2026-05-03 17:20:44
It's a story as old as time. Or at least as old as tech. As a company finds success, especially in mobile, they tend to expand outwards. That is, with more apps. And that inevitably leads to a move to consolidate all the disparate services back together into one "Super App".
Meta is probably the most famous example of this trend, because they've tried to do it a number of times, dating back to when they were still known as Facebook. The company would constantly bundle and unbundle services like Messenger and Photos. I mean, even Poke was unbundled at one point. This expanded beyond Facebook with WhatsApp becoming another attempt to create one-app-to-rule-them all after Mark Zuckerberg clearly saw the success of the "super apps" in various Asian markets with products such as China’s WeChat, Japan’s Line, and South Korea’s KakaoTalk. But it never really worked. Or at least, hasn't yet.
But if at first you don't succeed...
Beyond Meta's continued efforts to bundle and unbundle – most recently with AI – the latest wave of attempts at "super apps" was undoubtedly kicked off by Elon Musk. Back in 2022 he gave his rationale for buying Twitter as such: "Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app." Well, Twitter is now long gone, in its place is, in fact, X. So how's it going?
Perhaps well if you consider reverse mergers as a path to such a "super app". X, of course became a part of xAI, Musk's attempt to compete with his previous company, OpenAI, which quickly grew larger than X itself – at least from a valuation standpoint. But that merger also accelerated the losses of the company so they'd either need to raise money in perpetuity like the other frontier AI startups or... be subsumed by another entity. Enter SpaceX. And while you can't yet use X, the app, to launch rockets into space. It's perhaps just a matter of time.
But really, Musk has continued to push towards the "everything app" idea with the recent launch of XChat. And soon, 'X Money'.1 Never mind that these are separate, stand-alone apps at the moment. They obvious exist to eventually bundled back into that proverbial "super app". And depending on how the SpaceX IPO goes, the "vibe coding" service Cursor, may not be far behind from becoming a part of the playbook. And one day, of course, Tesla.
Can all of those services reasonably exist inside one app? Probably not. But that won't stop the powers that be from trying!
The "super app" trend is clearly hitting a fever pitch at this point. While Coinbase jumped on the trend several months back, fellow YC company Airbnb has also been pushing on the notion for some time. Beyond rolling "experiences" into their app, now they're going to add direct access to ride-sharing services and yes, hotels too.
Uber, meanwhile, has been at such "super app" ambitions for a while. You could argue that Uber Eats itself is a part of this, but more recently, they've been coming after the same goal as Airbnb just from the opposite angle, adding an increasingly array of tangential services to their ride-hailing app. The most recent push to become a "super app" involves a partnership with CEO Dara Khosrowshahi's old company (and oft-cited acquisition target) Expedia.
Snap, perhaps in part due to their investment from Tecent, owners of WeChat, and perhaps in part due to their ownership of their demographic, was trying to build a "super app" years ago. More recently, Spotify has been trying to break the bounds of bad music margins with podcasts, books, and now a range of partnerships.
Back in the land of AI, perhaps you're aware that OpenAI is on the verge of their own "super app". This will include not just ChatGPT but also their vibe coding solution Codex and even their web browser, Atlas. This follows competitive pressure from Anthropic, as Claude currently houses not only the chatbot, but Claude Code and Claude Cowork as well in one package on the desktop.
Google, meanwhile, just launched their first stand-alone AI app for Gemini on the Mac. This obviously signals new coding and agentic tools on the way which will be bundled into the app. This is the way.
Speaking of, guess who else is now talking about the notion of a "super app"? Disney! That's right, the entertainment company is also exploring ways to put the true "plus" in Disney+ under new CEO Josh D'Amaro. What might such an app include? "A place where users can book park tickets, buy merchandise, play games and watch movies," according to Thomas Buckley and Lucas Shaw's sources at Bloomberg.
