--- title: Apple CEO John Ternus on the iPhone Duo, Apple Intelligence AI, and Apple's Next Big Thing | TIME description: Apple CEO John Ternus discusses the new foldable iPhone Duo, Apple Intelligence AI, Siri's future, and Apple's next era of innovation following Tim Cook's departure in an exclusive interview with TIME. canonical: https://time.com/video/j5Ar32C1/ og:title: Apple CEO John Ternus on the iPhone Duo, Apple Intelligence AI, and Apple's Next Big Thing og:description: Apple CEO John Ternus discusses the new foldable iPhone Duo, Apple Intelligence AI, Siri's future, and Apple's next era of innovation following Tim Cook's departure in an exclusive interview with TIME. og:url: https://time.com/video/j5Ar32C1/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/j5Ar32C1/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Apple CEO John Ternus on the iPhone Duo, Apple Intelligence AI, and Apple's Next Big Thing twitter:description: Apple CEO John Ternus discusses the new foldable iPhone Duo, Apple Intelligence AI, Siri's future, and Apple's next era of innovation following Tim Cook's departure in an exclusive interview with TIME. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/j5Ar32C1/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Apple CEO John Ternus on the iPhone Duo, Apple Intelligence AI, and Apple's Next Big Thing > Sponsored content. 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Apple CEO John Ternus discusses the new foldable iPhone Duo, Apple Intelligence AI, Siri's future, and Apple's next era of innovation following Tim Cook's departure in an exclusive interview with TIME._ --- Oct 20, 2026 8:48 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Apple's 2017 iPhone is Going to be Awesome](/video/aUI8gjKW/) ### Apple's 2017 iPhone is Going to be Awesome [Apple's iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C: What You Should Know](/video/xWVkGCv3/) ### Apple's iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C: What You Should Know [Did We Just Get a Glimpse of Apple's New iPhone?](/video/RBJPEVfX/) ### Did We Just Get a Glimpse of Apple's New iPhone? --- ## Transcript How do we build deeply personal experiences leveraging AI that help us all be more creative, be more productive, do whatever it is that we want to do? John Ternus is leading Apple into its next era. In September, Ternus took over as CEO as Tim Cook stepped down after 15 years in the role. Hello and welcome to Apple Park. I am. He's now overseeing the launch of the iPhone duo, Apple's first ever foldable phone. The most dramatic design change to the iPhone since its debut in 2007. And Apple is still finding its footing in the AI space, where the company's efforts have largely been overshadowed by its rivals race toward superintelligence. Following this year's Apple keynote event, I spoke with John Ternus at the company's headquarters in Cupertino, California. You first joined Apple 25 years ago as a member of the product design team. You've been working with Tim for the last several months, maybe more. For all we know, preparing for this transition. He really passed the baton to you this morning. What have you spent most of your time talking about these last few months? Uh, honestly, talking about the future, right? I mean, that's that's kind of what we do here. We're always I mean, even today, today is an amazing moment. We celebrate tomorrow. It's past and we're on to the next thing. And, uh, and yeah, just a lot of really wonderful conversations with Tim about, you know, where do we go from here and what new opportunities do we have? And it's been great. How involved with design are you still? Well, you know, it's funny because as a product designer, that's a mechanical engineer by background. And the, the team that the product designers work most closely with are the industrial designers. So I've been working hand in hand with industrial designers at Apple since, since I started. And it's, it's an amazing relationship. I think what's so special about this place is design is at the center of it. Like design means everything to us. And what's incredible is our designers, both on the software side and the hardware side, they really understand the engineering, and the engineers have a very deep appreciation for design. And so it's a really powerful collaboration. It's not a designer sketches something up and then throws it over the wall and says, go make that. It's from the very beginning. The teams are collaborating and, and it's just a wonderful thing to be a part of. iPhone duo brings an entirely new design while preserving everything you love and expect from iPhone. When closed, the duo is about the size of a passport, and when opened, it looks like a small tablet. The surface is made from a durable custom polymer and has a display engine that enables a seamless transition between its inner and outer screens. Apple hopes that users will find the phone as integral to their routines as they do other beloved Apple products. How do you know when a design choice is genuinely contributing to the experience, rather than simply calling attention to itself? That's a good question. I think that comes from, again, the the collaboration that we have, the cross-functional because, because everybody's kind of looking to solve these problems together. And first and foremost, we're focused on what is going to make this product better for the user and that guides it. And so as long as you're thinking that way, then something that's frivolous or distracting isn't going to make things better for the user. And so we're not going to do that. So we focus on on usefulness and utility and capability, but design helps make the experience better. And sometimes you just want a little whimsy. Like if you saw with