John Ternus, who officially took over as Apple’s CEO on September 1, 2026, has laid out why the iPhone will remain the center of Apple’s artificial intelligence strategy even as competitors race to put AI on people’s faces instead of in their pockets. In a new interview with TechRadar recorded at Apple Park, Ternus was asked directly about his description of the iPhone as an “intelligent personal hub,” a phrase that had reporters wondering whether he was quietly previewing a future Apple wearable rather than talking about the device already in everyone’s hands.
Ternus made clear that this was not a shift in thinking at Apple, but rather a statement of how the company sees the next several years playing out. He pointed out that Apple already makes excellent wearables in the Apple Watch and AirPods, and that both are genuinely strong platforms for AI features. But he argued that the iPhone remains uniquely suited to the job because of its combination of processing power, battery life, and a display that lets people see information rather than just hear it, something he says matters because humans process visual information far more effectively than audio alone.
Privacy Is Doing a Lot of the Work Here
The other half of Ternus’s argument is about control. He emphasized that because all of a user’s personal information lives on their iPhone, a device they hold and control directly, that device becomes the natural home for an AI system that needs deep access to someone’s life in order to be genuinely useful. He was careful to note that Apple does not want access to that data either, framing the iPhone’s role as a personal hub as much a privacy decision as a technical one. Other devices like the Apple Watch and AirPods still play a role in that ecosystem, but according to Ternus, the phone is where the real intelligence lives because it is the one device built from the ground up around user control.
That framing puts clear distance between Apple’s approach and the wave of AI wearables currently being pushed by companies like Meta, whose smart glasses have drawn sustained criticism over how much they can see and record about the people around the wearer without those people ever knowing it is happening.
What the Ternus Era Actually Looks Like
Beyond the AI hub comments, the interview offered a genuine look at how Ternus thinks about leading Apple after 25 years at the company, most of it spent running hardware engineering under Tim Cook. Rather than promising a dramatic reinvention, Ternus described his approach in far simpler terms: he loves making products, and he loves doing it with the people around him at Apple. He pointed to newer camera features like Smart Take as an example of the kind of capability that simply was not possible before AI became part of the product development process, and said that this moment, with AI opening entirely new kinds of product opportunities, is the most exciting point in his career so far.
He also touched on how Apple positions itself against the competition, arguing that the real differentiator has never been a single spec or feature, but the way hardware, software, and services work together to create something bigger than the sum of its parts. That philosophy extends across Apple’s entire lineup, from the newly introduced foldable iPhone Duo down to the everyday experiences built into iOS, watchOS, and Apple’s growing set of AI-powered services.
Asked what it actually felt like the moment he realized he was about to become CEO of one of the most valuable companies in the world, Ternus kept his answer personal rather than corporate. He described Apple as being in his blood after spending half his life there, and said the moment brought on genuine goosebumps rather than anything rehearsed. It is a small detail, but one that fits the picture emerging from this interview: an engineer who has spent a quarter century building Apple’s products now setting the company’s direction, without much interest in changing what got Apple here in the first place.
