any mention of Johnny Ive. Neither company wants to point out that Steve Jobs number two is at the center of all this because he's leading the design of this product. Do you think that's notable? I think it's by design. I think it's notable. I even think the origin story of this lawsuit is Johnny Ive himself. I think Apple's point of view is that Johnny Ive was on Apple's payroll for half a decade or more post the Apple Watch. and during that time basically destroyed the Apple design team from within and took everyone with him to build a competitor to the products that he developed at Apple, right? That is Apple's viewpoint. And I think there's a lot of anger towards I've at the very center of this, particularly, you know, from Tim Cook and some of those other players there. I think Johnny I's perspective is that all the Apple products today, they are direct siblings of everything Johnny I've developed there. Even the iPhone Duo, you can see you can see Johnny I've work in there, right? It's all part and parcel with Johnny I've. I think that he believes that he created the product portfolio, that's the basis of this three, four trillion dollar company. And he was tired after, you know, carrying that company, postive jobs and very sad about Steve Jobs' death and wanted to move on. And that him and Tim Cook came to an agreement that he only needed to work at Apple for a few days a week, right? And so what if he wants to eventually leave Apple and build something new and have people follow him? That's up to that. So I think it's two very different sides of the same story and you can side with whoever you want to side with. But I think it's really unfortunate that things did not work out for Apple and for Johnny I together in this instance. And I think he saw AI as the new core technology that he can develop something really cool around just like the iPhone was developed around the cool technologies back then of the app store and multi-touch and what have you. You know, it's really interesting with that. And this is a whole different podcast is all of I've specced products are designed or limitations, right? The iMac was designed or the limitation of the CRT displayed and so on and so forth. And AI doesn't have any limitations because it always just tells you can do everything. And I'm just dying to know what he identifies as the limitation that makes the magic of the next iFroduct. Like I said, that's a whole different podcast but it's it's just on my mind as I think about what might he do to make this more than just a hockey puck that's listening all the time. I'm psyched to play with it and to see it. And I think this screenless idea is about the blessing and a curse. I think that we're going to really see how effective AI is when we're using it without a screen and having it in the background. But at the same time, there are things about displays that are not replaceable with screenless devices, gaming, massive market, video conferencing, massive use case, watching video, another massive market and use case. And I just don't know how open AI takes over the world with a device that can't video chat, can't do gaming, can't do video. And we've seen historically that being an iPhone companion, that just doesn't cut it. Support for the show comes from Framer. There used to be a dilemma that most businesses encountered when they were building a website. You could use a one size fits all template that didn't differentiate you and didn't really do what you needed it to do. Or you could build something from scratch but it was expensive and the process was slow. Framer gives you a third option. 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For a limited time, at T-Mobile, get the amazing iPhone 18 Pro on us. With up to 36 month-y build credits, when you trade in an eligible device, example iPhone 16 on a qualifying plan, example $100 plus a month-time without a pay-plus taxes and fees, for well-qualified customers plus tax and $35 of vice-connection charge, credits and in balance, if you pay over a mere cancel, finance agreement $11,99,99,99, iPhone 18 Pro 256 gigabyte to acquire. Best and fastest mobile network in the U.S. based on analysis by Uclips P-test Intelligence Data Way to 2026. Visit T-Mobile.com. Actually, you mentioned the AirPods of the camera. AirPods are a success because they have a huge attach rate to iPhones. People buy iPhones, they buy an AirPods. People buy iPhones, the best at AirPods. There you go. You got a huge business just out the gate. And then you lose them every six months. You break them, you've got to buy new ones, so. You mentioned that adding a camera to AirPods might turn them into a platform unto themselves. That would obviously compete with some of these screenless devices or these AI native devices. How would that work? Okay. So these AirPods basically have the visual intelligence feature that you have on your iPhone. You could point at something, you could take the action on it, you can get more information. It's built into the AirPods, it's no different. So like, one use case is you're on your computer and give your phone. I want to add say to my calendar. I just point my iPhone camera at my email and I say, "This is my calendar." And it adds to my calendar and parses all the links the AirPods could do that for you now. You can tell your AirPods when I get to the pasta aisle at Whole Foods, stop me, ping me when you see the tomato sauce I'm looking for. And it'll do that. When you're walking around a city and you ask it to get directions to the nearest Walgreens, instead of telling you turn right in 40 feet, it'll say turn right by the the black sedan parked at the corner. So using visual information to provide you context to help you throughout your day. It's a game changer, I think. And I think it's going to be a really sought after product. And I think that the changes we saw with the AirPods 5 at this Apple event were now you're