This isn't too surprising given that D'Amaro previously ran the Parks division for Disney and has been the steward of their investment in Epic Games. But the company has also discussed trying to make such a "one stop shop" for all things Disney in the past, and it hasn't gone anywhere.
In fact, outside of the aforementioned Asian markets with their handful of dominant players, the model just has not translated to the Western world. It's unclear why this time will be different – maybe the AI services like Claude making cross-pollination more the norm, maybe? – and there are plenty or reasons to think that it won't be.
The most obvious issue, as I talked about with the notion of OpenAI's "super app" is one of complexity. Apps, against, at least in Western markets, have historically been fairly focused and simple. Uber. Airbnb. Twitter. These are apps to do one thing. But the desire to expand is always there, lingering. And the business dictates it. So the simple naturally becomes more complex.
This is even more pronounced if you try to mix business with pleasure, as it were. Say by trying to turn a consumer hit service into an enterprise one as well. These things tend to happen naturally, or not at all.
The risk, of course, is user experience. One reason Facebook has had to keep unbundling after pushing to bundle is bloat. When your service starts to require multiple menus and drop-downs – congrats, you've created Microsoft Office. That might be fine for business, but for consumers, it's a nightmare. That's the reason why OpenAI had to simplify ChatGPT's drop-downs – it was a total mess.
There's undoubtedly a balance to strike. And Netflix may point to a way forward here, as they've been able to keep the app pretty streamlined even as they shove more and more stuff into it. Not just more content, but more types of content. Like sports and even games. They still rely on their algorithms to serve up what they think you'll want on that all-important main page.2
Dynamically served-up interfaces could be a key to making this work.3 And AI will obviously be a key to that. Or the "super apps" may fail to catch on, at least in the West, for the 20th year in a row...
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
1 If we're reallying going to do the 'X ____' branding, can we at least standardize how they're styled? Should there be a space after the 'X' or not? Might I suggest a lowercase usage since 'xChat' and 'xMoney' looks at least a little less porn-y? Also, sort of calls back to Apple's success with their famous lowercase 'i'... ↩
2 Though I'd still argue that they push their games a bit too much. ↩
3 Elon/X would undoubtedly argue that payments are the key to make this all work, and there may be something to that notion. Though I'm not sure how easy it will be to get people to route payments through an app like X... ↩
2026-05-02 06:00:58
Got 3 hours to kill this weekend? Might I suggest the latest episode of John Gruber's The Talk Show podcast where we discuss all things Apple CEO succession. Tim Cook. John Ternus. And a lot of rabbit holes. You can find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or you podcast player of choice...
Inklings is a newsletter featuring links and commentary from M.G. Siegler on timely topics found around the web.
📈 Big Tech Earnings Extravaganza – The biggest takeaway over the two-day span (with four reporting on the same day) seems to be that while everyone beat their numbers, how the market reacted varied wildly. Because what really mattered clearly was the AI spend – well, except for Apple – and the perception of how the massive CapEx is being leveraged (or not). Google soared to new record highs (and is closing in on NVIDIA as the most valuable company in the world). Microsoft sank (but has since come back a bit). Amazon jumped (and is on the verge of overtaking Microsoft as the 4th most valuable company). Meta tanked (and is about to fall behind Tesla again – they're now a half-trillion behind Broadcom and TSMC). Clearly, the market is most skeptical of Meta and Microsoft at the moment and most bullish on Google and Amazon when it comes to AI. And I think they like Apple as a hedge against the madness. Or simply because people need to use AI on something and Apple sells a lot of those somethings. How long until Meta offers up a cloud offering just to shut Wall Street up? [Techmeme]
