No, no, no, no, no. Not me.
Bonjour. I am super happy to be talking to Malouh and Clique for the first show of the season.
Hello. Hello. Hi. Do you realize that when you said hello to the world, it was the most retweeted hello of all time?
Yeah, it was uh that was my first tweet.
Yeah. Why did you decide to do that? Just to say hello?
Well, I think a hello has a certain significance for Apple, right? Whether it was from the first Mac or the iMac or the iPhone. The products always introduce themselves as hello. It seemed like a fitting word.
And in terms of signification, the other words is one more thing. And yesterday was your first keynote. And how does it feel to be on stage as a CEO of Apple and to pronounce those words, 'One more thing'?
It's pretty amazing, right? I mean, as you know, I've been here a long time. I've been here 25 years, and so I've you know, I've seen Steve say it and I've seen Tim say it. And so having the opportunity for me to say it was pretty magical. Kind of goosebumps.
Yeah, I think it's like taking the sword of Excalibur, you know?
But mostly it's just having the opportunity to present our products and kind of help present the work that so many people have done is an incredibly humbling and exciting opportunity because so many people here just put their heart and soul into these products. And then moments like yesterday we get to show the world what we did. It's really fun.
And how do you feel after like the first keynote of your life? It was... As a CEO, I mean.
It was not the first keynote of my life. I've been in keynotes before. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I feel amazing. Like these days, these launch days, that's why we do what we do, right? It's the moment we've you know, everybody's been working for so long, so hard on these products. And then we finally get to show the world. We get to show our friends and family. And so I mean, they're the best days for us.
And there is something that I really loved and maybe it's a lesson that we have to learn from you as a CEO to people who want to make our own business like you were talking about the product, about the software, but the most you were talking about is the teamwork.
Yeah, yeah. That's because none of it would be possible without the team. And I feel so lucky. You know, the thing that I love most about the time that I've spent at Apple is the people I've been able to work with, right? The very best in the world. I've been able to work with them. They've been able to learn from them. I've learned so much every day from the people around here. And so when we all come together and get to build something new, that's the best part.
So, tell me about the Duo, the famous one more thing. Is it two iPhones together or an iPad that we can shut down?
No. Oh, well, you know, I mean, it's something new and unique, right? But I think we didn't want to just do what we'd seen other people do, which is sort of take two phone shapes and stick them together and then you get this weird square thing. We came at it from we want to build a large screen experience that feels right to us. And obviously, we've been doing that for a long time with iPad. And so we knew kind of the shape, you know, we came up with this new aspect ratio. It's root two to one. And what's really special about it is that's the aspect ratio when it's open. It's also the aspect ratio when it's closed. So, everything scales proportionally. But when it's open, you end up with a wider screen like iPad that has the benefit of being great for watching movies, for playing games, for side-by-side, you know, multitasking, all of those things. So, we wanted to start from that experience and build something that felt really great to us.
We were in the crowd with so many people, a lot of artists, and they were all saying after your keynote that we were amazed about the magic, the coming back of the magic. And I think that this magic is a lot of work. There is the engineering, that's your job, the software, and what was the hardest stuff to create that magic with that product, that feeling? What was the biggest problem to solve?
You know, I think Well, I mean, there's so many problems, right? When we're building something new. And you know, sometimes it's something very new like Duo. Sometimes, you know, there's really hard problems that we're solving in, you know, in iPhone 18 Pro, right? Like we had some really big challenges there to make it better, more battery life, more performance, more camera. But I think it's also the joy is in the problems and in the problem solving, right? And I think what was really fun about the iPhone Duo is because it's so new, it was a chance honestly for the teams to be really clever and come up with entirely new things, right? And so there was the really hard hardware engineering problems and in terms of designing the hinge and the display and how do we make that work and make it as reliable as we're going to do because that's what we do. We make high-quality products that we...
And even the screen like How hard was it? Like how much time? How much trial?
