John Ternus begins Apple CEO tenure with the foldable iPhone Duo

The foldable Duo is a fitting opening act. Ternus and five other Apple engineers filed a patent application involving foldable electronics in 2011, according to the profile. Apple then spent years working through problems that dogged early foldable phones, including fragile construction and a visible crease.

The finished device is described as a passport-size phone that opens into a tablet. Apple says a custom polymer surface and a hinge containing more than 100 precision components make the crease difficult to detect. TIME also highlights a display engine for transitions between the outer and inner screens, side-by-side web browsing and a dual-camera setup that can show a caller and the scene in front of them during FaceTime.

Those details do not guarantee a hit. TIME notes that prospective buyers may balk at a price above $2,000. The profile points to the unreleased Apple Car and Vision Pro's low sales as reminders that ambitious hardware does not automatically find a broad audience.

Apple's AI bet stays tied to devices

The profile places Ternus's hardware focus against a larger strategic problem. Several rivals lead the race to build more capable AI systems, while Apple is trying to make those systems useful through its own products.

TIME reports that a redesigned Siri launched in the United States in September. It is powered by an Apple model that uses Google's Gemini technology, an arrangement that gives Apple outside help while it develops its own AI products.

Ternus and other Apple executives argue that their goal is not to chase every frontier-model milestone. They describe Apple's approach as personalized and privacy-preserving, with an emphasis on features ordinary customers will use. That is the company's position, not proof that its strategy will close the capability gap TIME describes between Apple and leading AI labs.

For Ternus, the case still comes back to hardware. Even if another company builds superintelligence, he argues, people will need devices to talk, view photos and capture the world around them. "People want physical things," he told TIME.

Duo is therefore an early test of two ideas: that Apple's design discipline can justify a premium price, and that advanced AI will make its hardware more useful rather than make those devices disappear.