🐭 New Disney Boss Tested – One of those tangents Gruber and I go on is about Disney. And specifically, why it might make sense for Apple to acquire them. How would that be for a Ternus "Prestige" wild card? Unlikely to happen soon, but at a sub-$200B market cap, it sort of looks like a steal? It would cost well over $1T now to acquire Anthropic! And with HBO/Warner Bros seemingly now off the table... Anyway, the other new CEO in town, Josh D'Amaro has had a hell of a first few months between the Sora shitshow, some Fortnite fumbles. the Bachelorette nightmare, Disney layoffs, and now Jimmy Kimmel – yes, again. Speaking of, does TV really even make sense for Disney anymore? They're apparently keeping ESPN for now – and certainly Apple might like that asset! – but what about ABC and/or the affiliates? Many early tests and calls for D'Amaro (don't say Chapek)... [NYT]
📸 The Siri Camera Mode – Is Apple really going to risk tainting their all-important camera with Siri's bad brand? It sure sounds like it! But really, the feature(s) make sense. 'Visual Intelligence' is sort of awesome and clearly the future (as Google Lens was before it) but it's way too buried. Putting it front-and-center will spur usage and, importantly, get it ready for it inevitably being a part of Apple's forthcoming smartglasses (and AirPods/Pendant?). All while giving Apple some interesting data to use for their own AI build out! While I joke/not joke about Siri, I do like the idea of changing the camera shutter button to the logo to make it clear what you're doing. [Bloomberg 🔒]
🗣️ The AI Button – Speaking of, I've been meaning to note this new wearable made by an ex-Apple team. No, it's not Humane, it's almost the opposite. It's called, wait for it... Button. It's a pin you push to start talking to AI. It's not always on, not always listening. This sounds a lot like what I thought the first version of such products should always be. Instead, we got laser projectors. Still, I'm not sure this should be a button you affix to your clothes versus a pendant with a lanyard. Yes, seemingly what Apple itself is thinking about. But really, I'm thinking about the first iPod Shuffle – the white stick with the built-in lanyard, not the latter square variety that this product more closely resembles. That first version was so great because it was so simple. You put it around your neck and you were off with hundreds of songs available on demand. The biggest pain point was the wires for the EarPods. That's no longer an issue! I mean, Apple should probably bring back the iPod for that reason alone? But at least make any AI button similar to that magical feeling. The real key will still be hard to pull of: response time. [Wired]
🦁 Netflix Shifts Narnia to Theaters – Well would you look at that. Greta Gerwig's The Magician’s Nephew (technically the sixth of C.S. Lewis' Narnia series, but the first chronologically) was all set for a Thanksgiving 2026 IMAX release (followed by Netflix a few weeks later) but now it's shifting to Spring 2027, not because of reshoots but because Netflix is going to push it wide to all movie theaters. It will get a seven-week run starting in February before it hits Netflix in April – that's... 49 days. Sure, it's just one movie, for now. Regardless it sure looks as if Netflix is backtracking on their previous theatrical stance... Who would have thought? Yes, a lot has changed in the past few months, but also, nothing has changed. This was always inevitable. [THR]
"I’ve found Claude to have a sort of pen-and-paper quality to it. It functions like one of the best assistants I had back in the Vanity Fair days — except that it doesn’t need water and doesn’t dream of becoming an editor one day."
– Graydon Carter, announcing that Dario Amodei – yes, the Anthropic CEO – will be the co-host of his annual Cannes Film Festival party this year. Yes, really.
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
Uh, hell yeah 1980s-inspired racing Porsche. To celebrate both 75 years of Porsche Motorsport and 50 years of Apple. Fun fact, the Porsche 935 K3 race car was sponsored by Apple all the way back in 1980.
It's true, look!
🎶 Listening to "Bobby" by Wolf Alice
🍺 Enjoying a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale
🇬🇧 Sent from London, England
2026-05-01 17:06:32
In 2021, Apple spent $11.1B on CapEx for the year. In 2022, that number fell slightly to $10.7B. In 2023, it was back to $11B. By 2024, it was down a bit to $9.4B. 2025 saw a jump to $12.7B. 2026? Well, with half the fiscal year in the books as Apple just reported their Q2 numbers, Apple is on track to spend... $9B to $10B in CapEx.
