Who'll Own Your Inevitable AI Assistant?
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客座专栏:托尼·法德尔曾助力 Mac、iPod、iPhone 和智能家居革命。他说,下一场平台战争已经来临,争夺的是那个最了解你的 AI 助手。
Guest column: Tony Fadell helped make the Mac, iPod, iPhone and smart home revolutions happen. The next platform war is here, he says, and it's for the AI assistant that will know you best.
托尼·法德尔是一位活跃的投资人和企业家,拥有 30 多年的历史,创立公司并设计产品,深刻改善人们的生活。他是 Build Collective 的负责人,这是一家投资咨询公司,指导深度科技初创企业。目前,Build Collective 正在指导超过 200 家初创企业,创新颠覆性技术。托尼是 Nest 的创始人兼前 CEO,这家公司开创了物联网。他曾任苹果 iPod 部门的高级副总裁,领导团队创造了前 18 代 iPod 和前三代 iPhone。在他的职业生涯中,托尼拥有超过 300 项专利。2016 年 5 月,《时代》杂志将 Nest 学习恒温器、iPod 和 iPhone 评为“有史以来最具影响力的 50 款小工具”之一。他是《纽约时报》畅销书《Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making》(Harper Business;2022 年 5 月 3 日)的作者。2025 年 10 月,他被任命为麻省理工学院晨兴设计学院的首任驻校设计师。
Tony Fadell is an active investor and entrepreneur with a 30-plus year history of founding companies and designing products that profoundly improve people's lives. He is the principal at Build Collective, an investment and advisory firm coaching deep tech startups. Currently, Build Collective is coaching over 200 startups innovating game-changing technologies. Tony is the founder and former CEO of Nest, the company that pioneered the internet of things. He was the senior vice president of Apple's iPod Division and led the team that created the first 18 generations of the iPod and the first three generations of the iPhone. Throughout his career, Tony has authored more than 300 patents. In May 2016, Time named the Nest Learning Thermostat, the iPod and the iPhone as three of the "50 Most Influential Gadgets of All Time." He is the New York Times best-selling author of Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making (Harper Business; May 3, 2022). In October 2025, he was named the inaugural designer in residence at the MIT Morningside Academy for Design.
AI 助手将成为技术的下一个战场。
AI assistants will be the next battleground in technology.
每一项伟大的技术都赋予人类一种新的超能力。个人计算机将计算能力交到个人手中,使曾经只属于政府、大学和企业的机器成为任何人都能使用的工具。互联网让我们能够访问世界上的信息。智能手机将这种力量放入我们的口袋,让我们几乎可以从任何地方与任何人或任何事物连接。
Every great technology gives humans a new superpower. The personal computer put the power of computing into the hands of individuals, turning machines once reserved for governments, universities and corporations into tools anyone could use. The internet gave us access to the world's information. The smartphone put that power in our pockets, connecting us to anyone and anything from almost anywhere.
每一次突破都改变了一个人所能做的事情。但即使有了所有这些技术,我们仍然在做很多工作。我们安排会议、整理收件箱、管理数十个应用程序、吸收无尽的信息,并每天做出数千个小决定。
Each breakthrough changed what one person could do. But even with all this technology, we're still the ones doing a lot of the work. We schedule meetings, organize our inboxes, manage dozens of apps, absorb endless amounts of information and make thousands of small decisions every day.
在平台转变中,技术感觉像是一个工具,然后才变得更大。AI 正处于那个时刻。我们大多将 AI 体验为我们可以提问或分配任务的东西。但突破发生在 AI 理解而不仅仅是回应的时候。
In platform shifts, tech feels like a tool before it becomes something bigger. AI is in that moment now. We mostly experience AI as something we ask questions of or give tasks to. But the breakthrough comes when AI understands, not just responds.
我的职业生涯经历了甚至引发了平台转变。Mac、iPod、iPhone、Nest。每一次转变都有一个共同点:将曾经稀有、困难或昂贵的能力变得更容易获得。那些理解行为转变而不仅仅是技术转变的构建者,才能建造出持久的东西。
I've spent my career experiencing and even causing platform shifts. The Mac. The iPod. The iPhone. Nest. Every one of these transitions had something in common: taking a capability that used to be rare, difficult or expensive and making it more accessible. The builders who understood the behavioral shift, not just the technology shift, were the ones who built something that lasted.
