On September 9 in Cupertino, Apple steps into a market it long watched from the sidelines, unveiling a foldable iPhone under a new chief executive who has spent a quarter-century building the very machines he now must sell to the world. John Ternus, an engineer by instinct and formation, inherits a company that has not reshaped a product category since AirPods, and his opening act is a $2,000 device that asks consumers to believe Apple can do what Samsung has been attempting since 2019. The moment is less about a single phone than about whether a great institution can still surprise the world