One could imagine a banker on Wall Street conjuring Matthew McConaughey in Dazed & Confused: "That's what I love about Apple, man. Their Big Tech peers go crazy on CapEx, they stay in the same range..."
The dichotomy is so wild that it now gets written about every single quarter. But the dichotomy also keeps growing every single quarter as Big Tech keeps ramping CapEx and yes, Apple stays the same! I mean the chart above says it all by showing it all.
In 2021, Apple brought up CapEx quite a bit from $7.3B in 2020 to that $11.1B number – a huge jump, relatively speaking. It looked like they might be closing the gap with their peer group as Meta was at $19.2B that year, Microsoft at $20B, and Google at $24.6B. (Amazon was an outlier back then – $61B! – due to their unique warehouse and data center needs given their core businesses.) But over the next few years, the story remained largely the same, with everyone holding fairly steady (aside from Meta, which ramped CapEx in 2022 – but pulled back the following year). Then 2024 hit.
By then, it was obviously clear to everyone that ChatGPT was not a flash in the pan – well everyone except Apple, perhaps. Acting like the Eye of Sauron realizing the Ring of Power was nearby, the rest of Big Tech firmly fixed their gaze on CapEx. Last year, the numbers exploded. This year, they'll explode even further. Amazon will hit $200B spent for the year. Google will be close behind at $190B. Microsoft should be around the same at $190B. Meta at $145B. Apple? Again, they hit $4.344B in CapEx in the first half of 2026 – which was down a bit year on year – so they should end in that $9B to $10B range, assuming some level of ramp. Yes, that would be below what they spent in 2021.
It's just such a wild break from their peer group. And it keeps getting more wild. It seems like the most binary bet imaginable. Either Apple is right and the rest of Big Tech will have lit hundreds of billions – perhaps trillions when all is said and done – of dollars on fire, or Apple is going to be in big trouble.
Obviously, there will be some nuance there. Apple's bet relies on a few factors, including that someone else is spending this CapEx on which Apple can rely. This is the "hybrid" approach to such spend that Tim Cook and others at Apple keep referring to. They're basically saying that while they'll do some of their AI work in-house, on their own servers, for the most part, they'll partner with the others to rely upon their capacity. Most famously, Apple is now doing this with Google.
To that end, they may view it as similar to their longstanding – even after legal challenges – deal for Google Search. Apple could have spend tens or hundreds of billions building their own search engine. But they opted to partner with Google and instead got paid tens or hundreds of billions! And how well did that spend versus partner strategy work for Microsoft? They're making some money from Bing now, but it took years and years – and billions upon billions spent – to get to this point. And they're hardly making Google "dance" despite Satya Nadella's promises.
So yeah, that would be a best-case-scenario for Apple. The problem is that no one else thinks AI is going to play out the same way – clearly, or they wouldn't be spending these billions! At the very least, they view right now as a greenfield opportunity to own AI in a similar manner to how Google took control of Search. But more likely, they think AI is going to be a core bit of technology that they each need to control, lest they be beholden to someone else. This is exactly why Microsoft shoved OpenAI aside despite their early extremely prescient bet on the startup that remains the leader in the field. Even though Microsoft owns 25%+ of that company, with IP rights and access, they're now spending the billions to build out AI on their own.
What's especially wild there is that Apple is most famously the company that doesn't want to be beholden to anyone else if at all possible. It's the "Tim Cook Doctrine" for chrissakes! Either they've forgotten that fear, which stems from the times Apple nearly died in their history when others refused to play ball with them, and have been lulled to complacency by years of iPhone dominance, or again, they just think this will be like web search. Not something they need to fully own.
