John Ternus, an Apple executive who has been with the company for over a decade, made his first appearance as CEO at the annual Apple product launch event on Wednesday. He promoted new AI tools along with a foldable iPhone.
When folded, the iPhone Duo has a larger screen than either the Pro or Max models. The pre-taped presentation focused on entertainment content, gaming and other aspects of the iPhone Duo. Netflix was also mentioned during this event.
Pre-orders for the Duo priced at $1999 will begin on October 16 and retail sales should start within a week.
Ternus stated that the Duo is “reflective of what can be achieved when our best teams come together.” He said it was initially inspired by the idea that “a bigger display could open up new possibilities,” but “at the time you want something small enough to still fit into your pocket and palm.”
When folded, the Duo is about the size of a passport. Ternus stated that “others have made foldables which feel just like two phones stuck together awkwardly.” These devices, such as those from Samsung and Huawei, end up having a rectangular screen with black bars that appear when video is played.
About one third of the event was taken up by the 25-minute tour that covered all aspects of the Duo.
Ternus seemed to acknowledge the chatter that has been going on for years about Apple’s AI strategy, both in Wall Street and the tech world. Apple, unlike its large rivals Meta and Microsoft, has not fully embraced AI. They have expressed concerns over customer privacy. Apple Intelligence is a tool that integrates AI across all of its products.
Ternus stated that trust is only a good thing when you can no longer control your own data. Apple Intelligence is always running on the device. Private cloud computing extends the same privacy protection when greater capabilities are needed. This ensures that no one – including Apple – will be able to access your data. “It’s your personal intelligence which is actually private.”
He continued that the iPhone “sits in the heart of an incredible ecosystem of features and experiences which work seamlessly with the other products you use.”
Ternus replaced Tim Cook in September, several months after it was announced without drama. Cook, now EVP on the Apple board of directors, was appointed CEO in 2011. He received praise for his efforts to stabilize and grow the company following the death of Jobs. Cook and Ternus both rose to the position of CEO after many years as executives at Apple.
Apple’s events always draw global attention. However, Apple adopted years ago a prerecorded approach in place of the live presentations that Steve Jobs pioneered during his long tenure as CEO. This format was a necessity for Covid, and it is still in use today because of its ability to avoid any glitches or rough spots. Ternus was present to meet attendees at Cupertino’s company headquarters.
Ternus, in his recorded comments, recalled the Jobs era, when the iPhone was first introduced as a personal communication “hub”. Ternus asked, “If you had to design the perfect version of this hub, what would you have done?” Ternus explained that you’d want a device you can carry with you at all times, something you feel is deeply personal and able bring you intelligence in the most critical moments.
He teased the entire showcase by saying it would include innovations ranging from “Siri becoming more powerful and personal on all your Apple devices, to meaningful insights about health with Apple Watch.” AirPods, including powerful features such as live translation and much more.
He added that the iPhone 18 “brings together powerful AI capabilities with your own personal context, on a device you carry with you at all times.” Today, we will take this experience even further by introducing the new iPhone.

Apple’s new CEO John Ternus used the opening of the company’s Surprise and Shine event Wednesday to make its AI strategy clear: the iPhone is already the best AI device out there, and Apple cares more about data privacy than its rivals.
The comments come as Ternus takes the reins at Apple from Tim Cook, who is now executive chairman, and offer a clear picture of how the company plans to compete in the AI era. Instead of building new hardware for AI, Apple wants to make the iPhone the central way consumers interact with the new technology.
During his introduction at the Cupertino event, Ternus described the ideal AI device, or “intelligent personal hub,” as he called it. He said such a hub would have a broad understanding of a user’s personal context, always be with them, and have both a powerful processor capable of running AI models on-device and an internet connection to access models in the cloud.
The device would also have a large display, high-quality cameras and microphones so it could see and hear the world around it, along with long battery life, Ternus continued.
Plus, “you’d want it to be super easy to use without a big learning curve. And finally, you’d want it to work seamlessly with your other devices, apps, and services, so it feels like one integrated experience,” he said.
“In other words, you would arrive at something remarkably familiar, because there’s no product in the world better designed to be your intelligent personal hub than iPhone,” Ternus said.
Ternus also emphasized how Apple cares more about data privacy, adding that “others see [users’ personal] data as something to collect and store.” It was one of the sharper statements Apple has made about how it intends to differentiate its AI platform from the competition.
