One day after Apple confirmed that hardware chief John Ternus would succeed Tim Cook, the incoming CEO stood in front of staff with a claim worthy of the Steve Jobs Theater he delivered it in.
“We are about to change the world once again,” Ternus told employees at an all-hands meeting on Tuesday, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. He called Apple’s pipeline an “incredible road map,” and said this is “the most exciting time to be building products and services at Apple in my entire career.”
Ternus, currently Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering, officially takes over from Tim Cook on 1 September 2026. The two will share the summer on a handover, with Cook moving to Executive Chairman while Ternus joins Apple’s board.
On the surface, this was standard CEO-transition hype. But coming from the engineer credited with the iPhone Air, the M-series Mac transition, and every AirPods generation since 2016, the “road map” line is the one analysts are picking apart.
The near-term road map: a foldable and an iPhone Ultra
Ternus inherits the company just in time for its September event, which 9to5Mac reports could include at least ten new products. The headline slot belongs to the long-teased iPhone Ultra (sometimes called the iPhone Fold), Apple’s first foldable. Leaks point to a book-style design with a 5.3-inch outer display opening into a 7.6-inch interior panel, roughly the footprint of an iPad mini. Apple has reportedly spent years engineering a near-invisible crease, a fight Samsung and Huawei still have not fully won.
Alongside it: the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max with under-display Face ID, a second-generation iPhone Air, and refreshes of the Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4.
Expect the pricing shock to be real. Apple’s iPhone 17 Pro Max already sells at some Nairobi shops for north of KES 190,000. A first-generation foldable from Apple will not be cheap, and the company almost never enters a category at a discount.
AirPods, Home, and the AI push Ternus actually cares about
Ternus said “AI is going to create almost unlimited potential” for Apple’s products. That pairs with separate Bloomberg reporting that he has already begun re-tooling Apple’s internal operations around AI. Apple is late to the generative AI race, and everyone inside Cupertino knows it.
The next concrete proof points are reportedly a new high-end AirPods Pro with infrared cameras that feed visual data to a rebuilt Siri; a smart home hub sometimes called HomePad, plus refreshed Apple TV 4K and HomePod models; and a re-engineered Siri based in part on a custom Google Gemini model, expected to land with iOS 27.
The big speculative bet: Apple smart glasses
The most interesting thing in Ternus’s internal speech may be what he did not name. Bloomberg has reported that Apple is testing four frame designs for its first pair of smart glasses, using acetate rather than plastic, with a custom N401 chip derived from Apple Watch silicon.
The first version will reportedly be display-free. Think audio, cameras, Siri, live translation, and visual intelligence. It is a direct swing at Meta’s Ray-Ban line, which sold more than seven million units in 2025 alone. A public unveiling is rumoured for late 2026 or early 2027, with sales starting in 2027.
If Ternus really wants to “change the world again,” glasses are the most obvious hill to plant that flag on. The Vision Pro, the Cook era’s moonshot, has struggled commercially since its 2024 launch at a starting price of USD 3,499 (roughly KES 450,000 at current rates). A cheaper, phone-tethered pair of AI glasses with Apple’s build quality and distribution could do to Meta what the iPhone did to BlackBerry. Or it could flop, as Google Glass did. Ternus will own that outcome.
Reading between the hype
CEOs say things like “about to change the world” because they have to. Morale during a handover is fragile. But Ternus has built a reputation inside Apple as a product engineer, not a showman. When he flags AI as “unlimited potential,” it reads less like marketing copy and more like a signal to shareholders and staff that the slow-Siri era is ending.
The real tell arrives in September. If iPhone Ultra ships as advertised, if AirPods become a genuine AI device, and if the smart glasses preview is as polished as Apple’s reputation demands, Ternus gets to keep the big claims. If not, his first keynote will age very quickly.