Or at least not yet. The other possibility here is that they view this AI arms race as nutty right now because the technology continues to evolve so fast and it's possible that their peers spending their billions just ends with them all more or less on equal footing as the technology stabilizes and perhaps commoditizes. That has not been the case thus far, which is why everyone makes fun of Apple's AI stumbles. But it doesn't mean it won't be the case eventually.
At the same time, Apple can be like the tortoise racing the hares. Slow and steady with their AI work to try to win the race in the end, years down the line, when the technology is finally mature enough to matter for everything. The problem there might be the fact that they won't have the muscle memory from years spend in said AI race. Maybe they can hire/acquire their way to the top then, but it's a massive risk, to say the least.
But it's the one Apple is clearly willing to take! Certainly it's the one Tim Cook has been taking over these past many years. We'll see if John Ternus thinks differently here, but all indications are that he will not deviate from this strategy any time soon. We could very well be in a situation where in 2027, Google and Amazon are spending $300B on CapEx and Apple is spending... around $10B.
One more thing: Apple is ramping up their R&D spend, which you have to believe is also related to AI work, at least tangentially. In fact, those numbers are at all time highs for Apple. Of course, their peers are also ramping such spend too...
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
2026-04-30 18:18:56
Forgive me for getting pedantic, but I can't be the only one who feels like they're taking crazy pills here. Yesterday, OpenAI published a blog post declaring mission: accomplished in what they said was a key goal for their 'Project Stargate' initiative: 10GW of AI infrastructure. It's a big number, to be sure. And they note they've achieved it well ahead of their 2029 goal. Impressive.
The only problem? As best I can tell, they backed into this goal by not just shifting the goalposts, but by completely changing the field on which they play. And perhaps the sport too...
2026-04-30 02:49:45
Happy Earningspocalypse to those who celebrate. Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft all report today after the market closes. Obviously, all eyes will be on AI spend – and any signal of actual returns from spend to date.
How high will the CapEx numbers go this time?
Inklings is a newsletter featuring links and commentary from M.G. Siegler on timely topics found around the web.
💫 OpenAI Missing Projections – On one hand, you could read a startup missing internal projections as the company either not being great at extrapolation (more understandable during fast growth) or setting targets that are too optimistic (perhaps to help woo investors). These are internal numbers for a reason; they aren't held to the same level of scrutiny as, say, those of a public company. On the other hand, OpenAI is an awfully mature company at this point having raised more money than any other in history, with an experienced team, and one that is obviously trying to go public sometime soon. Plus, as far as we know, they haven't missed on such projections in the past, so... It's not a great look, but it's made worse by their response which includes the highly scientific measurements such as "firing on all cylinders" while calling the report "prime clickbait" – both of which, of course, are non-denial denials to a report, which has now been backed-up. Even the partners, whose stocks are getting hit by proxy at the moment can't seem to align on the right rebuttals here. The actual actions of the company perhaps remain more indicative here – killing "side quests", altering deals to expand their market, and yes, bringing on some help in the marketing/PR front. [WSJ 🔒]
💨 Amazon's 'Quick' Superagent – The branding for their desktop-based AI assistant isn't bad, but confusing. 'Amazon Quick' definitely sounds like a fast delivery offering, not their version of Claude Cowork. Then again, 'Q' didn't really work for them – and was weird for other reasons – so I guess just add some letters? More importantly, Amazon doesn't have the best track record when it comes to software. Almost all of it whether on the web, desktop, or mobile, quite frankly, sucks. So the hope will have to be that their approach – multiple models, obviously their own 'Nova' models and presumably Claude, but presumably not GPT, at least not yet – and their AWS connections will win the day. For $20/month, it better be fast. [Information 🔒]
Cost-Per-Click AI Ads – It feels like OpenAI has little choice but to go down this path already for ChatGPT – they need to start showing results to advertisers and this is the way you traditionally show results. But I'm still quite skeptical this model will work all that well in AI. There's a very fundamental problem: such AI services, at least to date, have removed most of the need to click. That's how they've been disrupting Google, of course. With web search, users are trained to click. With AI, users are trained to not need to click. So, yeah. Good luck getting to that $100B+ advertising business – which would be the overall biggest driver of the business at that point – in a few years this way. I just think they'll have to find a new model and methods for advertising in AI. Just like Google had to do for Search and Meta had to do for the feed. [Digiday]
"Stargate has now had three or four permutations, I don’t know what it is right now. I can’t tell you. Maybe it never really existed in the first place."