getting really solid ANC, even though it's not in your ear, with some Pro features like the Williams wipe at about 150 bucks, right? That's a really good product at a really good price. I think that's setting the stage for needing to make the AirPods Pro that much better. And that's where the cameras come in as that core differentiator. So this brings me to the last thing I want to talk to you about, which is Apple and privacy. The things you're describing at with AirPods are science fiction ideas that have been around forever. I tried Microsoft HoloLens 10 years ago, and they were doing augmented reality demos that are very much the things you're describing. They had me change spark plugs and an ATV. I'll never forget doing this with our big silly glasses on my face. And the problem has been one the technology, right? It's very hard to shrink that technology and have the appropriate battery life. And then the other problem is, well, you've got a camera pointed at everything around you all the time. And people don't like that. I'm always joking that I think the killer app for meta's glasses is facial recognition, right? If you just gave me a pair of glasses that would tell me everyone's names and faces at events, I would be the single greatest politician in world history. And the problem with that is that it requires a worldwide survey on state-of-base of everyone taking each other's pictures all by long. And that is probably not an appropriate trade-off for me to be the greatest politician in the world. But I'm just letting you know, I think that product would be cool for my personal benefit. The social cost would be too high. This is Apple's brand is privacy. And they're up against people calling the meta-glasses pervert glasses. They're in a world where people hate flock cameras and all that surveillance is happening online. They're doing Watch West 27 with an always-on-listening feature that just does transcripts. It doesn't record or store any audio. Still surveillance device. I can't believe it. I'll be honest to you. I can't believe they did it. Right. It's just listening. And you can double click it and it'll show you transcripts in the last 15 seconds of what someone said to you without their permission. First of all, read the room. It doesn't even light up. No, I know. No, that's not true. It does light up. But read the room. I was told it doesn't light up. Okay. First of all, we can get into this, but I was not at the Apple event for obvious reasons. And I haven't been at once since 2019. So I did not really know what's going to happen. Well, I didn't have the briefings. Okay. according to the literature on their website, when you're doing that feature, it lights up with a microphone icon when you do the live rewind. Maybe it doesn't light up for the Siri recaps, I don't think it does, the all day listening, but like the last 15 second things, it supposedly shows a microphone. But, you know, is this podcast a video? - Yeah. - Okay, I'm wearing an Apple watch. Can you see anything on my screen? - No. - Right? It's crazy too. - So I can't believe they did that because really, you're gonna take a backlash like this and then do it again with the visual intelligence six, nine months from now. - And then you're gonna do it with a pair of sparklasses and you're gonna walk into all of the other things. And it feels like Apple knows that there's a next generation of user interface is coming that is AI powered, that requires an amount of ambient capture, whether that's just listening, so you can talk to it or whether it's a visual, so you can see the world around you. And they haven't solved the social privacy ass note. There are white papers about how they might have solved the technical database privacy aspect, right? They've got private cloud compute and they're gonna encrypt the data, they're not gonna store this and that. And I don't think any of that's gonna overcome the social privacy aspect. They didn't do a good job on articulating the social aspect of it at all. They could have showed more demos, they could have disgusted a bit deeper, they sort of just throw and go to it. I know they only have very limited time. And you know, but I don't think they spent enough time breaking things down here. I quite frankly think they did not do a good job rolling this feature out. I asked myself, but I'd be comfortable using this feature? Yeah, but then I tell everyone around me the last week, hey, I've been recording you the whole time, they're gonna freak out, and they're not gonna trust the Apple, right? So it's a really interesting one. I'm pretty shocked they did it. What is the net new Apple Watch Buyers because of this feature? Like what is the bigger challenge doing this feature or not doing this feature? And I think that doing this feature is a bigger drawback than not doing the feature. There's no here, there's no cost of not doing something. Well, there is a cost if you think there's about to be a wave of AI devices that are doing always on transcripts and meeting recordings and opening eyes is gonna do something. I mean, we have seen a way- But we're not there yet, right? Like this could have waved- Right, so you can just for close it, right? You can just, this is like Microsoft stuff. You're like, here's a preview of a feature. Don't even consider that stuff. Eventually, this will get good. And you've just foreclosed the competitor. Well, the other thing is, is they had nothing else for the watch. So they had to kind of just do something, right? This is the weakest Apple Watch update. We've seen it in a long time. And they're kind of lost as what to do next. Now they're sort of recalibrating it. They're gonna have a major watch revamp at the end of next year and so forth. But they had to do something. If it were me, I would have ripped off the band-aid at the same time with all the audio, plus visual intelligence stuff next year. Do it altogether, they'll a