Apple on Monday announced that John Ternus, senior vice president of Hardware Engineering, will become Apple’s next chief executive officer effective on September 1, 2026. Tim Cook will then become executive chairman of Apple’s board of directors.
Rolfe Winkler for The Wall Street Journal:
Ternus will follow two corporate legends. Steve Jobs developed the most lucrative product in history, the iPhone. Cook squeezed trillions of dollars of value from the smartphone thanks to the supply chain he built and the services and ancillary products he rolled out.
As Cook did when he succeeded Jobs, Ternus is taking over as a relative unknown to the outside world. If Jobs was a product visionary and Cook a supply chain guru, Ternus is a hardware savant who exists somewhere in the middle.
A mechanical engineer by background, who most recently has led hardware engineering for all of Apple’s products, Ternus takes Apple’s reins at a critical time in its history. The company is at the top of its game selling iPhones, after rolling out popular new models last fall. Yet it is struggling to find its next hit product.
It also must remake itself in the age of artificial intelligence. After decades defining how people interact with computing devices, first on their desktops and then in their hands, Apple has fallen behind rival companies who are leading the next great computing platform with chatbots that converse like humans. Apple’s own Siri, which is set to get an AI brain transplant this year, has been a Neanderthal by comparison…
Ask anyone from Apple what they think of Ternus, and they all say the same thing: He’s a super nice guy… What he isn’t known for is taking big, risky swings, said people familiar with Ternus’s tenure, leaving open the question of whether he can provide the product vision that company critics say has been absent since Jobs died.
MacDailyNews Take: 🤞🏻
As we wrote last July (hopefully, Ternus will surprise us):
What should happen at Apple:
- Tim Cook retires (yesterday, preferably)
- Cook does not get Chairman of the Board position
- Apple hires a charismatic, visionary CEO in the mold of Jobs
- Company returns to path of inventive innovation
What likely will happen at Apple:
- Tim Cook hangs on for years
- When he finally retires as CEO, he becomes Chairman
- Apple hires another bland, myopic CEO in the mold of Cook
- Company continues on path of iterative stagnation
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