New Apple CEO John Ternus believes the company should get its designs right rather than launch early or copy rivals, and he points to the iPhone Duo as proof. Ternus, named as Tim Cook's successor in April 2026, first joined Apple about 25 years earlier. Only 10 years into his tenure, he was already involved in the project that would become the iPhone Duo. Speaking to Time magazine, he said that he and five fellow engineers filed a patent for foldable devices in 2011. "It felt clear that we were going to eventually get to a place where OLED displays were going to be flexible."
Samsung and other rivals reached the foldable market before Apple. Ternus was unbothered, saying the "other examples in the world felt kind of cheap and crappy." Richard Dinh, Apple's vice president of product design, said Apple could have launched sooner. He said he discussed a foldable with Ternus because rivals were already launching theirs, and Apple had a device with a similar top surface that he thought might have been good enough despite its flaws. Ternus told him, "you'll know when it's the right thing," which gave the team confidence to push boundaries in innovation and manufacturing.
Ternus also acknowledges that Apple does not do everything itself and that not everything it makes works right away. He said Screen Time was "good but not great" when he used it with his own children, and that updates have since improved it. "You can't do everything," he said. "So we kind of try to constrain ourselves to the stuff that matters most."
On AI, Ternus did not directly address perceptions that Apple lags rivals, but he argued that its privacy and ecosystem give it an advantage. He also believes people will keep wanting physical devices, saying, "I don't see a scenario where all of a sudden, our devices disappear."
Source: AppleInsider · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing