Apple’s new CEO John Ternus took the top job on 1 September 2026, ending Tim Cook’s 15-year reign. In eight days, he hosts his first iPhone launch. No pressure here for sure.
Cook’s exit was planned well in advance according to Bloomberg, Ternus had been quietly groomed for the role for years, overseeing hardware engineering and more recently design. He sent staff a memo on day one calling next week’s event “a huge launch that’s going to be phenomenal.” Classic Apple confidence and magic words.
The 9 September Apple event, tagged with the cheeky invite line “surprise and shine”, is expected to include the iPhone 18 family, Apple Watches, and the headline act: Apple’s first foldable phone, reportedly called the iPhone Fold or iPhone Ultra. A revamped Siri AI might be rolling out more broadly too, which might actually be the more important story here.
What Makes This a Big Moment (Beyond the CEO Swap)
Ternus is a hardware engineer through and through. He’s built some of Apple’s best physical products like the M-series Macs, the latest iPhone lineup, the Apple Silicon transition. For that side of the business, he’s probably the right person and no, he is not a new guy at Apple.
But Apple’s most urgent problem right now isn’t hardware. It’s AI.
Siri has been embarrassing for the past two years. While OpenAI, Google and Anthropic have been shipping more capable assistants and Siri has been setting timers and misunderstanding simple voice commands. Apple’s on-device privacy pitch is admirable, but it doesn’t paper over the gap when the assistant just isn’t smart enough to be useful. The new Siri AI, built on proper large language model technology, needs to actually deliver not just in demos, but in day-to-day use for regular people.
Ternus didn’t negotiate Apple’s existing billion-dollar deal with Google for Gemini integration, and he has no public track record on the AI governance and policy questions that will define the next few years. At least Apple has realised they have lost the AI battle and opted to use Google for Gemini AI instead – which is great. But it needs to be much more useful than what the WWDC 2026 presented.
Apple iPhone Foldables
I know foldables are a big deal in the tech press, and yes, Apple entering the category will give it a shot in the arm. But personally? I’ve never found foldables compelling enough to justify the price premium, and I don’t expect Apple’s version to change that for me. If anything, Apple entering the space this late (which they normally do) feels less like boldness and more like finally getting around to it.
The people who’ll be excited are the iPhone loyalists who’ve been waiting for a big physical form factor change. That’s a real audience. But for everyone else, the iPhone 18 Pro and what Siri AI can actually do are the more interesting stories.
What to Watch
The 9 September event is the obvious one but keep an eye on the Siri AI rollout more than the foldable headlines. That’s where Apple either closes the gap with its competitors or confirms the problem is deeper than a software update can fix. Ternus’s tenure will ultimately be judged on whether he can make Apple’s AI story as strong as its hardware story. The hardware is already great. The rest needs work.
About Lauren Chan
Lauren Chan is a tech writer and software developer with a passion for any new kinds of technologies. Also a cat lover (who doesn’t)?
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