An ambitious Siri. An Apple carrier. One subscription that makes the whole thing worth having.
If I were running Apple, I would make Apple One the most obvious subscription an Apple customer could buy.
Today, it bundles services. I would build it into the commercial centre of the company’s next chapter: a genuinely useful personal assistant, a mobile connection, and the services people already use, under one subscription.
The idea is simple enough. Making it feel simple would be the interesting part.
Apple would need to become more ambitious about what Siri can do, take responsibility for more of the connected home, and give its intelligence a way to travel with us that does not involve looking at another screen.
It would also need to become a little more comfortable releasing things that might fail.
Here is where I would start.
Give Siri something to do while we are away
The new Siri AI is a foundation: a dedicated app, personal context, and actions across applications. I would push that foundation much further.
I want Siri to become a persistent personal assistant in the direction of ChatGPT’s dots or Meta’s Muse. Something that can hold a goal, work on it in the background, and return when there is a result or a decision worth my attention.
If I am planning a trip, it should keep the arrangements moving. If someone is waiting for an answer, it should help me avoid leaving them waiting. If I mention something that matters next week, it should still matter to Siri next week.
That requires a large, serious ecosystem of integrations. Email, calendars, travel services, shopping, work tools, household accounts. The assistant should be useful across the services a person actually uses, including the ones Apple does not own.
Its standalone app would be the place to see ongoing work, give it direction, and review what it has done. But the work should continue after I close the app.
“Always on” should mean that it keeps track of things. It should not mean that it keeps interrupting me.
I would make Apple Health a central part of this experience, too. Sleep, activity, routines, appointments, and the questions someone wants to discuss with their doctor could become part of one useful, ongoing conversation. The goal would be to help people act on information they already have, with appropriate limits around medical decisions.
For a company whose products already accompany people through so much of the day, this feels like a natural ambition.
Launch Apple Carrier
I would launch a mobile service under Apple’s own brand.
An MVNO: partner with existing networks for capacity, then take responsibility for the experience people actually deal with. Activation, plans, billing, adding devices, and getting help when something goes wrong.
One account for your connected Apple devices. Straightforward family plans. Sensible travel options. A clear price.
Setting it up should feel as considered as Apple Card or Apple One. Buying a new device should not create another small administrative project.
This would be difficult. Carrier agreements, coverage, roaming, and regulation do not disappear because the checkout screen is elegant. I would start in a few markets, get the fundamentals right, and expand from there.
But connectivity is too central to the experience of using an iPhone, Apple Watch, or cellular iPad to remain something Apple mostly hands over at the end of the sale.
An Apple carrier would give the company a chance to make that experience its own.
Make Apple One the subscription you start with
This is where the pieces come together.
Apple One already has family sharing. That is not the opportunity I am pointing at.
I would make it the default subscription people consider when they enter the Apple ecosystem, because its core offering would be useful almost immediately:
- Siri Personal Assistant, with persistent background work and broad integrations.
- Apple Carrier, providing the mobile service.
- Apple’s existing services, brought together in a coherent bundle.
The package should make sense to someone who does not spend their evenings studying subscription comparison tables.
Buy the device. Choose your plan. Your connection works, your assistant is ready, and your services are there.
There could still be tiers, regional differences, and individual options. But the central proposition should be unmistakable. Apple One would become the simplest way to get the full value of being an Apple customer.
Family access would extend that proposition without becoming its entire identity. Each person would have their own assistant, with shared spaces for the things a household chooses to manage together.
I would include Siri for Kids as a purpose-built experience: age-appropriate learning, creativity, and questions, with understandable parental controls. A child’s first experience of AI deserves more thought than a smaller version of an adult chatbot.
The business case is appealing because the value would become habitual. A service that helps every day, bundled with the connection you already need, has a much stronger reason to remain in your monthly budget.
Take the home seriously, down to the kettle
Apple’s newly announced Home Collection is a meaningful step. I would go further than the partner-led approach and build a broad first-party home lineup.
Lights, locks, sensors, lamps, small accessories. Objects that are useful, attractive, and unmistakably part of the same system.
And yes, a kettle.
A home is largely made of unremarkable things that people use every day. There is an opportunity in making those things work unusually well together.
I would want Apple to own the design, software, setup, and long-term support. Manufacturing partners are inevitable; delegating the product experience is a choice.
Some devices could respond to Siri. Others could quietly participate in routines. Very few would need screens.
The interesting question is how a room behaves when someone comes home, how the lighting changes through the evening, or how an ordinary object fits into a routine without demanding attention.
The basics should remain dependable. The kettle should boil water without a subscription. The lock should work when the internet is down.
If Apple wants a larger place in the home, it should earn it through the quality of these small encounters.
Put Siri in glasses people want to wear
I would also build a platform for audio-only glasses.
No display. No camera required. Discreet microphones, open-ear audio, and easy access to the same personal assistant that is already working on your behalf.
Directions while walking. A thought saved before it disappears. A quiet update on something you asked Siri to handle earlier.
For this, I would partner with eyewear brands.
Glasses are personal in a way that a thermostat is not. Fit, shape, prescription options, and taste matter. Apple could supply the technology and interaction standards while different manufacturers make frames people genuinely want on their faces.
The assistant would be consistent. The aesthetic would not have to be.
Battery life, outdoor audio, and knowing when to stay quiet would matter more than a spectacular demo. Get those details right, and Siri could become easier to reach precisely because there is less hardware competing for attention.
Ship at least one shitty product a year
Finally, I would give Apple permission to release something that might be a bad idea.
At least once a year.
A peculiar accessory. An unfamiliar form factor. A small product that makes reviewers wonder whether anyone in Cupertino was supposed to stop the meeting.
Apple should ship at least one shitty product a year.
That is not an argument for unreliable locks or unsafe appliances. It is an argument for taking a real risk on whether people will want something.
When every launch must arrive with the confidence of a historic achievement, uncertainty becomes difficult to tolerate. Ideas can spend years becoming more presentable without becoming more interesting.
Some of that uncertainty can only be resolved by putting a product into people’s hands.
Ship it at a sensible scale. Watch what people do with it. Make the second version better, or admit that the experiment did not work.
A company with Apple’s resources should be able to afford the occasional awkward product. I would be more worried about what it loses by avoiding one.
A business built around being useful
These ideas reinforce one another.
Siri gives Apple One a daily purpose. Apple Carrier adds a service customers already need. Home devices and audio glasses create more opportunities to use the assistant. The subscription makes the whole experience easier to buy, understand, and share.
Executed well, this could grow monthly recurring revenue and bring Apple more deeply into the everyday life of a household.
That would be the commercial result. The customer should experience something simpler: fewer things to arrange, fewer accounts to manage, and more help getting through the day.
I would want Apple One to become the subscription people keep because they regularly notice what it does for them.
And I would leave enough room in the plan for the occasional very strange kettle.