It's incredible, right? Incredibly. It takes lots of time, lots of trials. You know, you find issues, you fix issues. Then it's the software team like figuring out how do we make this work seamlessly across the big display, the small display. How do we manage it has two battery cells. How do you manage them so that from a customer perspective it's just one battery, but it has to be balanced and so there's a tremendous amount of work that goes into that. And then on the design side, right? What does it feel like to open? How satisfying can we make it when you close it? That nice click, right? On the software side, this idea of this when you close it you have sort of this passport shape that's a little wider. So the team, I mean is brilliant, took sort of the controls and status information and put it on the side and then all of a sudden you kind of have that extra vertical space. And also then when you open it, the controls are in the same place whether it's closed or open. And so it's just finding clever solutions to all of those things.
Yeah, but that's something that makes you natural to explain to me. Yeah, like how much people, how much height it is, how much failures.
Uh it's hard to say. Lots. Lots. We have good days and sometimes you have bad days. Sometimes you find a problem and you know, it's interesting when I obviously I've been here a long time. I've been through a lot of products, and I used to find myself I would get really anxious and stressed out as we got towards the end of a program because you always have issues. And you know you want to you know you got this when you want to ship in and you're struggling with solving a problem. And the thing I've learned over the years is that we always find a way. We have incredible people, and everyone's working together. And so, you know, there's a sort of sense of calm and trust in the team that we're going to find a way.
What's your trick as a CEO to say to your team we'll find a way? When you doing a meeting as example?
Yeah, I mean you know it's getting everyone together and trying to solve the problem together, asking the hard questions, figuring out, you know, is this good enough? Is it not good enough? What do we do? But I think a lot of us have been here a long time, and so we all know what this team is capable of. And we've seen it happen time and time again. And so, it's just reminding people like this is hard right now, but we're going to find a way.
You have the Duo on your pocket? Can you show me your favorite tricks? That's my life goal.
I do. That's the I have them both in my pocket. I grabbed the wrong one. It's amazing, isn't it?
What's your favorite trick?
My favorite trick? Well, I mean, this is really fun, you know, the animation that you get as you open it across from one side to the other is just sort of whimsical and fun, right? And it brings a smile to your face.
If I want to watch Canal Plus, I do it like this. F1 and you love F1?
I know. Well, and we had a great race last weekend, didn't we? That was a fun one.
Easy, fun, what is it like the keywords like when you think about a product?
Yeah, I think it's intuitive, simple, right? Like try to make it easy to use, and but yeah, it needs to bring joy, right? Like I think one of the things that really matters to us is that and we really appreciate is how much people love Apple products. And they love them because they can count on them, they're useful, they help them do things, but I think they also just bring that sense of joy, right? Where you like I said, you get a smile on your face every time you open it up and you see that transition. It's...
I see how happy you are. Yeah, and proud.
I know. Very proud. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very, very proud.
What makes you so proud to...
I think it's kind of what I was saying before. I'm just so proud of the work that the teams do to make these products possible and the amount of care and the attention to detail, right? Every little detail gets so much attention, so much work because we don't ship something until we feel like it's right and it's ready.
We don't know so much stuff about you and your life and we're going to talk about it. All I know is you love racing. And you do racing. And when you race, you have to take quickly decision, to think quickly, handle the pressure. And now as a CEO like how much time in a day you have to say yes, no, why not, yes, no, tell me more. How many times? It represents?
I mean, I don't know. I think it's I mean, the reality is the teams are so good. People are making decisions around here all the time and some decisions that are particularly hard to make will come to me and the good news is I have a leadership team that's been doing this for a long time. We can talk, we can debate, and we can kind of get to the answers together. And so having that team and having that support structure is really important. But ultimately it's just a privilege to be in a position where I can help steer this.
And who asked you to be the next Apple CEO? How did this happen? Was it a phone call? Was it a meeting?
Who asked me to be the next CEO? Well, Tim and the board asked me to be that. Well, I think when Tim asked me if it was something I would consider, I would say the good news is I was sitting down. Because I never in a million years would have imagined that happening.
