We are at more than just an inflection point; we’re at a moment where the global technological order may be about to fundamentally change. Don’t think about this just as an “iPhone moment” but as an “Apple acquires NeXT” event. A NeXTus event if you will. When Apple acquired NeXT, it kicked off a series of technological shifts that were completely unforeseen. It led to products like iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch and technologies like Cocoa, Cocoa Touch, AirPort, Apple Silicon, among countless others. That acquisition fundamentally altered the course of human history and changed the technological landscape. I believe that the events of last week may have done the same.

The Earthquake in Mountain View

I was sitting at Google I/O (thanks Google for inviting me!) with some fellow creators and friends when the news that OpenAI was acquiring Jony Ive’s startup io products broke. Despite being in California and there not being an actual earthquake, you could feel the ground move in that moment. I have already been a firm believer that we are experiencing what folks did in the late 70s and early 80s at the dawn of the personal computer revolution. Only this time it isn’t Steve Jobs and Bill Gates leading the charge, it’s Sam Altman and Demis Hassabis of Google Deepmind.

Google put on an amazing show this year, delivering AI products that already work and new hardware that I was able to actually try for myself. Google released new models that can create incredible output, agentic tools like Gemini and Project Mariner in Chrome I am right now running on my Mac, AR glasses powered by Gemini that I got to go hands-on with, and ideas like personal context that integrate with all of their apps to personalize responses. It felt like the opposite of what we have experienced with Apple Intelligence over the past twelve months. I had already been feeling a sense of dread for Apple, but now it is mixed with excitement about the latest Google announcements. Google is not just showing off amazing ideas, they are shipping some of the best products in the industry. While having drinks with my former colleagues from The Verge, I mentioned that the day felt like a “funeral for Apple” simply because I cannot imagine them being anywhere near able to ship products that come close to what I saw in Mountain View. Despite the certain hyperbole, there was clearly a shift afoot. After being beaten senseless throughout the day by Google, the next day Jony Ive landed the knockout punch. The man who designed the iPhone, Steve Jobs’ “spiritual partner,” has declared his previous creations to be “legacy products.” He went so far as to say that the past 30 years of work, which include the iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch, have led to what he is now building with Sam Altman. That is extraordinary and as a lifelong Apple acolyte it is the clearest signal that the river might truly be in danger of drying up.

The Fall of a Titan

The stewards of Steve Jobs’ baby appear to have gotten too comfortable, becoming so obsessed with services revenue, enacting brutal fights with the developers they used to cherish, and having been distracted by products that either can’t get to market or arrive not fully cooked. That is a terrifying combination of factors for an Apple fan, only compounded by what was the inevitable war that Tim Cook now has to wage with the White House over manufacturing.

Another person that has a vested interest in this new venture is Steve Jobs’ widow. Laurene Powell Jobs invested in the new company recently acquired by OpenAI through her firm Emerson Collective. That means that Sam Altman and OpenAI have the backing of both Steve Jobs’ life partner and spiritual partner. They have amassed a fleet of former Apple designers and builders who helped shape the world-changing products we all know and love, like Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey, and Tang Tan. They are thinking big, being imaginative, thoughtful, and clearly have a decisive vision for the way forward. This is as opposed to Apple, which again, appears focused on squeezing as much money out of its existing customers as it can. A close friend whose opinion I deeply value texted me the other day saying “How does it feel for Apple’s best product to be a tv show now?” That stung, but you can argue that at this current moment it is largely true. It is also indicative of the services shift. No one is talking about the latest iPhone or iPad, but about Severance and The Studio. They may be able to finance top tier content, but can they make the devices of the future anymore? They can design beautiful operating systems and sleek hardware but that won’t matter without AI. Well, it won’t matter to them. They like to own the whole widget. Apple makes the best computers but now it does so for other developers’ software. They seem focused on the wrong things at the worst possible time. Services required Apple to make a small philosophical shift, but AI and this current moment require a large structural one. A brain transplant if you will.

The iPhone may rule the US market now, there is no denying their supremacy when it comes to market share and on hand cash, but that can’t last forever. It feels like they are coasting and almost lost. I feel a sense of distrust towards Apple after the Apple Intelligence debacle. They promised us a future they seemingly cannot deliver. They never shipped their car. Vision Pro may be packed with incredible technology, but it has an extraordinary amount of shortcomings from its physical weight to its pricing strategy to the overall positioning. All of this has led to a vibe shift. Of course you will always have young fanboys, blinded by what they perceive as a love for the brand which is actually a cultish loyalty to the company. I once was one of those young fanboys, so I speak from experience. I don’t want to quibble too much about it, but there is a big difference between loving Apple the brand and Apple the company. Loving the brand is believing in Steve’s vision whereas loving the company too often descends into creating excuses for every decision, good or bad. Believing in the brand means believing in human-centric design, taste, wonder, and invention. The company, lately, represents margin maximization and defensive posturing. You can see the overall vibe shift that I mentioned earlier on display with John Gruber’s “Something is Rotten in the State of Cupertino” and John Siracusa’s “Apple Turnaround” pieces. Both are absolutely essential reads.