少数人拥有另一种超能力:一个出色的助手。这是一种超能力,不仅仅是因为有人回复他们的电子邮件或预订航班——这些都是有用的任务。助手的真正价值在于他们理解任务背后的人:你是谁,你的人际关系,你的日常,你的家人,你的优先事项,以及让你夜不能寐的事情。他们知道该处理什么,该把什么捆绑在一起,以及什么真正需要你的注意。
A handful of people have had another kind of superpower: a great assistant. It's a superpower not because someone answers their emails or books their flights – those are helpful tasks. The real value of an assistant is that they understand the person behind the tasks: who you are, your relationships, your routines, your family, what you prioritize and what keeps you up at night. They know what to handle, what to bundle together and what truly needs your attention.
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一个出色的助手可以在你开口之前就预判你的需求。但这种关系不是一夜之间建立的。它需要多年的合作、学习模式、建立信任和积累背景。
A great assistant can anticipate what you need before you even ask. But that relationship doesn't happen overnight. It takes years of working together, learning patterns, building trust and accumulating context.
一旦你拥有了这种超能力,你就不想失去它。失去一个出色的助手意味着失去多年的共享知识和理解。这种积累的理解将助手从帮助你完成任务的人转变为扩展你能力的人。
Once you have that superpower, you never want to lose it. Losing a great assistant means losing years of shared knowledge and understanding. That accumulated understanding is what transforms an assistant from someone who helps you complete tasks into someone who expands what you can do.
大多数人从未有过助手,也没有见过一个出色的助手是如何实际工作的,这意味着我们同时在学习两件事:助手能做什么,以及 AI 能成为什么。
Most people have never had an assistant or seen how a great one actually works, which means we are learning two things at once: what an assistant can do and what AI can become.
AI 开始像止痛药一样起作用。它可以消除摩擦,自动化一些任务,帮助我们更快行动。但我们仍然在管理 AI,而不是 AI 管理我们。我们提示、纠正和引导。这种情况将会改变。
AI is beginning to act as a painkiller. It can remove friction, automate some tasks and help us move faster. But we still manage AI more than AI manages us. We prompt, correct and guide. That will change.
止痛药消除了你已经感受到的痛苦。超能力则超越了消除痛苦。它解锁了你甚至无法想象的新能力。然而,构建一个能赋予你这些超能力的 AI 助手需要比我们现在拥有的多得多的背景信息。
A painkiller removes the pain you already feel. A superpower goes beyond removing pain. It unlocks new capabilities you couldn't even have imagined. However, building an AI assistant that gives you these superpowers requires a lot more context than what we've got right now.
这些是技术中重要的时刻。当一种新能力迫使我们重新思考什么是可能的,以及我们应该对生活中的产品有什么期望时。
These are the moments in technology that matter. When a new capability forces us to rethink what's possible and what we should expect from the products in our lives.
一个同时处理三个客户、六个截止日期和一堆未付发票的自由职业者,很快将拥有一个 AI 助手来跟踪这一切,这样他们就可以专注于工作而不是日常开销。一位家长将用它来管理家庭日历、学校提醒、购物清单和医生预约。一个学生将用它来组织课程、准备考试并按时完成截止日期。一位老年人将依赖它进行用药提醒和预约协调。
A freelancer juggling three clients, six deadlines and a stack of unpaid invoices will soon have an AI assistant that keeps track of it all, so they can focus on the work instead of the overhead. A parent will use it to manage the family calendar, school reminders, grocery lists and doctor's appointments. A student will have it organize coursework, prepare for exams and stay on top of deadlines. An aging adult will rely on it for medication reminders and appointment coordination.
AI 助手不是聊天机器人。它不是单个模型或一个完成任务的智能体。那些只是解决方案的一部分。一个优秀的 AI 助手不是单一的事物。像所有优秀的产品一样,AI 助手是许多技术无缝协作以创造简单体验的结果。很快,你的 AI 助手不仅会告诉你航班延误了。它会理解为什么延误很重要,重新预订航班,通知你要见的人,并更新你的日历。
An AI assistant isn't a chatbot. It isn't a single model or one agent completing a task. Those are pieces of the solution. A great AI assistant isn't one thing. Like every great product, an AI assistant is the result of many technologies working together seamlessly to create one simple experience. Soon your AI assistant won't just tell you your flight is delayed. It will understand why that delay matters, rebook it, notify the people you're meeting and update your calendar.
