For Apple to make its AI era succeed, it has to get back to its roots

Apple's AI strategy, including the delayed Siri AI rollout and partnerships with Google and Nvidia, faces skepticism as the company lags two years behind schedule. Former Apple executive and current commentator argue that success hinges on attracting developer talent and restoring the product-focused culture of the Steve Jobs era under new CEO John Ternus.

Apple owns the smartphone. It owns the devices and the ecosystem around them. It owns the on-campus product launch. Steve Jobs built that, Tim Cook protected it, and now John Ternus has to carry it into the AI https://www.fastcompany.com/section/artificial-intelligence era. That’s the hard part. Especially when you consider that Apple is two years behind schedule https://www.reuters.com/business/saving-siri-after-two-years-stumbles-is-apples-ai-moment-here-2026-06-08/ when it comes to getting real AI into the hands of users. The recent Siri AI rollout https://www.reuters.com/business/saving-siri-after-two-years-stumbles-is-apples-ai-moment-here-2026-06-08/ everyone was waiting for didn’t change that. In fact, it felt to me and many others I’ve talked to in the ex-Apple circles like a starting point with potential, rather than a finish line with a plan. A key factor: Cook played his last keynote as CEO safe. If you’re optimistic, it’s easy to classify Siri AI as a credible path to Apple weaving the technology through every app, device, and experience over the next three to four years. My question is simple: Can the market wait that long? Even confirmation that Apple is building with Gemini https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/11/as-openai-leans-into-enterprise-apple-and-google-target-consumer-ai.html fell flatter than expected. In the Steve Jobs era, partnering with Google in any way hell, even sharing a parking lot was unthinkable. I still have trouble accepting it as someone who worked directly with Jobs on the iPhone, iPod, and IPad. News that Apple is working with Nvidia and Google on top models operating within the Fort Knox-grade Apple labs should’ve knocked people off their sleek chairs in the Apple auditorium. Instead, it was met with a sleepy “Oh, wow, there it is.” That said, building on top of Gemini allows Apple to do what it does best: Perfect the user experience and application layer. So, what did Apple’s foray into AI accomplish? Rolling out Siri AI at Apple’s annual developer conference reinforced that success will require attracting and retaining technical talent with options to go to another Big Tech firm or hyperscaler at literally any moment. One area where it can offer something compelling beyond paychecks, real estate, and benefits: developer creativity. And this stems from the days of Steve Jobs expecting world-class products leveraging the best technology and software available and tested into the ground for user experience. If Apple wants the ecosystem dominance it had in the early iPhone years to carry into AI, developers need real tools and the freedom to build with them. Opening Xcode to third-party models, Gemini included, is a real signal that Apple knows the future of AI runs on access, quality, and creativity. Developers are the ones who’ll bring this to life on Apple hardware. For the Apple faithful. And for the masses. That matters. Siri is where regular people will actually feel whether this strategy works. We’ve all been waiting for a Siri that’s genuinely useful. The Siri AI rollout, while arriving a bit late, felt like a step in the right direction. As the AI boom meets the memory crunch, I’m left with two questions tied to Apple’s next phase: 1: Is Siri AI the start of a real shift, or still too incremental? 2: How fast can Apple get useful, trustworthy AI into every corner of the ecosystem? I believe the answers are in Cupertino. With Ternus. And, as Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2026-06-21/apple-s-new-ceo-ternus-needs-to-shake-up-design-apple-s-2027-iphone-road-map-mqnust26 , with a restored focus on building out the design team along with hardware, software, and services. The fierce battle for talent will carry through the next era of AI and hardware innovation. And things are already fundamentally shifting toward unexpected moves at a blinding pace. OpenAI recently announced a chip. Google is pivoting away from search. Intel and Qualcomm emerged from hibernation with new offerings designed to handle massive amounts of compute. But I’m encouraged that Apple will return to glory with a renewed approach led by Ternus to what made the company great under Jobs. My own experience working on the iPhone, iPod, and iPad in the early to mid-2000s tells me that the best Apple products have always come from one place: hardware, software, design, services, and developer tools all solving the same problem for the same person. Ternus knows this better than almost anyone. His job now is to make AI useful, trusted, and native across the devices people already live with—and to get Apple back to its scrappier roots, shipping things people can’t imagine living without. The encouraging sign is that Apple Intelligence, now anchored by Siri AI, is being treated as a layer across the whole platform. It just doesn’t feel like the organizing idea behind a new generation of products yet. To me, Apple’s Siri AI rollout felt more like a game of catch-up following lofty promises made by Cook in 2024, rather than category creation leading into Ternus’s tenure. I believe my old boss Steve Jobs would have pushed for a bigger leap—and I don’t think he’d have shipped Siri AI without a native agentic layer underneath it. But it’s a start.