Apple's new CEO reveals how AI will change your life

· The Fresno Bee

While artificial intelligence (AI) has infiltrated our search results, impacted customer service with mixed results, and touched our lives in lots of minor ways, its impact hasn’t changed most people’s everyday lives.

And while many people fear an AI-driven Terminator-style apocalyptic future, that hasn’t happened quite yet either. In reality, much of the impact of AI remains theoretical, and Apple’s new CEO John Ternus has a clear vision for what that looks like.

“As we look ahead, we see a future filled with enormous discovery and transformation. AI makes entirely new kinds of experiences possible. And AI can become even more useful when it brings together your life with the apps, services, and products you use every day,” he said during Apple’s Sept. 9 event.

Apple, he believes, can be the leader in developing that space because it already has a key product, the iPhone, that’s in you pocket, your hand, and at the center of your everyday life.

“This means the product at the center of your experiences becomes even more essential, what I like to think of as an intelligent personal hub. It’s the intersection of broad new capability and a deep understanding of your personal context that makes this idea so powerful,” Ternus added.

Apple has a massive advantage

Most companies developing AI technology need a way to deliver it to consumers. Apple already controls a massive piece of the device market.

“The headline is blunt: “Apple ended 2025 with 55.9% of the US installed base, up 5.9 points in a single year. Samsung fell 4.9 points to 27.8%,” according to an April Recon Analytics report.

“Apple beats smartphone competitors in terms of brand loyalty, with more than 90% of iPhone users in the U.S. saying that they’ll likely stick with Apple when it’s time to upgrade,” a Statista report showed.

That’s based on a number of factors.

“First, there’s the undisputed quality of Apple devices. Even though they usually carry a premium price, the build quality reflects that premium. Secondly, there’s the brand factor. Apple is one of the most popular and most recognizable brands in the world, and to many users, it would feel like a downgrade to move to a Samsung or Google device,” Statista’s Felix Richter wrote.

It’s a product edge that gives Apple a shortcut to controlling the future of AI.

Apple’s CEO shares a future that’s already here

In describing the “ideal version of this hub,” Ternus basically described the iPhone.

“Now if you were designing the ideal version of this hub from scratch, how would you do it? Well, first, you would want something that is always with you, deeply personal and able to bring intelligence to the moments when it matters most,” he said.

That’s clearly the iPhone, but the CEO got even more specific with the other requirements he lays out.

  • You require a powerful processor that can run incredibly capable on-device models to quickly answer questions in the moment, and pervasive networking to access knowledge and even more capable models in the cloud.
  • You need a large, beautiful display to show rich content.
  • You’d add high-quality cameras and microphones, so we could see and hear and reason over the sights, sounds, and the world around you.
  • Of course, you’d give it all-day battery life.
  • You’d want it to be super easy to use without a big learning curve.

Aside from all-day battery life, those are things the iPhone already delivers. Ternus also shared the final reasons why the iPhone already sits at the center of the AI world.

“And finally, you’d want it to work seamlessly with your other devices, apps, and services. So it feels like one integrated experience. In other words, you would arrive at something remarkably familiar because there’s no product in the world better designed to be your intelligent personal hub than iPhone,” he added.

Apple is all about device sales

RTM Nexus CEO Dominick Miserandino thinks that Apple has actually been sticking to the same script it has used for decades.

“Apple doesn’t give a damn about winning a chatbot contest. I’ve been using the Siri beta, and it’s an interesting game changer. It embeds quite nicely right into what you’re already doing on the phone. While Google and OpenAI burn billions on servers trying to build a destination, Apple is doing what it always does: selling hardware,” he told TheStreet.

More Apple:

He thinks that, no matter what Ternus says, everything the company does is about making sure you stay in the iPhone family.

“They don’t care about selling you a $20 monthly subscription — they’re using AI to give you a reason to ditch your three-year-old iPhone and drop $1,200 on a new one. The math is simple. Apple owns two billion screens, and they’re using this integration to drive the next upgrade cycle,” he added.

Apple knows everything about you

Ternus explained why a phone is the perfect device to be an AI hub.

“As your personal hub, your iPhone can do so much more for you because it understands your context. This includes your calendar, your relationships, your routines, the most private details of your daily life,” he said.

Other companies and devices, he noted, will have trouble copying that relationship.

“Now others see that data as something to collect and store. They move it to their servers and ask you to trust them. But honestly, trust only goes so far when your data is no longer yours to control,” he added.

Apple’s argument is that the company already has an established trust relationship with consumers. That’s a trust he takes seriously.

“Private Cloud Compute extends that same level of privacy protection, ensuring that nobody, not even Apple, can access what’s yours. It’s personal intelligence that’s actually personal,” he shared.

Apple’s privacy claims around Private Cloud Compute aren’t based solely on a statement from its CEO. The company has made the system available for security research and commissioned independent audits of its PCC provisioning controls.

A 2026 SOC 3 examination found reasonable assurance that those controls operated effectively under the applicable security, processing-integrity and confidentiality criteria, although the audit did not evaluate Apple Intelligence itself, according to Apple’s product support page.

iPhone isn’t the only piece of the puzzle that will help Apple build the future of AI.

“iPhone sits at the center of an amazing ecosystem of intelligent features and experiences that work seamlessly across the products you use every day, from Siri becoming more capable and more personal across your Apple products to meaningful health insights with Apple Watch to powerful new AirPods features like Live Translation and so much more,” Ternus shared.

Consumers are worried about AI

While Apple has built a trust-based relationship with its customer base, consumers do have an overall fear of AI.

“A majority of Americans (57%) rate the risks of AI for society as high. Far fewer (25%) see high benefits, while 15% rate both the risks and the benefits as significant,” according to a Sept. 2025 Pew Research Center report.

Consumers are wary about the impact AI will have not just on their lives, but on humanity.

“Our survey asked respondents to explain, in their own words, the main reason they see AI as having high or low benefits or risks for society. Those who rate AI negatively most commonly say AI erodes human abilities and connections. Those who see high benefits most often cite gains in efficiency,” the data showed.

Despite those fears, Americans have welcomed AI into their lives.

“About half of U.S. adults now report using AI chatbots, up substantially from the summer of 2024. This includes roughly one-in-four who use these tools on a daily basis,” according to a June 2026 Pew report.

Ternus thinks that, despite any worries people may have about AI, they’re already using iPhone, and that overrides those fears.

“Simply put, iPhone brings powerful AI capabilities together with your personal context on the device you have with you all the time,” he added.

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This story was originally published September 20, 2026 at 8:09 AM.