John Ternus tells TIME the iPhone Duo goes back to a 2011 patent he co-filed, and calls Apple's memory shortage a crisisJohn Ternus tells TIME the iPhone Duo goes back to a 2011 patent he co-filed, and calls Apple's memory shortage a crisis

Apple chief executive John Ternus has given TIME his first long interview since taking over on 1 September, and much of it is about the iPhone Duo.

The profile, by TIME correspondent Andrew R. Chow, was published on 15 October as part of the magazine's Best Inventions of 2026, with the Duo among the picks. It draws on two interviews in September, around the Duo's unveiling at Apple Park. It arrives a day before pre-orders open at 5am Pacific on 16 October; the phone, from $1,999, goes on sale on 23 October.

How long has Apple been working on a foldable iPhone?

TIME reports that in 2011 Ternus and five other engineers filed a patent application for a foldable device, looking at the batteries and circuit boards such a product would need. Ternus told the magazine it was already clear then that OLED displays would become flexible. TIME does not give a start date for the Duo project itself, only that Apple explored the idea for years while rivals shipped first. Ternus, as iClarified relays the profile, found those early rivals "cheap and crappy".

The interview adds four details about how the phone was built:

• The surface. Richard Dinh, Apple's vice president of product design, says he asked Ternus whether to accept a top layer like the ones competitors used, flaws and all. Ternus told him the team would know when it had the right thing. Apple went on to develop a custom polymer nanotexture, and TIME says the team travelled the world to line up suppliers who could make it.
• The hinge. It contains more than 100 small precision parts, according to TIME.
• The display engine. Apple says it used its own silicon to build a new display engine for moving between the outer and inner screens without a visible jump.
• The software. iOS moves the main controls from the bottom of the screen to the right side on the Duo, so a thumb can reach them.

On the crease, TIME reports that early users say they can barely see one, and attributes that to them. iClarified's account of the piece is more careful: the matte finish makes the fold less noticeable, it does not remove it.

What did Ternus say about Siri and Gemini?

The new Siri, which launched in the US in September, runs on an Apple model built with Google's Gemini technology. Ternus rejected the idea that this hands control to Google, comparing it to buying displays, memory and modems from other companies. "We make the things where we can really bring differentiation," he said, as iClarified quotes him. For Siri, he said, that difference is personal context: with permission, it can draw on messages, mail, calendars and documents. Lilian Rincon, who leads Apple's AI products, told TIME Siri was designed deliberately "not to be a companion". Requests run on the iPhone where possible and otherwise on Private Cloud Compute.

The memory shortage and the rest of the interview

Ternus called the shortage of memory chips, which has raised costs and delayed production, "absolutely a crisis". Asked about a Financial Times report from July that Apple had tested memory from a Chinese supplier, which drew a letter from a bipartisan group of US senators, he said all options should be on the table. TIME also confirms he spends several days a week with the industrial design and human interface teams, and quotes him on Apple's focus: "You can't do everything." Tim Cook, now executive chairman, still handles relationships with governments.

Our take

The 2011 patent is the headline detail, but it says less than it seems. Apple files patents on ideas it never ships, and a co-filed application proves Ternus was thinking about foldables early, not that the Duo was planned for fifteen years. The more telling story is Dinh's. Choosing to wait for a better screen surface while rivals were already selling foldables is a decision Apple can only defend if the result is visibly better, which is why the crease matters so much. In September an Apple engineering vice president told TechRadar the matte display would stop the crease getting worse with use, and TIME's evidence is still what early users say. Independent testing starts on 23 October.

The design studio detail matters for a different reason. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reported in early October that Ternus works alongside Apple's designers several times a week and that no new design chief was being sought. It was reporting from unnamed sources; it is now on the record in TIME.

The Gemini answer is the most useful line in the piece. Calling Google a supplier, like a display maker, tells us Apple sees the model as a component and the personal context around it as the product. That fits how the rebuilt Siri reached users in September, as a narrow English-only beta. For app makers it is a reminder of where the value sits: Siri is only as personal as the data and actions apps expose to it, so App Intents work is the part developers control.

The memory remark is the one a buyer should weigh. A chief executive calling a shortage a crisis, a day before pre-orders, matches Gurman's report that Duo stock will stay limited even as Apple fills its stores with demo units. If delivery dates slip on the first morning, nobody at APPDOOK will read it as weak demand; Ternus has as good as told buyers to expect it. App makers testing on the Duo should note the right-side controls too: any layout that puts its own buttons on the right edge of the open screen now competes with the system for the same thumb.