The AI App Store

When Apple announced the iPhone in 2007, the world changed. On stage at the now defunct Macworld conference, Steve Jobs gave an iconic presentation that introduced what would become the most singularly important consumer electronics product in history.

The influence of the iPhone cannot be overstated. It was the pioneering device for technologies like multitouch, an incredibly capable on-device web browser, and an entirely new approach to mobile operating systems. 

But, there is more to the iPhone’s influence thanks to the 2008 announcement of the App Store. A fully integrated marketplace of amazing third-party apps with one-tap installation changed the way that we think about end-user application development. For many people now, their mobile phone is their most-used computer, which means that every app has to consider that user interaction model.

AI Assistants as the New iPhone Moment

Fast forward to today, and I think there is a similar disruption on the horizon. 

Adoption of AI assistants has skyrocketed, and a huge percentage of end-users now have apps like Claude, Amazon Q, and ChatGPT installed on their computers. 

In many ways, these apps are like the iPhone: once announced, the world changed, and before we knew it, existing workflows were upended by more efficient, AI-enabled ones.

Let’s do a thought experiment. 

If the AI assistants are analogous to the iPhone, then what is AI’s version of the App Store? 

I think we are getting some early hints from the market that answer that question. In June, Anthropic announced one-click “extensions” for Claude, allowing customers to discover and install MCP-backed agents developed on top of open standards. With extensions providing integration with our most-used services such as Google Drive, iMessage, Stripe, Airtable, Figma, Atlassian, and more, our preferred AI assistants can now collaborate with agents to accomplish complex workflows spanning many systems, creating an entirely new primary interaction model for users.

AI Assistants in Every Operating System

Over time, I expect that AI assistants will be a core feature of every operating system, whether with new custom assistants developed by OS vendors, or via direct OS-level support for existing third-party assistants.