really coherent privacy story. But do you think that stuff is compatible with Apple's reputation for privacy? This is a real question I'm getting at, is they might not have told the right story about the watch. They're gonna have to tell the right story about AirPods with cameras in them in a world where people are shooting spray-foment flat cameras because they don't want them in their communities, right? There's a connection between these two ideas. And it doesn't seem like Apple knows how to tell that story. Well, clearly not, 'cause they haven't done it. But here's the story on the AirPods. They can't record actual video. They can't take actual pictures. They have an extremely low frame rate. I'm talking about a few frames per second. And the actual data that gets input into them, it's like, have you ever used a Roomba and you look at the app kind of what does the Roomba see? It's like a, it's like wire frames of the environment. Like it would not be able to tell you and me apart, right? It just would seek, but then how can it do the brands of tomato sauce in the aisle? - Well, in terms of non-people would be able to do that. And it could read text. So it would be pretty heavily reliant on reading text and seeing color and whatnot. But like being able to differentiate two people, right? It would be very difficult for it. It's almost like, it's like a fake reproduction of what's around you. I don't have a good explanation for it, but I'm sure, yeah, if they wanted to, they'd give a good one. I'm not sure they're gonna break it down. They might just say, just trust us, we're Apple. It's not taking pictures, it's not taking video. It doesn't know what it's seeing to some extent. So we'll see how they play it. But I would have done all this stuff together, ripped off the bandaid, and spent a lot of time focused on it. There was no need to do this audio intelligence feature at the end of '26 when you could have done it at the end of '27 with everything else. - Unless you're just trying to slowly boil the frog, right? You're gonna get people mad about this and then you're gonna do the next one the next time. - We'll see, it just seems like this next generation of devices involves some kind of ambient listening that we are not ready for as a society. People are really mad about meta-glasses. They soiled the water for Apple with a lot of other companies. Meta being the first mover on this, created an industry-wide problem. And I think even though Apple has such a strong privacy stance, there's people who don't believe them. There's people who don't care what they have to say. There's people who are gonna be angry about the Apple glasses and whatnot. And I think Apple, to some extent, is on such a high horse with this privacy message that it came away surprised that there would be some backlash to Apple doing this. They think I believe that people are overblowing it when it comes to Apple, right? And everyone should just be focused on Meta and just because Meta has done a poor job protecting people's privacy doesn't mean we're going to. And so we'll see what happens. - The one thing when I talk to the folks there, they never make the connection between Apple and Meta in the sense that Meta's apps run on Apple's phones. People are mad about Meta and they still think the phones, Apple's phones are listening to them and they can't quite make that connection 'cause it undoes a lot of their own messaging. If you believe your iPhone is listening to you that's not just Meta's problem, it is also Apple's problem. And they kind of have to actively ignore that relationship because otherwise everything else falls apart. And I think that's why there's this blind spot, right? If people's watches start generating transcripts, it's exactly the same relationship as my iPhone is listening to me and that's why I saw an ad for a vacation that I only talked to my friend about. - I'm curious that they're going to do, I have a feeling just going to bulldoze their way through it. They're going to just try to tell a good story. They're going to do a ton of PR briefings about it. They're going to do a ton of white papers about it and get as nerdy in depth as they can on this stuff. And you know what they're going to do? They're going to throw at a lot of comparisons and I even heard Ernest do this in one of the interviews and Apple statement on some of these features. I could totally imagine them say, why is it any different recording from sore glasses if you could just hold your phone up and record people, right? - You know, by the way, it's very funny you just mentioned that because that is exactly it. Mark Zuckerberg just said to our friend Alex Heath. - Oh, that's funny. - You literally said, how is it different than if I, like this is the industry's approach. And I think the answer is people are, yeah, I can see you doing that and I feel very comfortable telling you to stop. Like there's something different about that. - Yeah. The other thing, I didn't even realize that someone pointed this out to me the other day. It's like your Apple Watch has had the voice memos app for, I don't know, eight years at this point. Who stopped anyone from recording their whole day with the voice memos app on the Apple Watch anyways, right? This is just a more privacy centric version of that. So Apple's solving a problem here. They're not creating one. So, you know, it just depends on how you look at these things. I think they'll bulldoze their way through it. It's going to be a problem, but I think they'll be fine. - All right, last two before I let you get out of here, we've talked around the iPhone Duo a lot. We've mentioned it a lot. It's the thing that just came out. We haven't talked about it. What do you think about it? - I think it's incredible. I think, and this is a bull take. I think foldables will become the new normal within a decade. If you look at the market share of smartphones in the end of 