This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on September 9th, 2026. This piece was translated from Swedish by Claude. Some phrasing may differ from a human translation.

It’s time for Apple’s big launch event, with new products, high expectations – and an entirely new CEO. John Ternus has one problem above all to solve. And it demands radical change.

Will there be a foldable phone? How expensive will the iPhone 18 be? Will all the new gadgets be delayed because of the global component shortage?

Tonight John Ternus gives the first answers as Apple’s new CEO. But the most important change probably won’t show up on your iPhone.

To understand why, Tim Cook is almost as interesting as his successor.

Cook has just left the CEO seat, but he isn’t going far. He is changing offices while keeping a great deal of influence as the new chairman of the board. His pay says it plainly. It is roughly 84 times higher than his predecessor’s. The signal could not be clearer: expect continuity from Cook. This is not a ceremonial retirement post.

So what does the new CEO, John Ternus, actually have to play with?

Let’s start with what everyone will tune in to see tonight: the hardware. A foldable phone has been rumored for a long time, and it is the most likely launch. Ternus, previously the head of hardware, has worked on it – just as he did on every other phone and accessory Apple has shipped in recent years.

Apple is good at marketing and storytelling. They always make it seem as though their version of something is completely unlike the competition’s. But with foldable phones it is hard to see the angle. Both Samsung and Motorola have had equivalent products for years. It is a phone with more screen area – not a new product category in itself. It will also be expensive, because of the global shortage of computer memory.

That the foldable appears to be arriving right now is more coincidence than anything else. Projects like this take many years to develop. Every new hardware product landing over the next few years therefore carries both Cook’s and Ternus’s fingerprints.

The cycles for building something new are far too long for Ternus to have shaped anything meaningful yet. Probably not over the coming year either. He can steer how resources are prioritized across projects, but the broad strokes are already drawn. By him, admittedly, to a large extent.

On to the software. Apple offers an integrated whole that its customers have grown used to. Everything connects, from phone to computer to apps.

This is deliberate. If switching to Android feels like a hassle, that alone can be enough to keep Apple customers inside the ecosystem. And then they keep buying new phones, headphones and computers from Apple.

So it is highly unlikely that Ternus changes anything radically here. If anything, the trend runs the other way: deeper integration still, all the way down to the in-house chips. Apple’s software can exploit them to build services no one else can. That is a strength Ternus will almost certainly build on.

Then we come to the last point. The Achilles heel. As a member of Apple’s executive team for several years, Ternus has taken part in discussions about the company’s AI efforts. But it has not been his primary focus or his area of responsibility.

In fact, it is somewhat unclear who even owns AI inside the tech giant right now. The dedicated executive, John Giannandrea, has left, and the team working on the Siri voice assistant has been split up. Part of it sits with software chief Craig Federighi and part with services chief Eddy Cue. Several people on the Siri team were also recently laid off. It is a complete mess.

Ternus has to sort this out. And AI is the one area where Apple is likely to want real change. Anyone claiming that Apple’s low investment here reflects a different strategy cannot have talked to its employees. One of them described it as riding a bicycle and being overtaken by a rocket. That says a lot about the internal view.

The challenge is therefore twofold. Ternus has to keep everything that works intact. Tim Cook will likely be a great help there. But as CEO, Ternus also has to solve the AI question – the one Cook never cracked during his tenure.

What is the point of individual apps in an era when AI can order food, shop, or retrieve information for you? Yet the app paradigm is precisely what has held Apple’s entire offering together. This can turn existential fast.

So will there be a revolution at Apple? Probably not. Nobody wants one. But right now it does not look as though the AI question will be solved in-house. Perhaps Ternus concludes that an acquisition or a major partnership is what it takes to get into the game?

But the last time they opened the wallet properly was more than ten years ago, when they bought the headphone company Beats in 2014. So the approach is unusual for Apple – even if the cash pile is very deep. The means are there.

A move like that would at least create a local revolution in the AI market.

And put both Apple and Ternus on the map when it comes to AI.