Apple CEO John Ternus used his first keynote in the job to settle a question that has followed Apple for months: what happens to the iPhone once artificial intelligence reshapes personal computing. Speaking Wednesday at Apple Park during the company’s “Surprise and Shine” event, Ternus told the audience the device isn’t fading into the background. “There’s no product in the world better designed to be your intelligent personal hub than iPhone,” he said, tying the company’s entire AI roadmap to the phone in his pocket.
The keynote doubled as a product blowout. Alongside the AI messaging, Apple introduced the iPhone Duo, its first foldable phone, plus the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, AirPods 5, and the Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4. Apple also began offering a leasing option for new phones, a shift that arrived alongside higher prices on the latest devices, according to CNN’s live coverage of the event.
The framing matters beyond one product cycle. Ternus is the first Apple CEO in 15 years to run a keynote, following Tim Cook’s move to executive chairman on September 1. How he positions the iPhone now, as AI assistants and specialized hardware proliferate across the industry, will likely shape Apple’s product strategy for years.
A hub strategy with a 25-year precedent #
Ternus’s pitch is not new territory for Apple. It closely echoes a strategy Steve Jobs unveiled in 2001, when critics were writing off the personal computer just as flatly as some now write off the smartphone.
What Jobs said in 2001
At that year’s Macworld New York keynote, Jobs directly confronted pessimism about the Mac, citing skeptical commentary from tech analyst Walt Mossberg and executives at rival PC makers Compaq and Gateway. He rejected the idea that computers were being pushed to the margins.
“We don’t think the PC is dying at all,” Jobs said at the time. “We don’t think the PC is moving away from the center at all. We think it’s evolving, just like it has since it was invented.” He went further, predicting the Mac was entering a “third great age” driven by a wave of new digital devices, including camcorders, digital cameras, and DVD players.
Jobs’s answer was the “digital hub” concept: the Mac would sit at the center of that growing device ecosystem, adding value to all of it. Months later, he pulled an iPod out of his pocket, a product that effectively answered the question of why anyone still needed a PC. It became one of Apple’s biggest hits and helped set the stage for the iPhone.
Ternus applies the same logic to AI
Ternus is now framing the iPhone the same way Jobs once framed the Mac, as the hub that pulls everything else together, except the connected devices today are AI-powered apps and services rather than camcorders and DVD players. He argued that the iPhone’s processing power, cameras, always-on connectivity, and on-device AI make it uniquely suited for that role, a case Apple has also made through its official product materials for the event.
Answering the skeptics directly #
Ternus’s remarks were also a pointed response to recent commentary questioning the smartphone’s staying power. Headlines have argued the smartphone’s relevance is fading and that Cook’s tenure ended with an unresolved question about what comes after the iPhone. By opening his first keynote with a direct defense of the device, the new Apple CEO signaled he intends to answer that question with the iPhone itself, not a replacement for it.
Where the comparison could break down
One open question is whether Apple has an iPod-equivalent product waiting in the wings, something that could eventually challenge the iPhone’s centrality the way the iPod eventually gave way to the iPhone itself. Nothing announced at Wednesday’s event suggested such a device is imminent, though the newly unveiled iPhone Duo shows Apple is still willing to rethink the phone’s basic form factor after nearly two decades of the glass slab design.
What Apple announced alongside the AI pitch #
| Product | Key update |
|---|---|
| iPhone Duo | Apple’s first foldable iPhone, its biggest design change since the original iPhone |
| iPhone 18 Pro / Pro Max | New AI-enhanced Siri integration |
| Apple Watch Series 12 / Ultra 4 | Alarm and siren detection for hard-of-hearing users, live rewind, upgraded heart rate sensing, new “readiness” score |
| AirPods 5 | Improved noise cancellation, upgraded sound quality, live translation |
| iPhone pricing | New leasing option introduced alongside higher prices on new devices |
What comes next #
Apple has not said whether more AI-specific hardware is coming, but Ternus’s framing suggests the company will keep building outward from the iPhone rather than around it. With the device approaching its 20th anniversary, the new Apple CEO has staked an early piece of his tenure on convincingly answering the same question Jobs faced a generation ago: not whether the flagship product is fading, but what it evolves into next.