Tim Cook on iPhone's Future: 'There's So Much Left That We Can Do'

[I7guy]

Don't forget that they will eventually "innovate" new technologies that other companies already have and Apple customers will eat it up like they always do. It's actually a microcosm of society these days, "If nobody else believes what I believe then their wrong!!!". I saw in Best Buy yesterday morning the new S26 Ultras built in privacy screen and it is truly pretty cool I give it 5 years before Apple "adopts" and "perfects" and "invents" it. There is so much cool Tech out there that Apple is lightyears behind on, don't get me started on Siri....

So because Apple doesn’t havens privacy screen they are light years behind? That’s an interesting premise and conclusion.

According to the most recent earnings call , you are correct. Apples customers “eat it up”.

 

[Textime]

I wish I could use the iPad to play WoW, Dota 2 on a monitor.

 

[I7guy]

Long time Apple users try to imagine Apple with Steve Jobs post-2011 while I don't think there's anyone who would like Apple to be still under Tim Cook with how it turned out for the last 15 years. As early as 2015, Apple should have a new CEO and made Tim Cook just a transitional one.

Tim Cook grew into the job he was already capable of doing. And yes he is doing a helluva good job.

 

[tuckerjj]

I still genuinely believe the Apple Watch is the communicator of the future with the new Siri making that one step closer to reality. The utter privacy failure of smart glasses proves that a device with a camera is not the answer people are looking for. They still have social media as well, making them a huge distraction.

If they can get an 18-hour battery with always-on 5G cracked then the Apple Watch has all the benefits of a smartphone (Comms, search, fitness, nav) but none of the addictive drawbacks (games, social media, ads) The screen is too small to comfortably use for lengthy periods which is a good thing and due to being strapped to your wrist it is also pretty much theft-proof.

The notification nudges can be easily ignored until you have the time to answer unlike a pop-up in front of your vision. Smart glasses are an utterly terrible idea given how distracting they will be. This is yet another classic case of silicon valley trying to find a different answer instead of asking a better question.

Have you read up on the Vision Pro privacy measures? Apps don’t get access to the cameras, nor can they even see where a user is looking. If there’s anyone I trust to get this right it’s Apple.

I do share your concerns with notifications. I have mine all switched off aside from a few specific apps. App badges too, horrible things! I don’t have any apps on my Home Screen, just calendar and todo widgets. I search for apps whenever I choose to use them (friction is good here) and have Siri suggestions turned off (an insidiously distracting feature). I’ve mostly removed infinite scroll/content apps 😅 It’s perfectly possible to make your phone distraction free. I wish Apple would do better at the defaults.

The question smart glasses tech is asking is what if we could overlay UI on the world and instead of having to hold it in our hands and interact with it through a tiny window. There are concerns for sure, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth asking and exploring.

Distractions are bad, 100% agreed. That doesn’t mean big/AR screens inherently are.

 

[darngooddesign]

Just think of all the emojis left to create.

Apple doesn’t create emojis or unicode characters, all they do is make sure any new ones created by the Unicode consortium are included.

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

Do you really think the phone will be the primary UI device for the rest of time?

The rest of time? Whatever that means? No.
The rest of this century? The rest of our lifetime? Very likely, yes.
I don’t think people realize just how far away cheep, easily mass produced, full 5000+nit AR glasses really are.

I remember when the Apple Watch came out and many people said “nobody wears watches anymore”. A lot more people do now! If there is enough utility and value in AR glasses more people will wear glasses too.

This is such a bizarre comparison.
People didn’t stop wearing watches, and even if that were a valid argument a tiny two inch wide one ounce arm band is not the same as a metal and glass device that sits completely across your face from one ear to the other, covering both your eyes.
I’m not saying augmented reality glasses will never catch on, of course I believe that they will eventually, but not as a smart phone replacement for the majority.
Just like how tablets haven’t replaced all laptops, laptops haven’t replaced all desktops, etc.
Glasses *might* replace a specific type of person’s smart phone, just like an iPad might replace a specific type of person‘s laptop or desktop or a Vision Pro might replace a very specific type of person‘s television set, but no, I don’t believe that’s going to be a universal experience.