– An unnamed "someone familiar with Microsoft's thinking" which, of course, sounds a lot like someone who works at Microsoft and is undoubtedly chuckling right now over "Project Stargate". As it, of course, actually started life as an initiative between OpenAI and Microsoft, before "The Blip" derailed, well, pretty much everything between the two.
Soon, Stargate was reborn/repackaged as a $500B mega-project unveiled at The White House between OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle. Why? Because obviously OpenAI as a massively unprofitable startup couldn't raise the debt required to finance such a project on their own. Yet they probably needed to in order to ultimately compete with Google.
But, well, the best laid plans and all that – which, to be clear, this was not. Now we have Microsoft picking off Stargate scraps and "Stargate" itself morphed into just a catch-all PR term for OpenAI data center deals. "I don't know what 'Stargate' means at this point," says another "involved" buy unnamed source. So say we all.
Below, members of The Inner Ring will find thoughts on:
• Meta's Reverse Hackquisition
• Microsoft & OpenAI's New Deal
• and more...
2026-04-28 19:06:37
Back in 2012, I wrote a post comparing Apple's method of product development to the opening (and closing) of Christopher Nolan's 2006 film, The Prestige. The opening dialogue of that film explains the title:
Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called “The Pledge”. The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird, or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course… it probably isn’t. The second act is called “The Turn”. The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you’re looking for the secret… but you won’t find it, because of course you’re not really looking. You don’t really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn’t clap yet. Because making something disappear isn’t enough; you have to bring it back. That’s why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call “The Prestige”.
My post was entitled, "Apple’s Magic Is In The Turn, Not The Prestige" and it was specifically about how while some viewed the unveiling of the iPhone 5 at the time as boring, they were missing the point. The point, per my title, was "the turn". How Apple does what it does to transform the ordinary, a smartphone, into something extraordinary, the iPhone.
Here I am, nearly 14 years later, thinking about that movie and that point again with regard to Apple.1 But this time, the context is a bit different. If you'll forgive the turn of phrase, the key this time isn't "the turn" but yes, the Ternus. And to take it a step further, while John Ternus' focus has been on "the turn" over his nearly 25 years at Apple, ultimately the key, as he takes the reigns as CEO, may actually be in "the prestige"...
I already wrote up my thoughts about Tim Cook and his tenure at Apple – including a few months ago when the news of his stepping down as CEO was just rumored, but seemed likely, soon. Now my thoughts turn to Ternus, and his path going forward – which will be Apple's path going forward.
The reality is that a lot of that path, just as it was for Cook when he took over for founder Steve Jobs in 2011, is already locked-and-loaded. All companies working with hardware have to have roadmaps that are set years ahead of time. And development cycles require product work to start at least a couple years in advance. With Apple, that's often even longer because of their complex supply chain and early access to new technologies. That is to say, Apple's pipeline of products are probably locked in for the next couple of years, at least.
Some may slip, of course – as has been the case with Apple in particular over the past few years as AI has upended not only their software, but their overall product strategy. But for the most part, we know what we're going to get this Fall and next Fall too – and a lot of that is obvious even without leaks. It's the years after that where things start to get more interesting as it relates to Ternus. Because he will start making calls this Fall when he takes over that will set those wheels in motion...
Of course, leading up to his ascension, it sure seems like Ternus already has been doing that, at least a bit. With the MacBook Neo, Ternus got a lot of credit – and, of course, "stage" time – for ushering in that product. While it seems obvious with the benefit of hindsight that it would be a huge hit, it was also quite antithetical of Apple's normal approach, certainly with regard to the Mac lineup.