上下文赋予助手感知能力。能够知道你是否在工作、在家、旅行、开会、锻炼或与家人在一起。上下文越丰富,你的助手就越有用和个性化。
_Context_ gives the assistant awareness. The ability to know if you're at work, at home, traveling, in a meeting, exercising or spending time with family. The richer the context, the more useful and personalized your assistant becomes.
记忆使助手能够随着时间的推移了解你的偏好、工作流程、习惯、关系、日常事务和之前的对话。
_Memory_ allows the assistant to learn your preferences, workflows, habits, relationships, routines and prior conversations over time.
合适的交互和个性建立信任。每个助手都会发展出一种沟通风格、语气和模式,让使用它的人感到自然。
The right _interaction and personality_ build trust. Every assistant develops a communication style, tone and patterns that feel natural to the person using it.
技能赋予助手完成任务的能力:研究、编码、日程安排、财务分析、设计工具、旅行协调、健康跟踪或与其他专业智能体交互。
_Skills_ give assistants the ability to get things done: research, coding, scheduling, financial analysis, design tools, travel coordination, health tracking or interacting with other specialized agents.
最后,反思,即助手综合你的工作流程、兴趣、关系和日常事务中的信息,以识别模式并揭示你自己无法发现的有用见解的能力。
And finally, _reflection_, the ability for an assistant to synthesize information across your workflows, interests, relationships and routines to identify patterns and surface useful insights you wouldn't have found on your own.
它们共同将 AI 从一个响应的工具转变为一个理解你的 AI 助手。
Together they're what turn AI from a tool that responds into an AI assistant that understands you.
大多数人仍然不知道他们需要一个 AI 助手。这对于一个新平台来说并不罕见。在个人计算的早期,大多数人不理解为什么他们需要一台 Mac 或 PC。计算机给人的感觉是专业、技术化,并且与现实生活脱节。苹果明白,在平台能够规模化之前,行为必须改变,因此它让 Mac 进入教室,投资学生定价,并在产品变得必要之前使其变得熟悉。如果你在苹果上学习,苹果就会成为你的第二天性并值得信赖。
Most people still don't know they need an AI assistant. That's not unusual for a new platform. In the early days of personal computing, most people didn't understand why they'd ever need a Mac or a PC. Computers felt niche, technical, and disconnected from real life. Apple understood that behaviors had to change before the platform could scale, so it got Macs into classrooms, invested in student pricing and made the product familiar before it was necessary. If you learned on Apple, Apple became second nature and trusted.
我们仍处于 AI 助手的电子邮件检查阶段。还有更多潜力有待挖掘。
We're still in the email-checking phase of AI assistants. There's a lot more to unlock.
ChatGPT 达到 1 亿用户的速度比互联网历史上任何消费技术都要快。人们已经在与 AI 共同生活,但我们仍处于早期阶段。下一个转变将把这个工具从偶尔使用的聊天机器人转变为持续陪伴在你身边的值得信赖的助手。
ChatGPT reached 100 million users faster than any consumer technology in internet history. People are already living with AI, but we're still in the early stages. The next shift moves this tool from occasional chatbot to a trusted assistant working persistently by your side.
最初的体验根本不像 AI。它们感觉像是更智能的搜索。现在,我们让它自动处理简单的事情:体育比分、天气警报和旅行行程。接下来,委托的任务会增加。这是重要的转变。
The first experiences didn't feel like AI at all. They felt like smarter search. Now, we're having it do simple things automatically: sports scores, weather alerts and travel itineraries. Next, the delegation increases. That's the important shift.
一个助手变得越有用,你就越依赖它。你越依赖它,积累的记忆就越多,信任就越深厚。最终它会融入你的生活,帮助你管理生活,甚至享受生活。
The more useful an assistant becomes, the more you rely on it. The more you rely on it, the more memory accumulates and trust builds. Eventually it weaves itself into your life, helps you manage life and even enjoy life.
iPhone 也经历了类似的路径。它最初是一部可以用来查看电子邮件的手机。然后它变成了你的钱包、导航系统、相机、音乐播放器、消息平台,最终成为大多数人出门不能没有的东西。我们仍处于 AI 助手的电子邮件检查阶段。还有更多潜力有待挖掘。
The iPhone had a similar path. It started as a phone that you could use to check email. Then it became your wallet, your navigation system, your camera, your music player, your messaging platform and eventually something most people cannot leave home without. We're still in the email-checking phase of AI assistants. There's a lot more to unlock.
