Apple refuses the showcase race, and John Ternus defends apps’ survival against smart agents
Major tech companies are engaged in a feverish race to launch smart interfaces and models at a rapid pace, but the new leadership at Apple has chosen a different path based on deliberation and a refusal to chase superficial technical showmanship. In an extensive interview with journalist Steven Levy for Wired, Apple CEO John Ternus defended his company's position in the AI landscape, stating that he is fully comfortable with the standing the company holds today, and emphasizing that Cupertino will not release smart tools merely to prove its presence in the race.
The stance comes after two years in which the iPhone maker faced repeated criticism for lagging behind the AI wave, especially after the company postponed the launch of the most advanced version of its voice assistant Siri, which did not reach users' devices until the summer of this year. Although Ternus, who officially took over executive leadership in early September after a long tenure as an executive within the company, acknowledged that each side has its own view on the debate, he maintained a perspective that the real use of technology goes beyond adding promotional tags to products.
Ternus explained that Apple is fully determined to employ AI capabilities in its new products, but it sets a decisive criterion for how this employment is carried out:True success is achieved when the user does not have to wonder whether a feature stems from artificial intelligence or conventional programming.The core value in the company's calculations does not revolve around the type of algorithm used in the background, but around the final product's ability to win users' affection and attachment, which makes integrating models a matter of quiet design that serves the experience without drawing attention to the programming mechanism itself.
The conversation reached its peak when Levy confronted the CEO with a fundamental question about the future of Apple's entire ecosystem, and whether the rise of independent smart agents would threaten the traditional app model and render the App Store obsolete. Ternus's reply was striking; he acknowledged that relying on agents could make life easy and comfortable, but he quickly added thatthe creation and innovation of products remain a profoundly human and personal activity.The company is keen to practice it and is passionate about it. We at the editorial board see this answer as reflecting a strategic commitment to the app model, and a refusal to concede the disappearance of APIs that constitute the digital economy's lifeblood for the platform and its developers.
This approach carries direct and significant implications for anyone managing a tech product or leading a development team in the Gulf, Egypt, or the Levant. Over the past two years, banking, service institutions and startups in Riyadh, Dubai and Cairo have rushed to consider dismantling their digital interfaces in favor of complex automated agents, assuming the era of separate apps had passed. However, the continued commitment of the region's most widely used tech platform to protect the app model provides a clear advantage: focus your resources on refining your app and feeding it with invisible intelligence that improves service efficiency, rather than draining budgets on building flashy, short-lived agents. The difference here is made by reducing operational friction and smoothing the experience, not by flaunting generative engines.
These statements confirm that competition is not decided by the rapid release of models to the market, but by a solution's ability to blend naturally into daily practices. For the regional tech ecosystem that builds its solutions atop major operating systems, the practical lesson here is clear:Smart tools are a means to serve product quality, not an end in themselves.and staying power will belong to those who build reliable software that solves real problems and earns user loyalty over the long term.