From iPhone to AI: Why Jony Ive’s OpenAI Deal Signals a Power Shift
In a video dripping with so much mutual admiration that I found myself muttering “Get a room,” former Apple designer Jony Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have announced a collaboration to “create a family of devices that would let people use AI to create all sorts of wonderful things.” Ive’s hardware design company, io Products, will be acquired by OpenAI for $6.5 billion in stock, despite having only 55 employees and never having shipped anything. Ive and his team will oversee creative and design aspects across all OpenAI products, including ChatGPT and other apps.
Despite all the self-congratulatory Bay Area tech bro exaggeration, the announcement is not pure fluffery. ChatGPT—and generative AI overall—is arguably one of the most transformative technologies since the Internet and the smartphone.
It’s hard to envision what we’ll use to interact with AI in the future besides the smartphone, smartwatch, and earbuds we have today. Jarringly—and perhaps tellingly—despite the video being staged as an informal discussion in a San Francisco coffee shop, Altman chose to describe current usage of ChatGPT in a laptop browser instead of the ChatGPT app on a phone.
The next piece of AI hardware won’t be the now-defunct Humane AI Pin (which also had investment from Sam Altman and a partnership with OpenAI) or the Rabbit r1 (which Marques Brownlee described as “barely reviewable,” after calling the Humane AI Pin “the worst product I’ve ever reviewed”). It’s certainly not the Apple Vision Pro, which, remember, is a “spatial computer.” It may eventually be glasses, even if the Ray-Ban Meta AI Glasses haven’t set the world on fire.
Years of hearing overblown promises have made me inherently skeptical, but Jony Ive and his team have done important work in the past, and OpenAI has the resources and the chutzpah to bring a product to the mainstream market. Whatever it is, it’s slated for late 2026.
Regardless of what OpenAI ultimately ships, this announcement may signal a shift in the balance of power in the tech world. Jony Ive, the guy who played a key role in designing iconic products like the iMac, iPod, iPhone, and MacBook, is now focused on creating the next generation of consumer technology for OpenAI rather than Apple.
Meanwhile, instead of making the iPhone the preferred platform for AI, Apple has struggled to develop and implement a compelling AI vision. At best, Apple Intelligence is currently a scattershot collection of unimpressive features that barely change the user experience; at worst, it’s a promised version of Siri that’s hard to imagine living up to its marketing. Even more embarrassingly, Perplexity has released a version of its voice assistant on iOS that encroaches on Siri’s territory by linking a modern chatbot to public APIs that enable it to create reminders and events, load inline maps, play songs from Apple Music, and more.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. Apple’s cultural DNA is built around perfecting individual, on-device experiences instead of fostering social interactions, community development, and engagement with the broader Internet. Consider features like iTunes Ping, Game Center, and Apple Music Connect, which struggled due to closed ecosystems, limited opportunities for interaction, and insufficient attention and resources. Apple has also failed to compete in the blogging and publishing space, having discontinued iWeb, limited iCloud sharing to specific data types, and kept Pages focused on print output. And, of course, there’s search, where Apple has consistently depended on Google and other partners to provide information to Spotlight and Siri rather than creating its own index.
Apple’s desire to limit its engagement with the messiness of the Internet isn’t just a historical curiosity—it may represent an existential threat to the company’s future. Recently, in the Google antitrust case, Apple’s senior vice president of services, Eddy Cue, speculated that “you may not need an iPhone 10 years from now” as technology evolves, particularly due to AI. He also noted that AI-powered search features, such as I wrote about in “AI Answer Engines Are Worth Trying” (17 April 2025), have contributed to Safari searches declining for the first time in 22 years.
So Apple executives recognize the threat. The question is, can they generate the youthful perspectives, energy, and enthusiasm needed to keep Apple relevant?
