Will Jony Ive and Sam Altman’s new partnership dethrone Apple? A lot of people seem to think that in a battle of OpenAI vs. Apple, the iPhone maker is on borrowed time.
Looking at social media, the hype about OpenAI’s acquisition of Ive’s startup io is off the charts. Many pundits predict doom for Apple, which is already widely assumed to be woefully behind in AI. Apple’s stock took a big dive on the news of OpenAI’s acquisition of Ive’s secret company Wednesday.
But I highly doubt that Ive and Altman will topple Apple from its throne. Apple still has massive advantages — and they’re perhaps unassailable. Here’s why.
Jony Ive: iPhone killer?
In their big announcement video, Jony Ive and Sam Altman revealed almost nothing, except that they’ve cooked up some prototype products (plural), they’ve been working on them for two years, and they’ll reveal more next year.
I’ll bet that Jony Ive’s future suite of AI products looks and behaves quite a lot like Apple’s current crop of smart products, with something like Humane’s discontinued Ai Pin thrown in — with ChatGPT front and center.
It seems clear that OpenAI is trying to avoid Meta’s current conundrum. Right now, Mark Zuckerberg’s company wholly relies on Apple and Android to distribute Meta’s main products: Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and so on. He can’t fully control his company’s own destiny.
I’m sure Zuckerberg would love his own Meta-branded smartphone to run Facebook on — free of privacy-focused meddling by goody-goodies like Apple CEO Tim Cook, who severely curtailed Facebook’s abilities to track users.
This is why Meta is desperately racing to develop what it thinks is the next generation of smart hardware: AR glasses and headsets.
It’s all about access and distribution.
OpenAI vs. Apple: What will io’s suite of smart devices do?
When you shout out to your smart speaker, Ive and Altman want ChatGPT to answer, and serve as the middleman for whatever holidays you book or products you order. And the best way to ensure that is to own the hardware.
Like Apple co-founder Steve Jobs famously said: “We want to own the primary technology in everything we do.”
For AI products, that’s going to be the hardware it runs on. The last thing Ive and Altman want is for ChatGPT to be just another app.
But why an acquisition? OpenAI and io are already partners.
Presumably, Ive’s team at io already cooked up promising prototypes — and Altman wants to seize control of them.
Why io must develop a smartphone, plus other devices
It seems clear that there’s huge potential for products that act like a human assistant: an AI that you speak to in natural language, that understands the context of your request, and can execute tasks for you like a capable human assistant would.
Google is already going down this path. Just this week at its Google I/O event, the company demoed how it’s building its Gemini AI into Android and Chrome.
I bet the hardware that io’s assistant runs on will resemble Apple’s current lineup of smart devices (plus maybe a wearable that might look and work a lot like Humane’s now-discontinued Ai Pin):
- A smartphone (primary interface: ChatGPT)
- A tablet (primary interface: ChatGPT again)
- Wearables (watch, pin or necklace)
- Headphones or earbuds (like the earpiece in the movie “Her”)
- Smart speakers and a home hub with a screen
On this list, AI-powered headphones or earbuds seem the most likely, at least initially. A smartphone and tablet seem the least likely: The design, engineering and distribution challenges are phenomenal, even if Ive and Altman get everything right.
However, developing some kind of smartphone seems absolutely essential in the long run. It’s like the iPod in the era of mobiles, before the iPhone came along. For a time, people carried both an iPod and a phone, but it was inevitable the two devices would merge.
Ive and Altman might be working on something like the Humane Ai Pin — a portable, screenless device that tracks what you say and do. But even if they crack it, and make the greatest, craziest ChatGPT gadget imaginable, people will still probably carry a smartphone.
Why the smartphone is here to stay
I think the smartphone is here to stay. It already joined the pantheon of all-time great form factors. Like the laptop, whose basic design is more than 40 years old, the smartphone will endure for decades, even if better, smarter devices come along. People will still want portable screens to watch movies, to videoconference, to look at photos and to read.
Even Ive and Altman themselves don’t think they will kill the smartphone — at least not immediately.
“In the same way that the smartphone didn’t make the laptop go away, I don’t think our first thing is going to make the smartphone go away,” Altman said in an interview. “It is a totally new kind of thing.”
OpenAI vs. Apple: Cupertino’s daunting advantages
Even if Ive and Altman successfully make a suite of great AI devices, including a smartphone to challenge the iPhone, Apple still maintains several daunting advantages.
Apple already has massive distribution: more than 2.35 billion active users worldwide. The company possesses almost unlimited resources, tons of talent, capable leadership, a great brand and, perhaps most important, a five-decade history of making complex technology easy and accessible to everyone.
Right now, Apple is indeed a laggard in the generative AI space (although it’s reportedly catching up). To buy itself time, Cupertino integrated ChatGPT into Apple Intelligence to answer the most advanced queries.
But I see no reason why Apple couldn’t eventually develop its own smarter Siri, and it’s reportedly almost there. Apple might be behind, but I don’t think there’s any reason it can’t catch up. In an age when all the major technology players have their own advanced AIs, there’s no reason why Apple should be left out. Heck, it could probably just buy DeepSeek for pennies on the renminbi.
Jony Ive and Sam Altman aren’t to be underestimated, but I smell a lot of AI hype. And I wouldn’t bet against Apple.
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander is an expert on:
Apple and Apple history
Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Tim Cook and Apple leadership
Apple community
iPhone and iOS
iPad and iPadOS
Mac and macOS
Apple Watch and watchOS
Apple TV and tvOS
AirPods
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
