TIME names iPhone Duo a best invention; Apple says it isn't chasing AGI
TIME published its 2026 Best Inventions issue with Apple CEO John Ternus on the cover and the iPhone Duo among the picks; Ternus took over as CEO on September 1, 2026. In the interview he discussed the iPhone Duo (reported to start above $1,999, with a hinge of more than 100 precision parts and nano-texture treatment to reduce the crease, following a 2011 Apple patent filing), memory supply shortages, and said "all options should be on the table" after reports that Apple tested Chinese chips. Apple SVP of Worldwide Marketing Greg Joswiak said the company does not feel threatened by OpenAI's hardware plans, adding that Apple is not building for the "die-hard AI believers chasing superintelligence" but for everyday users, with an emphasis on personalization and privacy; the report says the new Siri, built with Google Gemini technology, launched in the US in September 2026.
Apple executives are publicly framing their AI as a privacy-focused, everyday assistant rather than a frontier-model race, which defines how they intend to differentiate against OpenAI and others.