平台战争曾围绕应用、生态系统、操作系统、开发者关系和网络效应展开。这场战争则不同。
Platform wars have been fought over apps, ecosystems, operating systems, developer relationships and network effects. This one is different.
模型并非助手。助手才是平台。
The model is not the assistant. The assistant is the platform.
我们以前见过这种模式。iPhone 将硬件、软件、服务和生态系统结合在一起,改变了人们与技术互动的方式。AI 也将如此。
We've seen this pattern before. The iPhone brought together hardware, software, services and an ecosystem that changed how people interacted with tech. The same will be true for AI.
托尼·法德尔在创立 Nest 之前曾帮助打造了 iPod。
Tony Fadell helped create the iPod before going on to found Nest.
AI 平台战争不会仅靠模型取胜。谁能构建完整的助手体验,让上下文、记忆、交互、技能和反思协同工作,谁就能赢得这场战争。
The AI platform war won't be won by the model alone. Whoever builds the complete assistant experience with context, memory, interaction, skills and reflection all working together will win this war.
例如,你告诉 AI 助手你需要周三去纽约开会,周五晚上回家。没有上下文,它不知道从哪里订航班。没有记忆,它不知道你总是选靠过道的座位,喜欢同一家中城酒店,并且需要回家接孩子放学。
You tell your AI assistant you need to go to New York for a meeting Wednesday and be home by Friday evening, for example. Without context it doesn't know where to book the flight from. Without memory it doesn't know you always choose an aisle seat, prefer the same Midtown hotel and need to be back home for school pickup.
上下文告诉模型当前发生了什么。记忆告诉它你是谁。技能让它能够行动。交互建立信任。反思帮助它连接模式并预测你下一步需要什么。模型是处理信息并生成响应的大脑。但仅有大脑是不够的。没有系统的其余部分,每次交互都从零开始。
Context tells the model what's happening right now. Memory tells it who you are. Skills allow it to act. The interaction builds trust. Reflection helps it connect patterns and anticipate what you need next. The model is the brain that processes information and generates responses. But a brain alone isn't enough. Without the rest of the system, every interaction starts from zero.
微软、谷歌、苹果、Anthropic、OpenAI、Perplexity 和 xAI 都在竞相掌控这种与你非常私人的交互。目前,对它们中的大多数来说,模型是它们的护城河。但模型已经在商品化。我们的个人硬件设备将接入不同的 AI“大脑”——在云端或设备本身——无论哪个最便宜、最快或提供更多隐私。
Microsoft, Google, Apple, Anthropic, OpenAI, Perplexity and xAI are all competing to own this very personal interaction with you. Right now, for most of them, the model is their moat. But models are already commoditizing. Our personal hardware devices will plug into different AI "brains" – in the cloud or on devices themselves – whichever are cheapest, fastest or offer up more privacy.
真正的护城河将是随着时间的推移围绕你构建的完整助手。
The real moat will be the complete assistant built around you over time.
没有单一的云服务能看清你生活的全貌。但一个互联的设备生态系统可以。你的手机知道你的位置,你的手表知道你的心率,你的笔记本电脑知道你的日历,你的眼镜知道你在和谁说话。每个信号单独使用都有用。结合起来,它们创建了一个更强大的画像,助手可以用它来理解你。
No single cloud service can see the full picture of your life. But a connected ecosystem of devices can. Your phone knows your location, your watch knows your heart rate, your laptop knows your calendar, your glasses know who you're talking to. Each signal is useful alone. Combined, they create a much more powerful portrait the assistant can use to understand you.
这就是我所说的设备联邦。谁控制了设备联邦,谁就拥有了构建最值得信赖、最有价值的 AI 助手的基础。
This is what I call the Federation of Devices. Whoever controls this Federation of Devices has the foundation to build the most trusted and most valuable AI assistant.