That's why I immediately framed it as the smartest announcement Apple had made in a long time. It signaled a sea change when it came to their strategy. For the past many years I had been worried that Apple had become completely calcified when it came to changing their ways – which seemed like it could be particularly problematic in the Age of AI, where everything is moving at light speed. That obviously proved to be true, but shakeup of the AI divisions aside, it was this MacBook Neo that signaled the possibility of real change for Apple.
The company has famously been run by leadership that for the most part had been there for decades. This type of stability obviously has huge benefits, but also some pretty big downsides, as I believe we saw play out with AI. And Ternus was in this boat too as someone who has been at Apple for that quarter century – nearly half his life!
Steve Jobs may have famously told Tim Cook not to focus on what he would do, just to do what's right (for Apple, when he took over), but the truth is that Apple has spent the past 15 years of Cook's tenure largely doing what it thought Jobs would do anyway. And for the most part, this was the right call! Stock prices may deceive, but sales figures do not. But now that we're on to the next generation with Ternus and a leadership team that is naturally going to turn over as many of them are at or near retirement age, there truly is an opportunity to "think different".
Ternus will say all the right things right now about staying the course that Apple is already on. But again, he has little choice at the moment, that path is pretty much set. Sure, there will be choices here and there – in particular with partnerships around AI and elsewhere – but the product pipeline is pretty locked. The question is really what Ternus chooses to set in motion for 2028 and beyond.
Again, a lot of that is in process too, but in such a way that things can and do get tweaked or prioritized or cancelled. And new projects can get started depending how Ternus and his team read the tea leaves.
Cook, famously, had a bit of a rough time in this regard. Yes, there's the Apple Watch – but per above, that project was undoubtedly actually kicked off while Jobs was still alive. AirPods were likely truly post-Jobs, but I mean, they are EarPods without wires. They're great! But not exactly an entirely new product category. The car project was probably more nuanced, as the Apple Board was said to have been discussing it when Jobs was still around, but "Project Titan" definitely started under Cook. Of course, it never really went anywhere! And then there's the Vision Pro. Certain parts and technologies may have dated to Jobs, but it was clearly a Cook package. And well, it's perhaps the most to-be-determined product Apple has ever launched. It hasn't looked good to date, but they could morph it over time into something solid, not unlike the Apple Watch. We'll see.
Really, the only slam dunk Cook can take credit for is Services (well, and his Chinese supply chain, if you want to consider that a product!).2 Yes, some of those – notably iTunes and the App Store – kicked off under Jobs too. But it was Cook who put most of the wheels in motion (thanks largely to Eddy Cue) to get the division to where it is today – to the point where it will someday overtake even the iPhone itself in terms of revenue.
Anyway, my point is that while Cook couldn't exactly "coast", he could coast far more than Ternus will likely be able to. Especially as the aforementioned wave of AI threatens to upend every corner of technology.
In the near term, I believe Ternus and Apple are going to be in a great position with the iPhone because it's still the most-used and best device. That means that it's going to be the most-used and best device for AI too. But it will be under assault in a way it hasn't since its earliest days. Both with new AI hardware coming and, I imagine, new smartphone entrants built more specifically for this moment.
But even if Apple remains sitting pretty with the iPhone, they cannot afford to be sitting still. They still need to be funneling the proceeds from the device into the What's Next™ product. This is obvious, but again, Apple hasn't really been able to do this post-Jobs. They have a great satellite constellation of products, but nothing that moved Apple from the Mac business to the iPod business to the iPhone business, as Jobs did. Nearly 20 years later – Cook's entire tenure – and Apple is still the iPhone business.