Yeah, I mean it like to me it's always just been be here, focus on the work, build great things, love every minute of it, and then to be given this opportunity to be asked about it was pretty mind-blowing and yeah, it's beyond words, right?
So you were sit down in the office? And what did you say? How did you say this?
Yeah, it's good because otherwise I probably would have fallen over. Well, it was just I mean it's this question of, you know, is this something that you'd be willing to take on, right? And it was something I had to think about. It's obviously not a decision you just make like that. It's a big decision and so something that we talked about. I talked about with my wife, right?
Yeah. That was what I was going to ask you like who did you call first?
Yeah, no no no. She and I spoke about it quite a bit, right? And honestly, you know, in the end she made it really clear. She said, you know, you love Apple. Of course you have to do this, right? And...
But I guess that you've asked your wife this decision because it's a life changer.
Yeah, it impacts all of us, right? So yeah, so she had to agree as well. And she's incredibly supportive and it was yeah, it's good. And so here we are.
So your wife is the real CEO. I just want to thank you because you chose Clique. It's a worldwide long conversation exclusive with you, John Ternus, the new CEO of Apple, and you chose Clique, a French media on Canal Plus. Thank you. Why? Why did you choose us?
Well, Mouloud you and I got to meet at WWDC and I think we hit it off right away. And so I've been super excited to get a chance to talk to you. I knew we were going to have a good conversation. And look, you know, France is incredibly important to us, right? Apple's been in France for over 40 years. We have over 2,500 employees in France. And you know, I was there a few years ago and actually spending a lot of time talking about our work in the environment and had so much fun with the team and meeting folks there. And I think there's so much passion for design and culture in France that I think it's just has always been very symbiotic with Apple. And so, yeah, super happy to do that.
This is an exclusive and you're our first guest of the year. So, thank you, John. I'll talk about so many subjects like kids, AI, the planets, ecology. And I know that you're concerned about all the subjects. I'd love to start with the kids. Is it okay to give an iPhone or an iPad in the end of the kid?
Look, the world has changed a lot since you and I were kids, right? When we were kids, entertainment was basically TV and maybe if you were lucky, like a video game console or something like that. And you know, we would spend some amount of time doing those things and then we were off outside doing whatever we were doing. And I think, you know, the world's more complicated now. I think if you look at what smartphones and iPads have done, they've opened the door to so much. I'm always amazed when I see what kids can accomplish in terms of like we talked about creating content, learning, right? Just there's so much potential for kind of growth from the things you can learn. One of my favorite ones, I'm a mechanical engineer, right? And you know, I didn't actually start making products, making things until probably I was in college. Now I'm seeing kids in elementary school that are, you know, learning from, you know, maybe watching things on YouTube, learning how to design stuff, 3D print things. I mean, that's really cool. They're incredibly capable. But that said, you know, there's also the kind of extra burden on the parents because parents want to make sure that their kids are still getting their exercise, getting their sleep, doing all the things they need to do. And now, of course, there are things on your phone that are trying to grab your attention and pull you in as much as possible. And so, you know, many of us here at Apple have kids and have gone through that or going through that and figuring out how to navigate that with our families. And so, we felt it was really important to build tools to help parents manage that.
Was the question because, you know, there is this famous urban legend about people who design cell phones or computers don't let their kids use them.
Well, I can't quite relate to that because my kids use them. But it's something that as a family we talked about a lot, right? And we managed a lot. And we said, 'Here is the time when you can be using these things and these are the things you can use them for. And here are the times when you shouldn't be on your device.' And so, the tools that we've built that we're just releasing now are really easy to set up when you have a child account. We put in kind of initial, based on the age, sort of initial suggestions on how much entertainment, how much games, how much social media based on the age of the child. And the reality is all families and all children are different. So, parents can go in and easily adjust that. But I think it's really important that they have the tools to manage them.
Mhm. I know that you really care about it because last time we talked, the first time, we were talking about the doom scrolling. Like how a kid even an adult or grown-up or old man or woman can be absorbed by the phone. And you were saying that you felt a responsibility to avoid that.
