Ternus names the iPhone as the ideal AI device in his first keynote as Apple CEO

Unboxing one starts with an iPhone, because the hub pairs with a phone for setup, and the interface is a mashup of iOS, tvOS and watchOS ^[7]. The feature Apple is selling on it is Siri AI, which arrived this month in iOS 27 with a waitlist attached ^[11]. Until a buyer clears that queue, the main reason to own the thing is unavailable to them ^[11].

The keynote and the shipping product answer different questions. Ternus asked the audience to imagine an AI device that would need an always-on connection, a decent display, good cameras and microphones, long battery life and easy interoperability. That device already exists, he said, and it is the iPhone ^[1][2]. Gurman writes that Ternus is playing his only hand: OpenAI is close to launching an AI-first computer, and Apple has no revolutionary new mobile product. The current iPhones are the best showcase it has for Siri AI ^[4]. The rest of the roadmap points back to the phone too, with smart glasses expected next year and camera-equipped AirPods reported for 2027 ^[20].

Apple wanted to introduce this hub as far back as 2024 and could not until the assistant was good enough ^[9]. TNW reported that the hardware had been finished for months and that Siri was the hold-up ^[10]. Software set the release window ^[22]. Part of that software is rented: Siri AI was rebuilt on a custom Google Gemini model that reportedly costs Apple around $1bn a year ^[12].

The other Apple story of the week is smaller than the aggregate coverage made it look. Gurman reports a handful of Fitness+ staff cut, mainly on the audio side behind Time to Walk and Time to Run, with new audio content appearing less often and not stopping ^[16]. AppleInsider argues the cuts are being over-read ^[18]. The round follows August cuts across the Siri, Vision Pro immersive video and gaming teams, which Gurman calls increasingly common ^[19]. TNW's characterisation is that Apple is trimming content production in the places where an assistant might produce the content instead ^[23].

A household deciding whether one of these belongs on the kitchen wall has two things to weigh. The hub needs an iPhone in the house to pair with, and the things a buyer would want to ask it in the first week are the things that need Siri AI ^[7][11]. Then there is the market. Apple said during WWDC week that Siri AI would not launch in the European Union while its negotiations with the European Commission over the Digital Markets Act were unresolved, and TNW has not established whether that position has changed ^[13]. A buyer who already runs Claude or another third-party agent has somewhere to put it, since Google Home has opened to those agents. Apple's hub runs Siri only ^[15].