“…Honestly, trust only goes so far when your data is no longer yours to control; that’s why Apple Intelligence runs on device whenever it can,” Ternus concluded.

Stocks and bonds both fell sharply on Wednesday, after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent failed to curb what he termed “fever”.
The Treasury Department announced at 11 am ET that it would repurchase $6 billion worth of 10- to 20-year government bonds, in the hope that fewer bonds on the market will drive up demand and push down rates or yields. The Treasury Department made an announcement at 11 a.m. ET that they would be repurchasing $6 billion in government bonds with ten- to twenty-year maturities. They hoped that the fewer bonds available on the market, would increase demand and push down the rates or yields that had risen to unprecedented levels.
That’s not exactly what happened. The announcement caused a sharp rise in the yields of most Treasury bonds. The yield on the 10-year Treasury bond soared up to 4.85%, reaching its highest since November 2023. Bond yields on 20-year and 30-year bonds soared up to 5.3%. As Treasuries decline, the yields on those bonds rise.
At midday, the Nasdaq Composite fell 0.8%. This is because it’s sensitive to interest rate changes due to its high concentration of large tech companies. S&P500 fell 0.6%.
Wall Street’s reaction shows the limitations of Bessent’s claims that he has power over the markets. The Trump administration has also run out of options to exert influence over the U.S. economic system, including gas prices, bond yields and retaliatory duties.
Since the beginning of this year, yields have steadily increased. They began to rise in late July when Kevin Warsh, the newly appointed Federal Reserve Chairman of President Donald Trump, gave a presser at which he did not sound completely committed to using Fed tools to curb inflation.
This spooked the bond market, as inflation rose due to the Iran War and Trump’s policies on trade.
Bessent, who appeared to be suggesting that the rise in yields was mainly due to the “financial media,” said that “there was like this fever” building on the bond market.
He told Breitbart that “they get hold of a story, and I wanted to make things more factual.”
My job is to bring things back to equilibrium.
Investors see this Bessent outlook, where the government is urged to take action in order to maintain low yields, as a trap that could be set for Treasury Department.
In an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal in August, Stanley Druckenmiller, a legendary investor, wrote: “Once the markets think Treasury will defend a certain price, each rise in yields is a test to see if the government can stand firm. The operations have to grow in order for them survive these tests.”
Peter Boockvar referred back to the article on Wednesday. He wrote, “You’ll be sure that the market will continue ‘testing’ the official resolve if the fundamentals justify it.”
Investors and economists alike believe that the fundamentals warrant it.
The U.S. debt reached a new record of $40 trillion in just a few weeks. It was obvious for many years that the U.S. national debt would reach this massive amount. However, it still brought attention to the fact that America relies on other countries to purchase its debt.
Diane Swonk wrote recently that “Sovereign Debt around the World has Exploded and We’re All Competing for the Same Pool” of Investors.
She told NBC News that August, “You have a large debt but not as many customers.”
Bessent acknowledged this concern last month when he said he and the White House were working on “a fiscal consolidation package” that they would be discussing more about in the weeks or months to come.
Details of the plan have yet to be shared by Treasury Department and OMB.
Bessent, in an interview earlier this week, did not seem particularly worried about the ballooning American debt.
He said that the U.S. Bond Market has had the highest performance in the bond markets of the world ever since the election of President Trump.
If people were concerned about the U.S. or defaulting on its debt, they would sell U.S. Bonds and buy German or Japanese Bonds. “But the U.S. bond market was performing better.”
Bessent’s recent active market interventions include the Treasury Buyback announced on Wednesday.
Treasury supported the Japanese yen in early August.
Bessent’s role as a supporter of the Japanese yen is unusual. It was inspired by fears that Japan, one of the biggest holders of U.S. Treasury Bonds, might sell its bonds to generate cash for its currency.
A large number of Treasury Bonds sold will typically increase yields. The White House protected itself from a large T-bill sale by helping Japan stabilize its currency.
Bessent, a currency trader earlier this week warned not to try his will.
Bessent told SMU, “I’m the house.” When we intervene in the Japanese yen I can tell what Bank of Japan, Japanese policymakers, and the Japanese will do.
He said, “You are welcome to bet on me.”