2006, smartphones had like 6% of the market. Now they have 85% of the market. They went over 50% of the market after five, six years. The iPhone itself was not the source of that, but the iPhone got everyone into the smartphone game. I think that iPhone Duo is going to do the same for the phone market. I think it's going to become the new normal. - Even though they're a late mover to foldable? - Yeah, I think the Apple brand is that strong. Really, I really do. I think the fit and finish, the software integration is going to get people really excited about this category. I think that Apple upgrade eventually, that's the releasing program will expand internationally. I think that's going to get people in it. I think that at some point, they're going to stop advertising sticker prices and focus on the monthly prices. And they're going to get people locked into this thing. They're going to have a family of iPhone Duo's over time. You'll see every phone maker, just transitioning to foldables. Samsung Catholic line is already foldables. Very soon, the candy bar style is going to become legacy. - That's a big prediction. Although I will say their iPhone handoff feature, where you can move a number between phones, seems to point to a future where I, for example, have the folding phone for work, and then a much smaller lighter phone for the weekends with the family. You can see that vision taking shape, only because it's not easy to port a number between devices, just whatever you want, which I think is incredible. Last question, we've talked a lot about Apple. It's culture, it's set of products. What do you think its biggest challenges are in the new era under John Ternis and what do you think its biggest opportunities are? - I would say I think the biggest challenge and the biggest opportunity are the same thing. Ternis is an Apple. The next three to five years is still Tinko example, right? That's just the reality. He's going to still be there in the background. He's still going to loom large and the product pipeline is still going to be coming out of an era that started under Tinko. But in five years from now, they are going to need to start thinking of what actually replaces the iPhone as the next thing. For the Mac, to iCloud, to AI as the center, what is Apple's new thing after the phone, what is Apple's new thing after the current generation of AI? [BLANK_AUDIO] And Ternus is 10 years CEO, I think, will go down as a success if he's able to find that next new centerpiece. It's about a few years before he used to start cooking on that, but I'm talking about something that can be in development for five to 10 years. Tim Cook never had the opportunity to have his new centerpiece of the company. He never had the opportunity to put his stamp on products of the company. For two reasons, both things that he tried to do as his centerpiece both failed spectacularly. Obviously, the Vision Pro, but the car, right? The car, that was Apple's multi-trilling dollar market cap opportunity and they just blew it. Ternus will need to successfully, we'll need to successfully hit that. - You know, I'd actually put a third thing on that list. It was the very beginning of the cook era, jobs literally on his deathbed. Said he'd figured out TV and cook had to spend, however long, pretending he knew what that meant. Because I don't think it had been solved. And so this first wave of Apple is going to redefine TV because the last page of the Isles Comb biography had that jobs code. - They haven't even done a new Apple TV box in four years. - That's a long time. It's funny because you don't need one. It never occurs to me that I need to upgrade this thing. But maybe there's going to be some AI feature that I can't live with that. - Well, Siri AI, they've been waiting for the Siri AI update. And this could be a whole other podcast, but Siri AI has been the gate to all of these new product categories. The AirPods were supposed to be out already, the Apple TV, the HomePod, the Smart Home Hub. All these devices were supposed to come. Couldn't do any of them until Siri AI, now Siri AI is here, floodgates are open. - All right, well Mark, we're going to have to have you back on the show to talk about those floodgates and all these new products. Very soon, I can't believe you hadn't been on until now. Thank you so much for being on the cook. - Yeah, I mean, obviously I'd love to have you on my new podcast, the Power On Podcast, launching very shortly. So thanks for the advance. - Yeah, very great. We'll be looking out for it. Thanks man. (upbeat music) - I'd like to thank Mark German for taking the time to join me on Decoder and thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed it. - To let us know what you thought about this episode or really anything else at all, drop us a line. You can email us at [email protected]. We really do read all the emails, or you can hit me up directly on Threads or Blue Sky. We're also on YouTube. You can watch full episodes at DecoderPod. We also have a TikTok and an Instagram. They're both at DecoderPod as well. They're a lot of fun. If you'd like to code or please share it with your friends and subscribe over your podcast. Decoder is a production of the Verge and partly the marketing of podcast network. Decoder's producers are Greg Ott, Kate Cox, Nick Stat. This episode was edited by Eileen Felix, our editorial director is Kevin McShane. The Decoder music is my break master cylinder. We'll see you next time. (upbeat music) - Your heart can tell you a lot about your health. Apple Watch Series 12 measures your heart rate every five seconds with the most accurate heart rate sensing and awareable. So your vitals app, now with heart rate variability, can tell you when something is off. And your readiness score can let you know when to rest and when to push. Here are the story in every heartbeat with Apple Watch Series 12. 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