As speculation mounts over Tim Cook’s eventual successor at Apple, John Ternus — the company’s senior vice president of hardware engineering and widely viewed as the frontrunner — faces scrutiny for mirroring Cook’s cautious, stability-focused leadership style. While this approach has sustained Apple’s dominance through incremental refinements and massive profitability, critics argue it may not suffice for navigating the transformative challenges ahead, particularly in artificial intelligence where Apple continues to trail competitors. With the company’s future growth hinging on bold innovation and catching up in AI, the debate intensifies: Is Ternus the safe, steady hand Apple needs, or does the next era demand a more disruptive leader?
Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
Ternus, like Cook, is risk averse and reluctant to, as one person close to him puts it, “upset the Apple cart.” As one longtime executive says: “If you think Tim Cook’s doing a good job, then you’ll think John Ternus is going to do a good job.”
The main case against Ternus may be that Apple needs someone more willing to shake things up. Although its products helped define the past 50 years of consumer technology, thriving for another 50 will inevitably require the company to transform in ways that aren’t entirely clear today. On AI, Cook’s successor will likely inherit a company that’s fallen behind competitors…
Ternus has yet to prove he can shepherd a truly new class of products to market, or push the company into its next growth phase. He’s also been criticized for not doing as much as previous hardware chiefs to implement breakthrough technologies. During a 2023 television interview, Ternus also laughed off the idea that Apple should worry about being late to generative AI. When Apple Intelligence, the iPhone maker’s take on modern AI, came soon after, it was such a disappointment that some industry watchers began calling for Cook’s job. Almost two years later, Apple has failed to introduce any competitive AI services. It has several times delayed the release of a more capable version of Siri, which will, somewhat embarrassingly, depend on technology from Google.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple fairly screams for a charismatic outsider to inject new vision, excitement, and drive into the company.
As we wrote last July:
For its NeXT CEO, Apple needs relative YOUTH, not another 50- or 60-something calcified company lifer who was part of the so-called team that blindly missed the GenAI paradigm shift.
Steve Jobs was 42 years old when he returned to Apple as interim CEO in September 1997. pic.twitter.com/Bk0kdul7QF
— MacDailyNews (@MacDailyNews) July 10, 2025
MacDailyNews via X, July 14, 2025:
What should happen at Apple:
1. Tim Cook retires (yesterday, preferably)
2. Cook does not get Chairman of the Board position
3. Apple hires a charismatic, visionary CEO in the mold of Jobs
4. Company returns to path of inventive innovationWhat likely will happen at Apple:
1. Tim Cook hangs on for years
2. When he finally retires as CEO, he becomes Chairman
3. Apple hires another bland, myopic CEO in the mold of Cook
4. Company continues on path of iterative stagnation
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If you have another Steve Jobs hidden away somewhere now would be a great time to unleash him or her on the world. Steve Jobs had a worldwide reputation for tech innovation, original thinking, leading employees with amazing charisma and vision, by the time he was 23. Steve Jobs was one in 100 million. If there was one around he would be running a company by now. Not to say there aren’t great people out there but the next CEO will not be anything like Steve Jobs and if he or she tries it will be a huge failure.
A founder is a founder, people will not give as much leeway as to a founder.
In an unstable AI market, Apple-Google partnership will be like a prudential’s rock (I am a non-American.) Doing other things successfully to fund AI efforts. Look at Neo in that context. Neo is already a huge success. let us see how much Gemini on Mac succeeds.
Read Bill Gates’ internet tanker letter to employees. You need time and money to turn that around, And Bill Gates did that successfully. Bill’s biggest mistake was Ballmer and Microsoft paid through her nose in Ballmer era.
Tim and John have money and patience to turn rhe Apple tanker around along with Google. Both, with help from each other, turn their own tankers around. The biggest asset an Apple Leader should have is a cool mind and patience. Which both Tim and John do.
Tim absolutely has to be CEO as long as Trump is in his office. I think we will see John as a CEO on January 21st, 2028, Tim has had enough time being a CEO and REALLY wants to retire, but it is Apple’s board urging him to be there till Trump is there.
However good John may be, He is a ROOKIE with Trump. APPLE NEEDS TIM NOW.
call Jonathan Ives back!
Scott Forstall FTW!
Forstall has been gone from Apple for 13 years and has done nothing of note since. The idea that Apple will bring in some hotshot disruptor and hand the wheel of a $4 trillion company to him is totally off the wall. It will 100% be an internal candidate as it should be. This isn’t the 90s where Apple’s entire market cap was only a few billion dollars. Until companies start making massive money off of AI instead of selling it to Apple for pennies on the dollars they spent to develop it, lets see how much “catching up” Apple actually needs to do. Just recently MDN highlighted an article about how Apple’s wait-and-see approach can help them leapfrog competitors by switching AI providers depending on the best model at that time.
Apple means best hardware, Just now I got 26.4 and suddenly my Mac is running faster. Think of people with M2, M3, M4 and M5 who got that boost.
This looks like a Tim Cook clone headlines Great for IPad development. Hope this won’t be another overpaid leverage existing products expert
You need an innovator the iPad been invented for some time.
The iPad sucks. It isn’t a personal computer, it’s an overpriced eReader.