That same year, Steve Jobs presents the iPhone. No stylus, no menus, and you see the real internet instead of a stripped-down mobile version. Within a few months a million iPhones have been sold, and the rest is history. This is the iPhone moment.

Everyone sees it straight away: this is what a smartphone should look like.

Around 2021 I am impressed by Quickchat AI, a Polish chatbot based on GPT-3. I am amazed by its intelligence, its speed and the fact that it remembers what I told it earlier.

On 30 November 2022, OpenAI puts a free chat window online. You type what you want, the way you talk. Five(!) days later, ChatGPT has one million users. The ChatGPT moment has arrived.

It looks like a pattern: ease of use wins. The interface makes it visible and clear what is expected of you. The device or app does what you expect. What comes naturally, wins.

In 2026, AI is already much more than a smart language model with a chat window. It is in fact an everything app you no longer want to escape from.

Claude or ChatGPT is an everything app. It is our productivity centre. ChatGPT or Claude knows who you are and what you want. 'It' reads your mail and your files, and acts on your behalf. The simplicity of getting exactly what you wanted is why you will want to stay - and why soon you will not want to leave.

The everything app moment is near. And that next big moment will be bigger than the iPhone and ChatGPT combined. And I hope that this time it will not be a purely American party again.

The race for the everything app has not been run yet. Europe still has a chance to claim this moment.

Because people take the path of least resistance, whether it is European or American. I am writing this article in close collaboration with Claude, from the American company Anthropic. Simply because it works so well and so easily.

Still, I am switching. My own AI use is moving to a European alternative. Which one, I do not know yet, and I also do not know whether I will miss the convenience. I will find out, and I will share here what I notice.

A few contenders are in the first comment on LinkedIn. Which ones am I missing? I am curious.

Next week: who is building the next aeroplane?