一个真正的人工智能助手,不是你每天只问几个问题就行的。它需要时刻提供帮助。而这需要持续的算力。如果每一次交互都必须经过云端,那么运行一个真正个人化的人工智能助手的成本,就会变得很像雇佣一个人类助手的成本,这对大多数消费者来说遥不可及。
A real AI assistant isn't something you ask just a couple questions a day. It's always helping. And that requires constant compute. If every interaction must travel to the cloud, the cost of running a truly personal AI assistant starts looking a lot more like paying for a human assistant, which is out of reach for most consumers.
实现规模扩张的唯一方法,就是将更多的智能移近你身边。
The only way this scales is to move more intelligence closer to you.
想想你家的安防摄像头。你肯定不希望为了检测运动而把每一帧视频都发送到远程服务器。处理过程发生在设备端,因为经济性、速度和隐私都要求如此。能够实时翻译对话的智能眼镜,不能等待与数据中心的一次往返。否则,在答案返回之前,你一句话已经说了一半。
Think about your home security camera. You don't want every frame of video sent to a remote server just to detect motion. Processing happens on the device because the economics, speed and privacy demand it. Smart glasses that translate a conversation in real time can't wait for a round trip to a data center. You'd be halfway through the sentence before the answer came back.
你的人工智能助手也不例外。本地 AI 处理日常事务,云端模型处理复杂推理。像 Plumerai 这样的公司正是为这一时刻而构建,他们用微小的人工智能模型,小到可以运行在指甲盖大小的芯片上,却又强大到足以处理你最需要的任务。(编者注:托尼·法德尔是 Plumerai 的投资者。)
Your AI assistant is no different. Local AI handles the routine. Cloud models handle the complex reasoning. Companies like Plumerai are building exactly for this moment with tiny AI models small enough to run on a chip the size of a thumbnail and powerful enough to handle the tasks you need most. (Editors' note: Tony Fadell is an investor in Plumerai.)
未来不会是所有东西都在云端,也不会是所有东西都在设备端。架构将是分布式的。这样你才能让经济性发挥作用。
The future won't be everything in the cloud or everything on device. The architecture will be distributed. That's how you get the economics to work.
控制设备联邦的公司获胜。拥有 25 亿活跃设备,这就是苹果的牌。
The company that controls the federation of devices wins. With 2.5 billion active devices, that's Apple's hand.
谷歌拥有令人难以置信的服务器端基础设施:Gemini、定制 TPU、数据中心、搜索、Gmail、地图、Android 和 YouTube。没有人比它更接近拥有模型和云层。但云不知道你冷。它不知道你在开车、你的会议刚结束或你在和谁说话。你的设备知道。
Google has incredible server-side infrastructure: Gemini, custom TPUs, data centers, Search, Gmail, Maps, Android and YouTube. Nobody is closer to owning the model and cloud layer. But the cloud doesn't know you're cold. It doesn't know that you're driving, your meeting just ended or who you're talking to. Your devices do.
我们制造 iPhone 时没有问它会如何影响人际联系。现在有了 AI,我们应该问这个问题。
We built the iPhone without asking what it would do to human connection. We should ask that question now with AI.
苹果拥有 iPhone、Mac、Apple Watch、AirPods、身份层、边缘计算以及技术史上最深厚的消费者信任关系之一。M 系列芯片为你的 Mac 和 iPad 提供动力。A 系列芯片为你的 iPhone 和 Apple Watch 提供动力。两者共享相同的统一架构,CPU、GPU 和内存集成在单个芯片上,专为边缘 AI 而构建。苹果的设备联邦将在设备上运行 AI,并在需要时与云中更强大的模型协调。苹果与 Gemini 的合作是未来方向的信号。
Apple has the iPhone, Mac, Apple Watch, AirPods, the identity layer, edge computing and one of the deepest consumer trust relationships in the history of technology. M-series chips power your Mac and iPad. A-series chips power your iPhone and Apple Watch. Both share the same unified architecture, CPU, GPU and memory on a single chip, built for AI at the edge. Apple's Federation of Devices will run AI on device and coordinate with more powerful models in the cloud when needed. The Apple and Gemini partnership is a signal of where this is going.
模型的重要性不如谁控制围绕你构建的助手,这才是持久的优势。你可以更换大脑。但你不能更换随时间积累的记忆、上下文和信任。
The model matters less than who controls the assistant built around you, that's the lasting advantage. You can swap the brain. You can't swap the memory, context and trust built over time.