the iPhone duo, when you open it up, there's this beautiful animation as you open to the inner screen. That's not a functional thing, but it's something that makes you feel good every time you see it. Actually, I think one of my favorite things about it was the kids queue, and I don't even have kids. I think it actually might work on my dog too. When I want him to look at it. Would I bet it would. Yeah. So you have to let us know. Yeah. If you can tell our listeners and our audience what kids queue is. Yeah. Well, so it's really fun. So with the foldable, you're opening up now, of course, you have a display on both sides and you have cameras on both sides. And so one of the things that we can do is we have, um, peanuts characters like Snoopy on the outside display. So it'll kind of capture your child's attention while you're taking a picture and get them to look at the camera. And this is just one of these things where when we started this product, we were building something very different than what iPhones had been. And it was an opportunity to honestly get clever and have fun and come up with new and interesting things. And kids is a great example of that. You have a reputation at Apple for being remarkably calm, but outside of work, you race cars. When did your fascination with going fast begin? Oh, you know, I have an older brother who was very much into cars. Uh, and when he was in college, he got a sports car, Datsun 240 Z. Really cool car. And I was just in love with it. And so he would ride, you know, I'd get to ride around with him in it and everything. And then, uh, when, when I got out of college and he was already out of college, we started doing some motorsports stuff together, uh, and just never, never got tired of it and love it. Despite being one of the biggest names in tech, Apple has taken a notably different approach in the AI race. Rather than trying to keep pace with the frontier models of anthropic, OpenAI and Google, Apple has focused more on intentionally integrating AI into the products consumers already know and love. Because there's no product in the world better designed to be your intelligent personal hub than iPhone. Apple announced Siri AI, which is powered by an Apple AI model that leverages Google's Gemini technology. Mom sent you an email with recipes for grandma's peach pie and grandma's lemon meringue pie. How do you think about Apple's role in shaping what comes next in AI? Yeah. Look, I think, um, this is the, I'm convinced, the most exciting time in my career to be building product because AI has so much potential to kind of allow us to change products, make new products, all of that. Our focus is what it always is. We focus not on technology, but on product. And how do we leverage technology to build products and features and experiences that really matter to people that people love. And if we're doing that right, you don't even really know. No one has to know that it was AI that had it happen. They just want to know that, wow, I was able to do that thing that I couldn't do before. And it was fun and it was easy and we could make it happen. So that's our focus and we are really keen to, to enable sort of the personal side of it, which we talked about today. Um, there's so much of your personal life is on your phone, right? Your phone is such a key part of your life. Uh, and the beauty of our system is that privacy is it's just all built in. And so that using Siri AI, you can tap into that personal contact, but nobody else can see it. Apple can't even see it. We don't want to see it and we can't see it. It is your information. And I think that is going to be our contribution in this space is how do we build deeply personal experiences leveraging AI that help us all be more creative, be more productive, do whatever it is that we want to do. Is there anything about AI that scares you? I mean, it's a space that's moving fast. And so when things are moving fast, like, you know, it's sometimes hard to to predict the outcomes. I feel really good about what we're focusing on because again, we're keeping the user at the center of it, and it's all in service of building a better capability and experience for the user. You announced in June that you're working with the American Academy of Pediatrics, and will be rolling out a new set of tools to help parents easily manage screen time. Why now, and how do you see Apple playing a role as parents and governments weigh how technology impacts our children? Yeah, we I mean, we've had screen time for a long time, right? And, um, you know, I can say personally, as a parent, I've worked with it in the past and it was, it was good, but it was not great. And I think, you know, this year, I think we did something really great with our, with our new child safety work. And it's a really important time. It's, it can be challenging to be a parent and figure out like, how do I manage what my kids are seeing, how often they're seeing it, who they're talking to? And so we wanted to build tools that make that really easy for parents. And I think we've, I think we've done just that. Apple is now one of the largest and most successful companies in history. What do you want to preserve as CEO about the way Apple makes design decisions as the company enters this next chapter? Yeah. Well, look, I think the the opportunities and the products, that stuff will change. It'll evolve as it does as new technologies come. But the way we work. Uh, I don't want that to change. I think, you know, as we said before, design has always been at the core of this company. And, uh, and I think our respect for the user and for building products that are that are helpful and beneficial to people, that is, that is job one. 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