Again, it's a great business to be in! But even it won't last forever. It still very well could last as the key business driver throughout Ternus' tenure too, but I mean, just assuming he gives the same 15 years of service, that will take us to 2041. Yes, the years are short, but the decades are long in tech. That's a long ways away. Especially when you think about it on the timescale of AI.
So what is Ternus to do? I don't know, that's above my pay grade. But at a high level, I do think he needs at least an iPad-level new hit product. And perhaps an iPod-level one in terms of relative game-change. I'm not saying Apple will die without one, but I am saying Apple will likely be seen as dated and in decline without one.
I do think the 'iPhone Ultra' – the artist formerly rumored to be the 'iPhone Fold' – will be a hit for Apple. But at the end of the day, it's an iPhone. The smart glasses? Certainly Apple could make them work, and perhaps piss off Meta in the process. But are they going to be a massive stand-alone product? I suspect that even in the success state they'll be viewed as one of the iPhone "satellite" products. Ditto with AirPods with cameras and any sort of AI pendants, obviously.
What's the next truly new product? Maybe full AR glasses? Perhaps taking cues from both smartglasses from below and the Vision Pro from above? You could certainly see that. But there's also a lot to be determined, both technologically and societally between now and then.
And wouldn't it be more fun for Ternus to truly come out of left field with something? Again, like the iPod. What category can Apple zero in on to truly revolutionize? As much as I still might like a true Apple Television set, that ain't it.
Robotics is probably the most obvious path here. It plays both to Ternus' hardware background and to our AI future. And beyond the rumored table top devices, Apple already has public research products that look... well, awesome. Very Apple, but also very Apple-of-the-future. If Apple can make Wall-E a reality, can you think of a better love letter to Steve Jobs?3
Apple looking around the landscape and taking what Tesla has (at some point) done with Optimus, and others have done and swooping in to do it "right" would be the Apple playbook, of course. Is that feasible by 2040? Again, we'll see...
Regardless, it feels like it's time for Apple to take some risks again.
Lastly, I would just note that while Ternus' focus and strength has been on "the turn", he will need to learn a new trick to cement his legacy atop Apple. Again, it's something Cook never quite nailed. The Prestige.
Cook as a presenter was fine. He got better as time went on, but that was also because Apple made it easier for him as time went on by taking away the live studio audience! I mean, to be fair, the pandemic really did that. But Apple, unlike their peers, never brought it back. They need to. Ternus needs to. He needs to tap into the energy of Apple's ecosystem again with live events. I suspect he will – perhaps even with his first iPhone event in the fall.
Ternus is obviously no stranger to MC'ing such events – again, digitally. Beyond the aforementioned MacBook Neo unveil, he's actually been "on stage" for years now – to the point where I called his continued presence out as interesting even before the rumors that he might be the next CEO started... But he should aim to forge his own type of presence on stage, unveiling new products.
I'm not saying he has to be Steve Jobs. It remains too tall and order, and really, he should want to be his own person in this – again, this is about Apple's future, not about the past. Others like Evan Spiegel at Snap and Jensen Huang at NVIDIA show a potential path here. Ternus, while an engineer, is not nearly as stilted as Mark Zuckerberg has been (though also obviously better over time), so he has a real shot at pulling off "the prestige" at such events.
While the key to Apple remains "the turn", Ternus nailing "the prestige" would give everyone, from the employee base to the user base to Wall Street, confidence in the path forward. As I see it, Ternus' tall task is twofold: he needs both a new trick and to reveal it, as well as Apple's old tricks, in a way that conveys the true magic of the products. As The Prestige taught us, "You have to bring it back."
1 That movie is perhaps also top of mind as I'm about to record a podcast about Christopher Nolan's film as it approaches its 20th anniversary... ↩
2 Maybe Apple Silicon, but that really launched under Jobs with the 'A4' chip in the original iPad. ↩
3 I mean, hopefully without the destroyed world and morbidly obese human population that's unable to move from their seats. But you know, the optimistic version of that. ↩