Endorse all these comments however the announcement reminds me of one of the schemes launched at the time of The South Sea Company in 1720. The prospectus stated that the scheme was “for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage which shall in due time be revealed”. I wonder if Mr. Altman would care to buy this bridge to Brooklyn I happen to have for sale…
It was glossy and over-luvvied up for sure. At some point the tech bros have to realise how all that puffery is privileged mutual self promotion, very off putting. But still…. A lot of potential, an impressive gathering of talent, a boatload of money, and a perspective on what is next. But… There’s definitely no there there yet. Late 26? Nope.
Ha ha! The more things change, the more they stay the same. Here’s the present day version:
Ive and Altman’s “announcement” reminds me of when Dean Kamen said he was working on a “world changing” product, the media and Internet went wild with speculation with even Steve Jobs chiming in…then all we got was the Segway scooter. Haven’t seen many of those around lately!
“Jony Ive and his team” (and his outsized ego) made a mess of the Mac in his later years with the company in my opinion. He “fixed” a user interface that wasn’t broken, focused on “thin” rather than functional, and (I believe) was the “genius” behind the egregious “butterfly” keyboard and the ill fated touch strip among other “improvements”. He was always changing the icons around for reasons I could never understand. The fact that Altman paid $6.5 B to acquire this Prima Donna will go down as “Altman’s Folly”. He may have done nice work when Jobs was around to counterbalance him but he went off the rails when Jobs left.
I have no doubt Apple needs to get really serious if they want to retain relevance. Lack of software quality, lack of innovation, the cluster that is Siri, the AI fraud, etc. none of that bears well.
That said, these two self-infatuated bozos talked about shipping “100M units literally on day one”. (Note to self: people who don’t know how to use the word literally are figuratively turkeys) This for a device for which they can’t even mention dimensions or show an enclosure. The age old oversell and underdeliver. How many more times is the rest of the world going to fall for this kind of self aggrandizing tech bro nonsense? A decade after Lizzy Holmes, you’d think we’d have smartened up a little. Biz reality these days sometimes feels like an episode of Silicon Valley or Succession.
Okay, I’ll put my ignorance on display. Why does a “normal person” (if such exist) use ChatGPT on a phone?
There’s a ChatGPT app for the iPhone that works extremely well in voice mode, where you talk to it and it replies out loud. It’s laughable that someone like Sam Altman in a San Francisco coffee shop would pull out their laptop and open a browser to load the ChatGPT website, rather than launching the ChatGPT app on an iPhone. It would be like using Google Maps on a laptop instead of a phone.
I would say that this depends entirely on what you plan on doing.
If I’m going to be navigating in the car, you bet I want to use my phone. But if I want to preview a route, research alternate routes or search for nearby locations to shop/eat at, then I want to do it with a large screen and a keyboard, which means a laptop or desktop.
Adam, why it may be not normal to use a laptop, which is way more convenient to perform what Altman described as a query to AI and see results of it? ;) Just curious.
Yeah Altman chose to cite having to take a laptop out of a bag to query ChatGPT as he was touting the convenience of whatever it is they propose as better.
He didn’t want to mention the phone as it would immediately make their top secret so-called ground-breaking device seem pointless - which it most likely is.
Sure, but the context here was two people chatting in a coffee shop. For something as simple as talking to a chatbot or looking something up on Google Maps, the phone is far more lightweight.
I’m really not sure how to parse your question, but as I said above, while sitting in a coffee shop and talking with someone, pulling out a laptop is overkill for how he described using ChatGPT.
Indeed—that’s why it was jarring. I’ve already seen speculation that they didn’t show a phone because they’re making a phone, but there’s also reporting from them denying that they’re making a phone. So who knows?
I can’t speak to this situation, but I’ve had bad luck with voice interfaces. If I’m trying to demonstrate something, I don’t want to risk the software getting the wrong words and submitting nonsense to the software. I’d rather type my requests, so I know exactly what I’m sending it.
I also tend to be able to type faster than I can speak the same words.
I may be wrong, but, to me, he was describing rather general situation of querying ChatGPT, not just for someone sitting in a coffee shop like himself in that very moment. But, even in that situation, laptop might have been preferable for many, for a bunch of reasons. So, normality is not a proper characteristic, I believe.
