The first big problem John Ternos faces is artificial intelligence

Less than a year ago, Apple made headlines for its lack of announcements about artificial intelligence at its annual WWDC event. Ten months later, the company announced that hardware executive John Ternos would succeed CEO Tim Cook as CEO — and the official release didn’t mention AI once.

Ternus, who is currently senior vice president of hardware engineering at Apple, will take over as CEO on September 1, after Cook spent a decade and a half in the role. Ternus is a 25-year veteran of the company and the first Apple CEO in nearly 30 years to come from the hardware sector. According to Apple, he has led the hardware engineering work for every iPad model, as well as the latest iPhone and AirPods families. Yesterday advertisement He highlighted Ternus’ work adding better noise cancellation and hearing health upgrades to AirPods, overseeing the debut of the MacBook Neo, and increasing the durability and repairability of Apple products. The company did not mention even once his plans or experience related to developing artificial intelligence.

And with all eyes on Apple executives after more than a year of failed promises about the company’s AI assistant offerings, this is sure to get noticed.

In recent years, Apple has taken a stand reputation For late competitors in the AI ​​race. The artificial intelligence assistant Siri lacks the capabilities of competing products from Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic, and relies on other companies for basic models. Both Microsoft and Google have made significant efforts to integrate agentic AI features into their operating systems in ways that Apple simply hasn’t — and sometimes when they try it, like Apple Intelligence’s notification summaries, they get it. Make fun of To miss the mark.

This does not mean that introducing AI into the system is a sign of success. Microsoft, for example, was Widely criticized For going so far in integrating AI into Windows 11 and bringing Copilot into every corner of the operating system, even into Notepad and Snipping Tool. This led to backlash from users, the emergence of the term “Microslop”, and a decision to roll back some of the changes (or at least It seems to do so Via rebranding, Central User concerns Windows 12 will embrace AI in everything). Some Microsoft users have reportedly switched to the MacBook Neo, which offers a lower price point to compete with Microsoft’s hardware and, ironically, offers less AI. So, if Ternos can parlay his decades at Apple, and his time working under Steve Jobs, to properly develop Apple’s AI systems — in the thoughtful, well-designed, streamlined way that Apple is known for — he might be able to catch up with the company in some ways.

But beyond the integration plans, there is still the fundamental issue of the actual AI Assistant features that Apple has fallen behind on. Other AI labs have spent the past two years significantly developing agentic AI systems, which aim to perform complex, multi-step tasks on behalf of users, although there is still room for improvement. Apple has a long-standing reputation for showing up late in a product category with a winning entry, but here, it simply made promises and failed to deliver.

Last June At WWDC, executives pointed to Apple Intelligence and highlighted live translation features, but Siri’s personalization features — first mentioned at WWDC 2024 — were delayed, with executives saying the rollout would happen “over the course of the next year.” Advertisements are running In 2024, Siri is showing off capabilities that have yet to arrive nearly two years later. Siri updates “need more time to reach our high-quality bar, and we look forward to sharing more about that in the coming year,” Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, said at the time. After 10 months, there’s no official word on when the new Siri will arrive, even with WWDC 2026 quickly approaching.

Last year, the company’s strategy looked like that Leaning on ChatGPT from OpenAI to fill some gaps in Siri, such as integrating ChatGPT into Apple’s Image Playground and adding visual intelligence features. Executives have repeatedly said in the past that they hope Apple users will be able to choose other competitors’ models to use as well, and as of January, Apple will finally be able She signed her deal With Google tapping Gemini to help fuel Apple’s future core models, which could cost Apple 1 billion dollars Every year. But even that deal may have been too late — last April, during Google’s search monopoly trial, CEO Sundar Pichai said it was hoped the agreement with Apple could be signed within months, leading to a rollout by the end of 2025.

The question now is whether the all-new Gemini-powered Siri will be introduced by WWDC 2026, or whether the debut will happen later, once Ternus officially takes the helm. On Alphabet’s February earnings call, executives said It was largely ignored A question about the company’s AI partnerships, including with Apple, though Pichai said he looked forward to Google powering “the next generation of Apple enterprise models based on Gemini technology.”

Ternus, who It is said It has a reputation for preserving Apple’s products rather than inventing new ones, and it will be tasked with the daunting task of leading the world’s first trillion-dollar company into the new AI era — not just catching up, but trying to get ahead of its competitors, who are already moving at dizzying speed.