A New Creative Covenant

The natural path now for lovers of the Apple brand and of Steve’s vision is no longer to obsess over what version of Apple exists now, it is to help envision a new future with what might be a new brand that cares about the ideals that Apple seems to be increasingly abandoning. I think we are about to see Jony Ive shape Sam Altman’s vision into something beautiful and human. Something that as Altman said Steve would be “damn proud” of what Jony is cooking. It is worth noting that Jobs and Altman did in fact meet many years ago during Sam’s Loopt era and it would be hard to find anyone else that understood Steve’s product sensibilities better than Jony, who he obviously has spent quite a bit of time with. The announcement of the acquisition essentially signaled that Jony believes Apple may begin to fade into history, that Sam is the closest thing to a modern Steve Jobs, and that his best work is still ahead of him. You can argue until you’re red in the face about the butterfly keyboard, the 18K gold Apple Watch, a mouse that charges upside down, and a pencil that sticks out of the iPad. But none of that matters when they’re mere blips on his resume. When Tim Cook granted Jony what was essentially complete control over Apple’s product strategy he inadvertently hurt their lineup. By giving him more freedom he may have actually stifled him. The best work doesn’t come from perfect executive harmony and endless options, it comes from competition and from creatively working inside of constraints. He was also lacking an editor, no one left at Apple quite has Steve’s taste or sensibilities, as much as I hate to admit it after years of telling myself that they did. Though there’s no doubt they’re trying their best to attempt to replicate it. If Sam Altman is the closest person to a next generation Steve Jobs, as Jony seems to believe, then he now has the kind of editor he needs. He has the creative partnership and clout needed to bring about more iPhone caliber products.

The Paths Forward

Given all of this, can Apple reposition itself? How can it get back on track? Apple was already arguably three years behind. After Google I/O and this acquisition they may be five. This could ultimately pan out differently than previous Apple products, where they traditionally haven’t been the first but the best. The old rulebook may not apply here. Google was able to catch up because they invented the transformer technology but simply hadn’t productized it as quickly as OpenAI. Apple effectively had nothing and the situation was made worse by executive squabbles and corporate dynamics. What Apple needs to do is chart an entirely new course. The obvious answer to Apple’s problem has been for them to make a significant acquisition, whether that be Anthropic, Mistral, Thinking Machines Lab, or Safe Superintelligence. While there is certainly some merit to the idea of doing this, particularly when it comes to giving some new product people who really understand AI some autonomy at scale, it just might not be the right move. Yes, Apple needs fresh thinkers, new blood that grew up admiring people like Steve, and folks who really understand the gravity of the moment. But I don’t know if they are quite ready for that. Apple clearly didn’t see the shift coming, but how they ultimately respond to that failure is what will actually define them for the next several decades.

So we have established that it is unlikely that the Cupertino company would acquire an existing organization, especially when it comes to Anthropic which is a public benefit corporation and has the baggage of massive investments from Amazon and Google. I also just don’t think that they want to integrate a giant external organization or spend more money than they ever have in a single endeavor.

I would argue they need to do something unusual, dare I say uncomfortable. I see two different paths: the first is to deepen their partnership with Google, let Gemini rip across the iPhone, and in doing so pair the two biggest phone companies in the world together to fight the coming onslaught of AI gadgets. The second path is simply openness. Apple is notorious for being locked down, a walled garden as many like to say. What if they created new tools for model builders to integrate their products into iOS at a deep level? They could let third party apps take full advantage of app intents, shortcuts, and other built-in tools. Default app selection has already been a massive improvement to iOS, but what if you could take that even further? I am not suggesting Apple open iOS in the traditional sense, this isn’t about sideloading. Just give model builders the tools they need to make experiences unhindered. Now I know what you’re thinking. The first path could be philosophically troublesome and given the current state of the default search engine agreement between the two companies, could be legally fraught. The second path requires Apple to do two things: it would need to repair its relationship with developers so that they are better incentivized to build for the platform beyond it having scale and it would need to move resources from first-party products. Neither solution is ideal and they would both face copious challenges. But they might just be more feasible than an acquisition or a leadership change or attempt to race to build comparable products themselves. Resources might be better spent on helping the AI labs than competing with them. At least for now. This could actually prove to be a really good test for Apple, particularly compared to Apple Maps. As the company began to wind down their relationship with Google in the early 2010s, they built their own mapping solution behind the scenes. Obviously the launch didn’t go as planned. But what if they let model builders rip through the ecosystem and quietly spent the next several years in a state of hibernation, building a great future competitor to ChatGPT and Gemini? To do this they would need to not start from scratch, but build on top of existing models. The old Apple ways of doing everything on its own might just not work here.

The Make or Break Moment

There are bigger structural questions to be posed, particularly surrounding leadership, but I’m not necessarily convinced that replacing Tim Cook or even Craig Federighi would miraculously solve all problems. They have been excellent executives. But it’s unclear if they are suited for this war. I believe the now well-known Tim Cook leadership style, focused on perfect harmony, is no longer what Apple needs. It needs a return to the competitive, nonstop, dare I say hardcore environment that Steve Jobs fostered. No more coasting. Call it intense, maybe even brutal—but the pressure cooker forged the future once, and it just might again. Every lifelong Apple observer knows this is how it works. This is going to be a brutal battle and they are still acting like it is peacetime.

For decades the war for technological supremacy was waged between Apple and Microsoft. Then Microsoft was upended by Google. Now, Apple is at risk of being supplanted by OpenAI. The soul of Apple isn’t dead—it just might live somewhere else now. They can reclaim it, but it is going to take everything they have. This is Apple’s moment to choose: fade into legacy or fight to the death for relevance. They aren’t leading the conversation anymore, but there is time to change that.