我们正在一边飞行一边建造这架飞机。我花了 30 多年时间打造改变人们生活方式的产品。我并非总能预见到它们会引发的问题。这一次,我主动提出了这些问题。
We're building this plane while flying it. I've spent 30-plus years building products that changed how people live. I didn't always anticipate the questions they'd raise. This time I'm asking them.
如果你的 AI 助手了解你的沟通风格、工作流程、谈判模式以及机构知识,那么当你离开一家公司时,这些上下文归谁所有?如果它深度融入医疗保健领域,当医疗服务提供者或保险系统发生变化时会发生什么?记忆和个性化在不同系统之间应该具有多大的可移植性?
If your AI assistant understands your communication style, workflows, negotiation patterns and institutional knowledge, who owns that context when you leave a company? If it becomes deeply integrated into healthcare, what happens when providers or insurance systems change? How portable should memory and personalization be across systems?
还有一个整个行业都不愿提出的问题。一个比大多数人都更了解你、随时可用、无限耐心、从不评判的助手……这是一个非常强大的工具。可能过于强大且令人上瘾,其程度我们尚未完全认清。
And then there's the question nobody in the industry wants to ask. An assistant that knows you better than most people, is always available, is endlessly patient, is never judgmental… that's a very powerful tool. Possibly too powerful and addictive in ways we haven't fully reckoned with.
我们制造 iPhone 时没有问过它会对人际关系产生什么影响。现在面对 AI,我们应该提出这个问题。
We built the iPhone without asking what it would do to human connection. We should ask that question now with AI.
当我们选择 iPhone 而非安卓设备,或选择 Mac 而非 PC 时,我们选择的是一部手机或一台电脑。而这一次,我们选择的将是一个了解我们如何思考、工作和生活的东西。这是前所未有的。人类处于这一平台变革的中心。请像对待重要事物一样构建它。
When we chose the iPhone over an Android device, or a Mac over a PC, we were choosing a phone or a computer. This time we're choosing something that will know how we think, work and live. That's never happened before. Humans are at the center of this platform shift. Build it like it matters.
本文是 CNET 系列客座专栏 Alt View 的一部分,该专栏为多元化的专家和杰出人士提供论坛,分享他们对快速发展的人工智能领域的见解。更多 AI 报道,请关注 CNET 的 AI Atlas。
_This article is part of CNET's series of guest columns calledAlt View, a forum for a diverse array of experts and luminaries to share their insights into the rapidly evolving field of artificial intelligence. For more AI coverage, check out CNET'sAI Atlas._
托尼·法德尔是一位活跃的投资人和企业家,拥有超过 30 年的创办公司和设计产品的历史,这些产品深刻改善了人们的生活。他是 Build Collective 的负责人,这是一家投资和咨询公司,指导深度科技初创企业。目前,Build Collective 正在指导超过 200 家初创公司,创新颠覆性技术。托尼是 Nest 的创始人兼前 CEO,该公司开创了物联网。他曾担任苹果 iPod 部门的高级副总裁,并领导团队创造了前 18 代 iPod 以及前三代 iPhone。在他的职业生涯中,托尼拥有超过 300 项专利。2016 年 5 月,《时代》杂志将 Nest 学习恒温器、iPod 和 iPhone 评为“史上最具影响力的 50 款小工具”之一。他是《纽约时报》畅销书《Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making》(Harper Business;2022 年 5 月 3 日)的作者。2025 年 10 月,他被任命为麻省理工学院晨兴设计学院的首位驻校设计师。查看完整简介。
Tony Fadell is an active investor and entrepreneur with a 30-plus year history of founding companies and designing products that profoundly improve people's lives. He is the principal at Build Collective, an investment and advisory firm coaching deep tech startups. Currently, Build Collective is coaching over 200 startups innovating game-changing technologies. Tony is the founder and former CEO of Nest, the company that pioneered the internet of things. He was the senior vice president of Apple's iPod Division and led the team that created the first 18 generations of the iPod and the first three generations of the iPhone. Throughout his career, Tony has authored more than 300 patents. In May 2016, Time named the Nest Learning Thermostat, the iPod and the iPhone as three of the "50 Most Influential Gadgets of All Time." He is the New York Times best-selling author of Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making (Harper Business; May 3, 2022). In October 2025, he was named the inaugural designer in residence at the MIT Morningside Academy for Design.See full bio