“AI has not been a particular strength for them,” Sculley said of Apple.
“We have a great team, and we’re putting all of our energy behind it,” he said.
Sculley, who served as CEO of Apple from 1983 to 1993, acknowledged the possibility of Cook’s tenure coming to an end, saying on Thursday that whoever succeeds him should help transition the company from an orientation around apps to agentic AI.
It is this push toward agentic AI that has Sculley believing OpenAI presents a real threat to Apple’s competitive prowess. Apps are no longer as effective as a subscription model, he said, which is how OpenAI operates ChatGPT.
“When we had apps at the center of everything, it was selling tools, selling products,” Sculley said. “When you think of subscription, it’s about people paying for something as long as they need it.”
”He’s the one who actually designed and built the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad,” Sculley said. “If there’s anyone who is probably going to be able to bring that dimension to the LLM, in this case OpenAI, it’s probably going to be Jony Ive, working with Sam Altman.”
“That momentum has led us to create 15 to 20 really compelling product ideas. The challenge is to focus,” Ive told Altman at the company’s DevDay conference last week. “It would be easy if you knew there are three good ones. It’s just not like that. We’re designing a family of products. And we’re trying to make sure we’re judicious and thoughtful in what we focus on and to then not be distracted.”