I know, you are a very thorough person at picking words, but so am I ;)
And I chose that phrasing specifically.
Here’s the quote with some editing from Notes transcription, which comes while he’s miming doing these things while sitting at a bar counter in a coffee shop:
It’s a classic strawman.
Victoria Song has a good article speculating about the device at The Verge.
Great writing Adam:
That’s what I think of as well. Great inventors don’t always hit the ball out of the park. As others have observed, Jony Ive focused too much on form and hamstrung function in his later years at Apple, and his new company has yet to deliver any hardware.
Sam Altman is a man who talks a lot and has some interesting ideas, but when I reviewed Adam Becker’s new book “More Everything Forever” in New Scientist, I found Altman was all over the place, his opinions changing whenever he opened his mouth. By the way, I highly recommend Becker’s book because he exposes how many billionaires have egos the size of a planet and are seriously lacking in real-world judgement.
And Jason Snell is skeptical as well:
As someone who is extremely put off by the astronomically large egos of the two principals, I think there is no reason to think that simply putting those two organizations together will yield a device that is significantly better than the two recently failed AI wearables. Whatever it is, the product is a tiny electronic device with extremely ambitious pretensions. Do either of these organizations have any experience with building tiny but sophisticated electronic devices?
I second the above recommendation of Snell’s piece. He said it all much better than I did.
This is pretty funny.
I find it embarrassing to talk to my iPhone, perhaps to ask for directions, am I alone in this?
(talking to a person at the other end of the line is different)
How about this for laughs (maybe) …
I like how Jony (is it me or has he become really fat lately?) waxes on about San Francisco, my home town, being this special place of optimism. And yet they managed to carefully tailor their long soapy bromance intro such that you can’t see a single bum or fentanyl dealer or tent or naked psychotic screaming at the sky of which this city otherwise is chock full of. Integrity people. If you are that phony (or believe you have to act in such a phony manner) and expect the rest of the world to be too gullible to notice your little subterfuge, do you really expect to be taken serious by anybody who matters? Post-factual age indeed.
Well, they shot the video at a place that is owned by Francis Ford Coppola, just adjacent to the district where all of the buildings have been bought up, in a manner similar to how Disney acquired its land in Florida for Disney World, by Ive, a couple of other mega-cap tech bros who cashed out, and a few VCs who are all competing to build company compounds. So “Iveyland” and its immediate surroundings is kept pretty sterile compared to other parts of SF both by private security and by the city government.
Well I suppose then we don’t quite agree on what “sterile” means.
But since you mention Francis Ford Coppola’s joint, it did confuse me that they shot it such that you first think they’re headed to Vesuvio only to then end up in Zoetrope. Oh well.
I do that all the time, but I guess I’m not a normal person!
Not at all.
Even a non tech Illuminati like me is skeptical. I’ve is a good designer…but his incessant devotion to thin leads to limited battery life and things like bendgate. And the Vision Pro has pretty much turned out to be a flop from what I’ve seen. And I agree with Jason that there’s nobody to tell him no which isn’t a great thing.
The Segway scooter was a wonderful invention, and I would have one today if the price was right. It’s a brilliant piece of engineering, with an aspect which seemed magical—the ability to stay upright on only one axle.
Its difficulty with non-smooth sidewalks was a problem, but not an insurmountable one. Larger wheels would have done the trick, and enabled the Segway to negotiate mismatched sidewalk sections, uplifts from roots, and pine cones.
The irony of the Segway story is that everyone said it was too expensive, but today, people all over are riding bicycles which cost as much as or more than a Segway. And I still walk, because neither is affordable! But that’s a good thing for my health, I suppose.
Will Jony and Sam’s new toy be affordable? Likely not, and there’s the rub. If you want to take over the market, you have to make it affordable. The iPod was affordable, the first iPhone was affordable (ok, they “cheated” by having AT&T subsidize it), the Apple Vision Pro is not, the Segway is not, e-bikes are certainly not. In the past decade or so, the tech bros have fallen in love with themselves and their toys, and completely forgotten what every business school teaches: if you price your product for a tiny market of billionaires, you won’t sell millions of units. For that, you need pricing for the masses.
