Apple's new CEO is reviving a Steve Jobs strategy from 25 years ago

Apple CEO John Ternus wants everyone to know the iPhone isn’t going anywhere. Ternus threw his weight behind the device on Wednesday during his first keynote as CEO, placing it firmly at the center of Apple’s product strategy for the AI era: “There’s no product in the world better designed to be your intelligent personal hub than iPhone,” he said.

The stance contrasts with the approach of former CEO Tim Cook, who repeatedly tried to convince Wall Street that Apple was more than just the iPhone. It’s also a rebuttal to pundits who have recently cast doubt on the device’s future, with headlines suggesting the smartphone’s days are numbered and framing the end of the Cook era as an existential challenge for Apple to figure out what comes after the iPhone.

Ternus’s framing of the iPhone as an “intelligent personal assistant” hub echoes what Steve Jobs did with the Mac in 2001, months before he unveiled the iPod. At the time, many observers believed the PC’s days were numbered; at a Macworld New York keynote, Jobs pushed back on bearish commentary from industry analysts and PC-maker executives, arguing the PC wasn’t dying but evolving into a “digital hub” that would connect a growing array of devices — camcorders, digital cameras, DVD players — and add value to all of them. Later that year, Jobs introduced the iPod, a device that became an enormous hit and helped drive Apple’s profits before eventually leading to the iPhone.

Today, with the iPhone approaching its 20th anniversary, Ternus faces a version of the same question Jobs confronted in 2001. It isn’t clear whether Ternus is quietly sitting on an iPod-like product that could secure the iPhone’s position as Apple’s hub for years to come, but he’s firmly rejecting the idea that the device is past its prime. He argued that an ideal AI hub needs a powerful processor, high-resolution cameras, persistent networking, and on-device AI — attributes the iPhone already has, giving it an edge in the compute-hungry AI era. Its portability and adaptability make it, for many people, the only computing device they need; other companies have tried to unseat the iPhone with wearables, but none have succeeded. Rather than sidelining the iPhone for something flashier, Ternus is leaning into it.

Why it matters

If Ternus’s bet mirrors Jobs’s Mac-to-iPod pivot, Apple may again be laying rhetorical groundwork for a new device category — but this time the payoff, if any, is still unannounced.