Apple CEO John Ternus is pushing back against ongoing criticism that the tech giant has fallen behind in the artificial intelligence landscape. In a wide-ranging and candid interview with veteran journalist Steven Levy for Wired, the newly minted chief executive addressed the company’s measured pace in adopting generative AI, its long-anticipated revamp of Siri, and the broader philosophy guiding Apple’s product development moving forward.
The interview offers a rare glimpse into the mindset of Apple’s leadership following a period of significant transition. Ternus, a longtime hardware engineering executive who officially stepped into the CEO role at the beginning of September, inherits a company navigating one of the most profound technological shifts in decades. Over the past couple of years, Wall Street analysts, tech commentators, and consumers have frequently characterized Apple as a laggard in the AI race. Those perceptions were fueled in part by repeated delays to a more powerful, context-aware version of Siri—a feature set that finally rolled out to users this summer after much anticipation.
Despite the outside noise and the intense pressure to match the rapid, sometimes chaotic release schedules of rival firms, Ternus remains remarkably unfazed. Acknowledging that critics are bound to voice their perspectives in a hyper-competitive market, the CEO offered a direct assessment of the company’s current standing.
“Everyone has an opinion,” Ternus told Wired, before emphasizing his confidence in the road ahead. “I really like where we’re at.”
That measured confidence comes at a crucial juncture for Apple. The company has spent decades defining how consumers interact with personal technology, pioneering graphical user interfaces, capacitive touchscreens, and modern mobile app ecosystems. However, the rise of large language models and autonomous AI agents has sparked intense debate over whether traditional operating systems and app-based interfaces could eventually become obsolete. Competitors across Silicon Valley have rushed to deploy standalone AI products, chatbots, and browser-based agents, often prioritizing speed to market over polished integration.
Apple, true to its historical form, has taken a more deliberate path. Ternus clarified that the company is “absolutely going to leverage AI” across its expanding hardware and software ecosystem, pointing to how deeply machine learning is already woven into the fabric of Apple’s devices, from silicon architecture to on-device privacy protections. Yet, he drew a firm line regarding how and why those features are brought to market.
According to Ternus, Apple has no interest in deploying technology simply to chase industry hype cycles or satisfy quarterly expectations from Wall Street.
“We don’t want to ship AI for AI’s sake,” Ternus explained during the interview. “When we’re doing it right, people won’t have to think about whether it was AI that made this happen or more traditional software. What matters is, did we build something that they really love?”
This philosophy echoes Apple’s historical approach to emerging technologies, where the company rarely claims to be first to market with a brand-new concept, but instead focuses on refining the user experience until the technology feels indispensable and intuitive. By embedding artificial intelligence natively into the operating system rather than treating it as a novelty chatbot or a standalone application, Apple aims to make advanced computing capabilities feel invisible and effortless to the end user.
During the discussion, Levy pressed the Apple CEO on the more radical long-term implications of generative artificial intelligence, specifically probing whether increasingly sophisticated AI agents could fundamentally disrupt Apple’s business model. As autonomous software agents grow more capable of executing complex multi-step tasks—such as booking travel, managing schedules, or interacting directly with web services on behalf of a user—some industry analysts have suggested that traditional smartphone applications could eventually become unnecessary. In such a future, the app store paradigm that has generated billions of dollars for Apple and third-party developers alike could be upended by conversational or intent-based interfaces.
Addressing the prospect of an app-less future dominated by autonomous software agents, Ternus maintained a grounded and human-centric perspective on product creation.
“That could make life really easy, I suppose,” Ternus replied, before pivoting to the core ethos that drives Apple’s design culture. “But the creation of products is a deeply human and personal thing, something that we love to do.”
The interview underscores the delicate balance Apple must strike as it steers through the artificial intelligence era. On one hand, the company faces mounting commercial pressure to demonstrate that its ecosystem can compete with aggressive AI advancements from Microsoft, Google, Meta, and OpenAI. On the other hand, Apple’s brand equity has long relied on a meticulous attention to privacy, hardware-software integration, and an uncompromising focus on user experience.
As Ternus settles into his leadership role following his much-hyped executive memo and recent product unveilings in Los Angeles, his comments signal continuity rather than a sudden strategic pivot. By prioritizing deeply integrated, seamless software experiences over rushed feature rollouts, Apple is signaling that it intends to play the long game in artificial intelligence—betting that consumers will ultimately value refined, friction-free utility over the relentless noise of the industry’s AI gold rush.