 

[CharlesShaw]

It makes a lot more sense if you treat it as infrastructure.

The iPhone isn’t just Apple’s most successful device. It’s ... the control point for identity

Exactly why I'm "stuck" with an iPhone even though I rarely use the actual iPhone. An iPhone with my phone number is necessary in order to text and call from my primary number on my iPad and Mac and to manage my Apple Watch, which I consider essential.

 

[User 6502]

That somewhat worried me, I’d rather him not doing anything at all and retire, his vision, choices and direction have been dreadful to say the least and he has damaged, hopefully not beyond repair, Apple’s reputation as an innovative company that releases high quality products. In the last decade or so there has been next to no innovation, especially in the iPhone which is their core business, and many many low quality software releases, without even mentioning the AI debacle.

 

[Ctrlos]

Have you read up on the Vision Pro privacy measures? Apps don’t get access to the cameras, nor can they even see where a user is looking. If there’s anyone I trust to get this right it’s Apple.

I do share your concerns with notifications. I have mine all switched off aside from a few specific apps. App badges too, horrible things! I don’t have any apps on my Home Screen, just calendar and todo widgets. I search for apps whenever I choose to use them (friction is good here) and have Siri suggestions turned off (an insidiously distracting feature). I’ve mostly removed infinite scroll/content apps 😅 It’s perfectly possible to make your phone distraction free. I wish Apple would do better at the defaults.

The question smart glasses tech is asking is what if we could overlay UI on the world and instead of having to hold it in our hands and interact with it through a tiny window. There are concerns for sure, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth asking and exploring.

Distractions are bad, 100% agreed. That doesn’t mean big/AR screens inherently are.

I actually think AR is going to become so prevailant in the future that Architects will have to think about how their structures work as the backdrop to a UI. But I also think that the current attempts to force it will not work.

The world is increasingly embedded with IOT sensors pumping out all sorts of telemetry to devices that can detect it. At the same time quietly disruptive P2P mesh networks like Amazon Sidewalk, Apple's Find My, BitChat and even the old Nintendo DS Pictochat show how we can form local networks without the need for infrastructure.

I believe the future of AR is not a continuation of the App paradigm where one centralised company has a stack control that 'pushes' out data but instead AR will organically appear on an open-source foundation in the same way the original web did via a P2P system that 'pulls' in data thats already there.

In this way we all kind of become our own little PAN (Personal Area Network) that gets 100% control over what we broadcast to the outside world. Want to make a social media statement? Have a little bubble pop up over your head whenever someone glances your way or use small disposable sensors to digitally Graffiti a wall. Local businesses can put marketing and menus outside their premises in all sorts of cool fashions and unplugging is as easy as removing your glasses.

The digital world doesn't just escape the internet but no longer relies on it either, pulling local communities together as it goes.

It adds value to our lives instead of taking it away. It wouldn't be too hard to implement a kind of P2P blockchain to maintain privacy.

 

[2low_tech]

"You see, after the success of liquid glass, we've decided to make the entire phone out of glass. This massively improves the replacement cycle." Tim Cook (probably) to Apple's investors

Or maybe it's an iPhone made from wood. SS > Ti > Al > Wood
Imagine the margins!

In some countries, primarily in Asia almost everything is digital. Phones are a necessity for daily life. I have been traveling quite a bit lately, and I can't remember the last time I was in a restaurant in a city that didn't have the menus attached to QR codes as one example.

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

I still genuinely believe the Apple Watch is the communicator of the future with the new Siri making that one step closer to reality. The utter privacy failure of smart glasses proves that a device with a camera is not the answer people are looking for. They still have social media as well, making them a huge distraction.

