After 15 years at the helm, Tim Cook stepped down as Apple CEO today. In his stead is John Ternus, an Apple veteran who most recently served as Apple’s head hardware honcho and has been knocking around the hallways in Cupertino for most of his adult life. If there’s anyone who knows Apple as well as Cook, it’s Ternus.
What can we expect going forward? Tim Cook was effusive in his praise of Ternus, writing in his final message to employees as CEO, “I will miss leading you and being with you for every step, even as I take enormous comfort in handing the helm to someone as brilliant and wonderful and capable as John. Few people understand what it takes to build products that change the world the way John does and I could not be more excited for his leadership.”
But what will the John Ternus era really look like? Will he be able to correct Apple’s mistakes and put the company on the path to further prosperity? And what will that future look like for you? I’ve gazed into the tea leaves, examined my fair share of entrails and read every palm I can find to see if I can work it all out. Here’s what I reckon we could be in for.
Until being named as CEO, John Ternus was Apple’s Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering, and he’s overseen the physical products that have made Apple such a success. (Apple announced that Johny Srouji will succeed Ternus as hardware chief.)
He first joined Apple in 2001 as part of the company’s product design team, with a particular focus on the much-loved Cinema Display. He graduated to Vice President of Hardware Engineering in 2013 and was then promoted to Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering in 2021.
As the hardware engineering lead, he at first handled Apple’s AirPods, iPad and Mac hardware divisions. iPhone hardware was added to that roster in 2020, with the Apple Watch being put under his purview in 2022. He also played a leading role in Apple’s transition away from Intel processors and towards Apple silicon, taking to the stage and conducting interviews to promote the new chips.
And since the ouster of John Giannandrea as Apple’s AI chief in 2025, the company’s secret robotics projects have been moved under Ternus’s aegis, too.
John Ternus played an instrumental role in the Apple silicon transition for the Mac.
At 51, he’s also one of the youngest members of Apple’s senior leadership team and taking ober at almost the exact same age as Tim Cook was when he became CEO in 2011, 15 years ago. That tells you that in making this move, Apple is planning for the long haul. If all goes well for the company, Ternus could be in charge for the next decade and a half, if not more.
Tim Cook is many things, but unlike Steve Jobs, he’s never truly been a product person. Ternus is a hardware guy through and through, however, and this could help him fix some of Apple’s most pressing problems, such as its floundering Vision Pro and how it makes its forthcoming augmented reality glasses a rip-roaring success.
On that topic, it’s worth noting that the first role Ternus took on after graduating from university was at Virtual Research Systems, a company focused on making virtual reality headsets and other devices. Could that give him uncommon insight into how Apple can set the beleaguered Vision Pro on the right path?
Maybe, maybe not. Ternus left Virtual Research Systems to join Apple in 2001, and a huge amount has changed in the VR world since then. At the same time, Ternus was at Apple during the entire Vision Pro creation process and would have had a strong role in its development. If he were present in a leadership position during that time, would much change now that he’s set to head up the company?
I wouldn’t rule it out. His nature as a product person could give him the ideas and vision to correct course now that he’s got more power concentrated in his hands. It could also be exactly what’s needed to steer the long-rumored Apple smartglasses to a successful launch.
And there’s an encouraging tidbit from a New York Times profile of Ternus from earlier this year. There, it was noted that around 2018, Apple was thinking of adding a LiDAR Scanner to its iPhones but was concerned that the relatively expensive $40 component would eat into its profits. Ternus proposed that the part could be limited to the Pro models and excluded from the entry-level iPhones.
But crucially, he didn’t do this purely because he was looking out for Apple’s bottom line. According to the Times’ profile, Ternus’s reasoning was that the Pro-level iPhones “tended to be purchased by Apple’s most loyal customers, who would be excited about new technology. Average consumers, on the other hand, probably wouldn’t care.”
