Apple CEO John Ternus is using the arrival of iPhone Duo to explain why the company took its time with foldables—and why he believes the wait was necessary. The device has been named to a major annual list of the best inventions of 2026, with Ternus featured on the cover of the issue tied to the honor. In a wide-ranging interview, he discussed the long road to iPhone Duo, Apple’s design process, the competitive landscape, and the role of AI in the company’s future.

The timing is notable. iPhone Duo reaches the market nearly a decade after other companies began selling foldable phones. For Apple, that gap was not a sign of disinterest. Ternus was involved in early foldable research at the company as far back as 2011, when many consumers still carried flip phones and the idea of a flexible smartphone display remained experimental.

Early foldable work started with a 2011 patent

In 2011, Ternus and five other engineers filed a patent application for foldable electronic devices. The work explored the component-level challenges that would need to be solved before a foldable phone could become a credible product, including what kinds of batteries and circuit boards such a device might require. It was a forward-looking exercise at a time when the smartphone industry was still adjusting to the arrival of large touchscreens.

Ternus said the direction of display technology seemed clear even then. “It felt clear that we were going to eventually get to a place where OLED displays were going to be flexible,” he said. That conviction helped justify years of exploratory work, even as the market for foldables developed slowly and unevenly.

Why early rival foldables felt “cheap and crappy”

Ternus was not impressed by the first wave of foldable products from other companies in the 2010s. His assessment was blunt: “The other examples in the world felt kind of cheap and crappy.” The comment captures a familiar Apple posture. Rather than rush a new category to market, the company tends to wait until it believes it can deliver an experience that feels polished, durable, and distinct.

That approach can look slow from the outside. Competitors often ship first, iterate in public, and absorb criticism while Apple watches. But Ternus’s remarks suggest the delay was deliberate. Apple was not trying to be first with a foldable phone; it was trying to avoid the compromises that defined early foldables, from visible creases to hinge mechanisms that felt fragile or unfinished.

The crease problem and the push for a better surface

The drive to create a foldable unlike its competitors is illustrated by a story from Richard Dinh, Apple’s vice president of product design. At one point, Dinh asked Ternus whether the team should proceed with a top surface material similar to those used by competitors. Dinh felt the material had flaws, but he also wondered whether it was potentially good enough to move forward.

Ternus encouraged the team to keep pushing. According to Dinh, Ternus replied: “Look, Rich, you’ll know when it’s the right thing.” That response gave the team confidence to push boundaries in innovation and manufacturing, to travel worldwide to connect suppliers, and to develop the nanotexture surface technology used on iPhone Duo.

The result is a surface made from a custom polymer and built atop a hinge with more than 100 tiny interior precision components. Early users have said they can barely detect a crease at all. For a foldable phone, that is a meaningful achievement. The crease has been one of the most visible weaknesses of the category, a constant reminder that the device bends in half. Reducing it requires work across materials, mechanical engineering, and manufacturing process control.

A CEO spending days in the design studio

The interview also describes Ternus as deeply focused on design in his early tenure as CEO. He has reportedly spent multiple days a week in the studio with the industrial-design and human-interface teams. The detail reinforces how central product design is to his leadership style. For a company whose identity is tied to hardware and software integration, the CEO’s presence in the design studio sends a signal about priorities.

That focus does not mean Ternus is indifferent to engineering. His background is in hardware, and the iPhone Duo story is as much about manufacturing and component design as it is about aesthetics. The custom polymer surface, the precision hinge, and the supplier relationships required to produce them all sit at the intersection of design and engineering. Ternus appears to be positioning himself as a leader who wants to understand both sides closely.

AI strategy: differentiation over doing everything

Ternus also addressed Apple’s approach to artificial intelligence. Asked about Apple Intelligence’s reliance on Gemini technology, he framed the decision around focus rather than dependency. “There’s not really a goal that we have to make every single thing in a product. We make the things where we can really bring differentiation,” he said.

That answer fits Apple’s longstanding strategy of controlling key layers of the experience while relying on partners for other pieces. The company has often built its own chips, operating systems, and core frameworks, but it has also used third-party components and services when doing so made sense. In AI, the question is where Apple can add enough value to justify building in-house, and where it can work with outside technology without surrendering the user experience.

Ternus also argued that Siri AI has advantages that are difficult for rivals to replicate. “Everything in your life is on your phone. With Siri AI, you can leverage all that information to do things, learn things, and figure out things in a way that nobody else can do,” he said. The claim is ambitious, but it points to Apple’s core asset: a tightly integrated device that holds messages, photos, calendars, location data, and personal context. If Apple can use that context responsibly, Siri could become more useful than a general-purpose assistant that lacks access to the same depth of personal information.

The adrenaline of a September event

Ternus also offered a lighter detail about the pressure of Apple’s September product events. Asked about sleep before the show, he said: “I was on such a moment of adrenaline and caffeine and excitement for the day.” The remark is a reminder that even for longtime executives, launching new products remains a high-stakes performance. Apple’s fall events draw intense attention from customers, developers, investors, and competitors, and the CEO is expected to project confidence while explaining why each new device matters.

For iPhone Duo, the stakes are especially high. Foldables remain a relatively small part of the smartphone market, but they carry outsized symbolic weight. They represent a test of whether a company can innovate in mechanical design while preserving the polish users expect from a premium phone. Apple’s entry will be judged not only on whether it folds, but on whether it feels like an Apple product first and a foldable second.

Ternus’s comments suggest that is exactly the standard the company set for itself. The years of waiting, the 2011 patent work, the rejection of early competitor designs, the supplier trips, and the custom hinge all point to a single idea: Apple wanted to enter the category only when it could argue that the trade-offs had been meaningfully reduced. Whether the market agrees will be settled by users, but the interview makes clear that Ternus sees iPhone Duo as a design-led bet rather than a rushed response to a trend.

Source:9to5Mac News