{"id":498823,"date":"2026-03-27T19:51:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T19:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/498823\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T19:51:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T19:51:09","slug":"apple-still-plans-to-sell-iphones-when-it-turns-100","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/498823\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple Still Plans to Sell iPhones When It Turns 100"},"content":{"rendered":"

Apple is allergic to nostalgia. In 2008, when the Macintosh was about to turn 25, I mentioned it to Steve Jobs<\/a> and he instantly shut down the discussion. \u201cIf you look backward in this business, you’ll be crushed,\u201d he told me icily. \u201cYou have to look forward.\u201d Now that Apple\u2019s 50th anniversary looms, however, the company is begrudgingly engaging in a series of concerts and commemorations<\/a>, and we\u2019re being blitzed by books<\/a>, articles<\/a>, and oral histories<\/a> of the company\u2019s early years.<\/p>\n

Rather than join the crowded trek down memory lane, I asked Apple to do what Jobs suggested\u2014look forward. What does Apple want to happen in its next 50 years?<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, I sat down with two senior executives to discuss just that. One was Apple\u2019s SVP of worldwide marketing, Greg Joswiak, aka Joz, who joined Apple in 1986. The other was SVP of hardware engineering John Ternus, the putative front-runner<\/a> to succeed Tim Cook as Apple\u2019s CEO. He\u2019s been with the company for 25 years. I also chatted briefly with Cook himself, just before Alicia Keys sang in front of the Apple Store at Grand Central Station\u2014the beginning of Apple\u2019s reluctantly splashy anniversary celebration.<\/p>\n

After acknowledging Apple\u2019s uncharacteristic party mode\u2014\u201cthis is too special\u201d to ignore, admits Joswiak\u2014we tackle the future. After launching the personal computer revolution, Apple managed to navigate multiple inflection points. With the Macintosh, it mastered the graphical user interface that makes computers friendlier to use. The iMac positioned the company for the internet boom. And, of course, despite a late start, Apple absolutely owned the mobile era with the iPhone. These products have remained vital\u2013just this month Apple released the buzzy new Macbook Neo, the latest version of a 42-year-old franchise. But now the future belongs to AI\u2014a category where Apple seems to have whiffed<\/a> so far.<\/p>\n

These gentlemen disagree. Apple, they insist, is already at the forefront of the AI revolution. \u201cWe were doing AI before we called it AI!\u201d says Joswiak. \u201cEvery single great chatbot works great on our products.\u201d Ternus argues that even if Apple didn’t take the lead in developing AI technology, it would still benefit. \u201cOur products are the best place people will use the existing AI tools.\u201d<\/p>\n

I push them on this. After all, if we’re looking decades into the future, shouldn\u2019t we assume that we\u2019ll move past our current computing paradigms and adopt something that specifically caters to the wonders of AI? That\u2019s what Apple\u2019s former design guru Jony Ive seems to be doing with OpenAI<\/a>. They\u2019re only one entrant in the race<\/a> to come up with new kinds of hardware devices built specifically for AI. \u201cI would assume you want one of them to be an Apple device, right?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

The answer seemed to be not necessarily. \u201cLet\u2019s not lose sight of the fact that nothing you just said is incompatible with the iPhone,\u201d Joswiak says. \u201cThe iPhone is not going to go away. iPhone is going to serve a very central role in any of those things you\u2019re talking about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wait\u2014Apple thinks that people will be using the iPhone 50 years from now?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s hard to imagine not,\u201d says Joswiak. \u201cThat’s where everybody else struggles. They don’t have an iPhone, and so they\u2019re scrambling for what to do. A lot of what they talk about ends up being accessories for an iPhone. We\u2019re not going to get into future road maps, but I will tell you, iPhones are not going anywhere.\u201d (Despite this bravado, I will be shocked if Apple does not come out with some AI-powered gadget in the coming years.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Apple is allergic to nostalgia. In 2008, when the Macintosh was about to turn 25, I mentioned it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":498824,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[304,733,43460,641,11814,2306,36771,86,29128,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-498823","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mobile","8":"tag-apple","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-backchannel-nl","11":"tag-iphone","12":"tag-mac","13":"tag-mobile","14":"tag-steve-jobs","15":"tag-technology","16":"tag-tim-cook","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom","19":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=498823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/498824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}