Apple’s pick to replace Tim Cook hints at its plans for the AI era

Source Domain: edition.cnn.com

Apple’s announcement Monday that CEO Tim Cook will step down and John Ternus will take over signals a significant shift for Apple: The company is betting its future on the most rapidly evolving technology in the history of computing.

Apple is still flying high on the iPhone’s success, which helped it become one of the few publicly traded companies to reach a $4 trillion market value last year. Cook expanded the iPhone beyond a mere product into a foundation for new business segments like wearables, digital services and health.

Ternus will have to figure out Apple’s next path – and he’ll have to do it as AI reshapes technology and the way people use it every day. The bar for Apple is especially high given its track record of class-defining products, including the smartphone, smartwatches and tablets.

Apple has rolled out a suite of AI-powered features for the iPhone, Mac and iPad that can do things like erase unwanted objects from photos, summarize messages, generate images and translate languages.

But Apple has yet to lay out a broader AI strategy, such as how artificial intelligence will shape new products and make the company money.

At first blush Ternus might seem an odd choice for that AI future. His background is primarily in hardware, having joined the product design team in 2001 and eventually ascending to become the senior vice president of hardware engineering in 2021.

Yet while consumers interact with AI through software, Apple deeply links its hardware with its apps, services and operating systems. Apple’s chips are made specially for products like the iPhone and Mac, making them more power efficient and enabling certain features that are specific to Apple devices. Some other gadget makers use chips from vendors like Qualcomm or Intel, giving those device companies less…

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