If they can get an 18-hour battery with always-on 5G cracked then the Apple Watch has all the benefits of a smartphone (Comms, search, fitness, nav) but none of the addictive drawbacks (games, social media, ads) The screen is too small to comfortably use for lengthy periods which is a good thing and due to being strapped to your wrist it is also pretty much theft-proof.

The notification nudges can be easily ignored until you have the time to answer unlike a pop-up in front of your vision. Smart glasses are an utterly terrible idea given how distracting they will be. This is yet another classic case of silicon valley trying to find a different answer instead of asking a better question.

I get where you’re going with this, but I don’t believe it.
I don’t think speech is a satisfactory replacement for typing, even touchscreen typing.
There are just areas, and scenarios, where talking to your device will always be more clunky, even if it had the best microphone and the best speech recognition in the world.
Also one of the things that is going to hold the smart glasses category back from being a smart phone replacement. Hand gestures and speech just is not a true equivalent of touchscreen and keyboards and mice, it’s more awkward, it’s by its nature less private, it’s more difficult for many different types of people.
We are already seeing accessories being introduced that are basically mini Bluetooth keyboards for AR glasses and VR headsets… that are shaped like a phone, can connect directly to a phone, at that point we are just turning the new category into a phone.

 

[Kylo83]

5 years later and we might actually have not cut out on the display

 

[platinumaqua]

What other essential feature can they still remove?

 

[Happy_John]

I still genuinely believe the Apple Watch is the communicator of the future with the new Siri making that one step closer to reality. The utter privacy failure of smart glasses proves that a device with a camera is not the answer people are looking for. They still have social media as well, making them a huge distraction.

If they can get an 18-hour battery with always-on 5G cracked then the Apple Watch has all the benefits of a smartphone (Comms, search, fitness, nav) but none of the addictive drawbacks (games, social media, ads) The screen is too small to comfortably use for lengthy periods which is a good thing and due to being strapped to your wrist it is also pretty much theft-proof.

The notification nudges can be easily ignored until you have the time to answer unlike a pop-up in front of your vision. Smart glasses are an utterly terrible idea given how distracting they will be. This is yet another classic case of silicon valley trying to find a different answer instead of asking a better question.

I can see where you’re going with this, but Apple Watches are still very much tethered to iPhones, so they’re an extension of the iPhone.

I like my Apple Watch because it vastly reduces my screen time and doomscrolling, as it’s not an interface that promotes doomscrolling.

But it is, for the most part, still an interface for the phone. Yes, to get you to buy both, but also for a more valid technical reason - the phone is the computer, it does the grunt work and heavy lifting - because of its larger size, it can have more battery, more memory, wider connectivity, more processing power.

It makes sense that the much smaller watch offloads as much as possible of the actual storage, computing and wider connectivity to the phone.

We may end up directly interfacing with the Watch more than the phone, but you’re still using the phone. It’s just there are maybe more options to think of the iPhone as more of a Mac mini than MacBook.

Or another way to look at it, an Apple Watch is more like AirPods / iPod combined than an iPhone. It still needs the phone as a “base station”.

As an aside, this was one of the issues with the Vision Pro, trying to replicate all the processing in the device, rather being tethered to a base device. And you still need a Mac to use MacOS (which is hard to move away from if you trying to get a lot of work done).

 

[User 6502]

You realise the Unicode Consortium comes up with new emoji, not Apple, right? What do you expect them to do? Ignore new emoji? Make a generic placeholder for ‘emoji not found’ when someone sends you a new one?

Obviously the criticism to Apple is not that they implement new emoji as the standards evolve, but that emojis seem to be the only headline feature of new releases. Clearly they must include the new emojis, but they should also actually develop new features and fix the existing ones which are broken.

 

[Spinarelo]

He sounds like a corporate bot with no soul. I find myself getting so annoyed at his predictable corny little lines during keynotes.

 

[Neepman]

Yep. Plenty more to do. Such as continuing to move search windows in new iOS iterations for no particular reason other than to make things frustrating.