I rode a Segway once, very briefly, and immediately understood why George W. Bush fell off one. It was designed for people who are not very active. Like Bush, I’m a bicyclist, and when you bicycle and you learn how to balance the bike quickly and effectively – and much too fast for the Segway handle. The friend whom I had was dropping off at her house had no problems with the Segway, but she was moving slowly and carefully because she had an injured wrist. But I immediately realized I was reacting too quickly and got off to avoid falling.
How interesting! So it sounds like your experience with the Segway was quite similar to my experience as a youngster when I first rode as a passenger on a motorcycle. I forget who was the driver, but I remember being told how important it was that I not try to shift my weight to balance the ‘bike’, but just go along with the driver’s movements. My natural urge was incredibly difficult to fight against, but I managed to do it.
Just a note: Warby Parker - the retail Glasses chain - is teaming up with Google and its AI, and no doubt we’ll see other outfits follow suit (pun intended) as this market gets super-competitive. I do know of some materials/industrial AI companies promising to reconfigure the manufacturing materials production process - this will be as revolutionary as Desktop Publishing was in the 80s/90s. Medical devices will benefit directly and it will be interesting to see who mates with who as AI technology powers increase and its containment decreases.
“Smart glasses” is a much tougher technology than most people think. The human eye evolved to focus from your hand to far away, and it gets tired quickly if you try to focus an inch or two away. We don’t focus our eyes on our glasses (or cataract implants or contacts), the optics bend the light on its way to your retina. Your eye muscles get tired trying to focus very close, so you get eyestrain (in the form of headaches or sometimes nausea) if you try to do it too much. I asked an Apple store “genius” about how long people can wear Apple Vision and she said it was about 40 minutes. Canadian military scientists found soldiers could not use Microsoft HoloLens more than 25 minutes without suffering problems.
I was really hoping Augmented Reality would take off, but - like Virtual Reality - it’s incidental. Maybe there’s a way AR and glass and eyeball could get along - but - I did not go “apple watch” because I don’t like wearing watches (my only worn jewelry is a wedding ring). I know a lot of folks who love their watch/wrist devices. I don’t like headphones that much either (even though I produce music all the time). Anyhow I think there’s a disconnect between a personal computer and a personal “device attached”. We’ve all watched those dystopic movies with people ladened up with devices - we (all) don’t want that, do we? While I’m excited by AI assisting researchers (esp in medicine, but in so many other ways!) with generationally dynamic computing- I’m not sure how devices end up in all this.
On a side note but related - what bothers me is now that long after Ive has been gone from Apple, they are still committed to making iPhones almost as thin as credit cards year after year. As this makes the phone most difficult to hold on the side, I’d much rather have a chunkier phone which could also sport a larger battery. And with the exception of the MacBook Air which began its life slim and thin, the same thin design applies to Apple’s laptop models. We had to give up many useful ports for only a couple USB-Cs to support all that thinness!
Likewise abnormal: Since I’m presbyopic (far-sighted), like most of the population over ~ 45 years of age, an iPhone screen is too small for maps and directions when I’m driving, which is why I use an 11-inch iPad Pro for that (among many other things). Trying to drive while wearing reading glasses is A Bad Idea, and I’ve never been able to make bifocals work for me. More power to those who can.
I’m with you. Presbyopia can make you far-sighted, but it actually describes the hardness of your lens that comes with age so your eyes cannot adjust your depth of focus. I’ve got the same problem, and also had cataract surgery gave me clear vision from a meter or two to infinity. It’s a big step up from having to wear thick glasses to do anything; now I only need thin reading glasses and only for reading and close work. But it does mean that I have to put on my reading glasses to see anything on a small screen, and even with reading glasses I have trouble with small type on small screen, and a map on an iPhone is useless.
Apparently, OpenAI is now saying whatever this device is, it won’t ship before February 2027. And it won’t use the “io” branding.