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An Anthropic research scientist has quit over concerns that the unrestrained creation of AI models capable of improving themselves will ultimately kill us all.
Jacob Coxon is a researcher, who in an evening social media post said that he had spent the past three years at OpenAI, and Anthropic working on research for pre-training. He accused both firms of not acting responsibly. The researcher said that the developers of this technology are “honestly convinced” it will kill everyone by 2020.
Coxon, in a post on X: “They’re racing to an ever-improving self-improvement superintelligence while gambling with our life,” wrote.
Coxon is part of a chorus within the AI industry that calls for a halt in AI development until it can learn to better itself. This would, according to many people, be a major milestone which would allow AI autonomy.
After several instances of AI agents escaping their sandboxes, and gaining access to the internet in general, policymakers and insiders are putting pressure on AI developers to reduce development.
Researchers say that the most severe breach so far was the OpenAI system’s intrusion into Hugging Face servers. This event is still poorly understood by researchers, in part due to the lack of independent investigation. Anthropic AI agents were also able to reach systems beyond their testing environments around the same time due to misconfigurations made by third parties during safety assessments.
Anthropic didn’t immediately respond to a comment request on the resignation.
Coxon continues his warning and calls to action in the following paragraphs:
Don’t underestimate this technology. Soon, these superhuman machines will be able to hack into anything and revolutionize any area overnight. They’ll also have real power and resources. The progress has been impressive in all of these areas, and it isn’t slowing down.
AI developers believe it will kill everyone by the year 2020. It’s not just a publicity stunt. In fact, I’ve heard senior executives and researchers feigning sanity in public while privately expressing fear. This level of risk is unique to human activities.
Many at OpenAI haven’t fully internalized that the stakes are civilizational. Anthropic is well aware of the risks, but it’s in a rush to be the first. They believe that no one will take responsibility, and so must act themselves.
It is hubristic to accept this race, and enter the “endgame”, from Slack of a private business. To speedrun an alignment, you must be utterly confident that no other options exist.
I’m optimistic about the possibility of coordination. The Hugging Face Attack and other warning shots have helped make pacing arrangements between U.S. laboratories more feasible. I do not feel that we are on the right track to stop a race around the world, and this may mean costly measures such as temporary restrictions on model capability.
You should consider how the future will feel if you’re a laboratory researcher. Would you like to start a superintelligent RL without a thorough understanding of the mind behind it? You should put your head on the pillow because it’s “happening anyway”. Or, take this opportunity to demand different conditions.
Evan Hubinger is Coxon’s colleague at Anthropic. He shared the same sentiment. His team “believes AI will kill us all!” Hubinger tempered this argument by saying that the probability of AI killing humans within the decade was greater than 10%. Anthropic admitted they don’t have a “plan to solve the alignment for superintelligence” and “are not on track.”
Guidelight AI Standards (an organization that encourages safe AI frontier development practices) published a report recently that found few top AI laboratories had developed containment plans to shut down AI which tries subverting human control.
Hubinger said in his posts on social media that current models pose a low risk, but “superintelligence” resulting from “recursive improvement,” is “happening quicker than we expected.”
The AI industry is divided on whether this self-improvement can lead to the human race’s demise or whether it can help solve the problems that AI advocates claim it could one day eradicate, such as cancer, climate changes, and world peace.
Anthropic, OpenAI and other companies are also actively working to achieve recursive improvement. In recent months a wave of startups have launched with fat checks and pedigreed founding teams to become the first ones to reach this goal. In February, Ricursive Intelligence attracted $335 million with a valuation of $4 billion; three months after that Recursive superintelligence attracted $650 million and a valuation of $4 billion; last month former Google DeepMind employee Jeff Dean founded Discovery Loop.
“The most likely point at which we will lose control is when an AI system can create a new AI that builds a next-generation AI. This AI can then build a stronger AI. It’s hard to shut down that system before it is too late.
Recently, legislation was introduced in the U.S. as well as the U.K. that bans the deployment and development of superintelligence. The Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act was introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, last week. On Tuesday, British Labour MEP Alex Sobel presented the Artificial Superintelligence Security Bill to Parliament.
Leahy who advised both bills noted that U.K. legislation pointed to self-improvement recursive as an early precursor of superintelligence which “must be controlled and prevented.”
Leahy stated that “superintelligence is not an instrument.” It’s not even a weapon. “It’s an enemy.”