 

[nsklaus]

“So much left we can do”

he must speak about all the rest of the still sane areas of the software stack left to sabotage. all that guy touches turns to s.h1t.

 

[Happy_John]

Obviously the criticism to Apple is not that they implement new emoji as the standards evolve, but that emojis seem to be the only headline feature of new releases. Clearly they must include the new emojis, but they should also actually develop new features and fix the existing ones which are broken.

That this point, "new features" are not really a draw beyond being attention-grabbing gimmicks, for the most part. The iPhone doesn't need that much more functionality, in and of itself. Focusing on bug fixing and optimization on iOS, IPadOS and MAcOS would bring the most benefit to users.

 

[tuckerjj]

The rest of time? Whatever that means? No.
The rest of this century? The rest of our lifetime? Very likely, yes.

Fair. I meant as long as the human race exists. In which case we’re agreed that something will become a primary device after the smartphone? In which case what? In my opinion, AR glasses (as long as we can make them thin and light, and acknowledge that there will be a decades long transition where the glasses are an accessory to the phone).

I don’t think people realize just how far away cheep, easily mass produced, full 5000+nit AR glasses really are.

Other technologies exist and there are signs that Apple have been experimenting with them for many years and for sure have filed patents on them.

A tiny two inch wide one ounce arm band is not the same as a metal and glass device that sits completely across your face from one ear to the other, covering both your eyes.

Yup, Apple’s obsession with thin and light is going to be super important here.

I’m not saying augmented reality glasses will never catch on, of course I believe that they will eventually, but not as a smart phone replacement for the majority.

Definitely not when they’re released - they’ll be an accessory for decades. But if (big if) the guts of an iPhone could be shrunk into a small and light glasses frame, not even then?

Just like how tablets haven’t replaced all laptops, laptops haven’t replaced all desktops, etc.

Oof, now you’ve got me started on another strong opinion 😂 I have a theory on what will replace laptops and desktops for most people and it’s not tablets.

Glasses *might* replace a specific type of person’s smart phone […], but no, I don’t believe that’s going to be a universal experience.

Probably not in our lifetimes, no, but not on a longer timescale?

 

[Luftkopf]

Obviously the criticism to Apple is not that they implement new emoji as the standards evolve, but that emojis seem to be the only headline feature of new releases. Clearly they must include the new emojis, but they should also actually develop new features and fix the existing ones which are broken.

You have to ignore quite a bit to think that Apple are doing little more than incrementing their hardware and adding new emoji. You mightn’t like what they’re doing, or be impatient for expected updates to arrive, but it’s still not nothing.

 

[Happy_John]

Fair. I meant as long as the human race exists.

Realistically, I don't think that's something we can do beyond wild speculation.

200 years ago was not, in the timeline of the human race, a long time. But today's lifestyle and technology was unimaginable then. 100 years ago, it wa imaginable, to a degree, but 100 years is simply a lucky person's single life-span.

For context, Apple is 50 years old. The Apple I is less than 50 years old. (It''ll be 50 in July this year).

 

[bice]

You realise the Unicode Consortium comes up with new emoji, not Apple, right? What do you expect them to do? Ignore new emoji? Make a generic placeholder for ‘emoji not found’ when someone sends you a new one?

I think many would be happy if a new version of any apple os had some real news instead of generating these kind of top-stories on macrumors...

Latest iOS 26.4 Beta Adds New Emoji Characters

The fourth iOS 26.4, iPadOS 26.4, and macOS Tahoe 26.4 betas that Apple provided to developers today introduce nine new emoji characters. Trombone Treasure Chest Distorted Face Hairy Creature (aka Bigfoot or Sasquatch) Fight Cloud Orca Landslide There are also new skin tone...

www.macrumors.com

 

[McNoise]

Well, it’s all about people … and their money … and there’s so much we could do ... but we don’t. 😂

 

[lepetitnicolas]

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Tim Cook on iPhone's Future: 'There's So Much New Emojis Left That We Can Do'​