Jony Ive, iPhone killer?

Jony Ive is back!

After six years of keeping a fairly low profile — except for buying millions of dollars of prime real estate near San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood — the storied former head of Apple design is working on a portfolio of new AI hardware with Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI.

In a deal announced Wednesday, Ive is selling a secretive AI startup and side project called io to Altman.

Ive and Altman are promoting themselves as best buddies and kindred spirits in the search for a new generation of products that promise (they say) to leapfrog the current generation of “legacy” products (e.g., smartphones) that Ive famously helped birth.

Now he’s going to knife his own baby.

In a somewhat infuriating, smug and frustratingly detail-free video that runs for 10 minutes, the pair announced their partnership, which is reportedly worth a cool $6.5 billion. (By comparison, Steve Jobs made about $7.4 billion when he sold Pixar to Disney.)

We have details on the new partnership and some background on key players in today’s lead story.

What does Jony Ive’s mysterious prototype do?

I’m willing to bet the new hardware will look and work something like Humane’s doomed Ai Pin.

Humane, which was also led by Apple alumni, tried to sell a smart lapel pin that provided 24/7 access to a powerful AI, but it was slow, buggy and the hardware was undercooked.

However, it seems clear that there’s potential for a product that acts like a human assistant: an AI that you speak to in natural language, that understands the context of your request, and can execute tasks for you like a capable human assistant would.

There’s no reason Siri couldn’t morph into such a thing, if Apple could get its AI act together.

Perhaps Ive and Altman will get there first. They promise a peek at their first product “next year.” It’s going to super-interesting to see what they cook up.

Also in today’s newsletter:

• Find out how to stash the iPhone photos you don’t want anyone else to see.

• LiberNovo’s new Omni office chair looks amazingly comfortable. It uses some cool tech to adjust to your body. Plus, it fully reclines — and can even give you a back massage!

• The first teaser trailer for Jason Momoa’s upcoming Apple TV+ show, Chief of War, looks absolutely epic. Watch it now.

• Cheers to Incogni for sponsoring Cult of Mac Today this week. Incogni specializes in scrubbing your personal data from the web, drastically reducing the number of spam calls and emails you receive. You can get a special deal on Incogni with code CULTOFMAC. See below.

• After years of legal wrangling (and very public mudslinging), Fortnite is back on the App Store.

• We dug up great new deals and price drops on Powerbeats Pro 2 earbuds, AirTags and an all-in-one AI tool that’s proven incredibly popular with Cult of Mac readers.

• Today’s the day in Apple history that the company officially ended one of its most iconic (and effective) ad campaigns.

— Leander Kahney, EIC.

^{A message from Libernovo}

^{A message from the Cult of Mac Deals team}

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