As Tim Cook hands the reins to hardware engineering chief John Ternus in September 2026, the company faces its biggest leadership transition in 15 years. While Cook’s tenure delivered massive revenue growth and operational excellence, many former employees and analysts say Apple has lost the product-first, risk-taking design culture that defined the Jobs years. Fortune explores whether Ternus can shift the company from steady iteration back to true innovation.
Sebastian Herrera for Fortune:
Matthew Rogers remembers Apple’s scrappy days when, as an engineer fresh out of college, he could debate ideas directly with Steve Jobs… “I was 23, 24 years old, and I interacted with Steve Jobs. That’s crazy, right? But that’s the organization he ran,” Rogers told Fortune from his Silicon Valley office (he now runs food-recycling startup Mill).
Back then, Apple’s hierarchy was much flatter. What made Apple special, he said, is that Jobs surrounded himself with consumer-minded product leaders who were expected to argue. The mandate was to build “the best thing out there” and take real risks. Some of Apple’s most iconic products came out of a skunkworks team across the street from the main office.
That much-mythologized era continues to shape — and perhaps burden — Apple as it navigates its biggest leadership transition in 15 years. Somewhere along the way, Apple lost a part of its design and product magic, Rogers and several former design and hardware employees, investors, and analysts said. The September handoff from Tim Cook to incoming chief executive John Ternus, who currently leads hardware engineering, has Rogers and other longtime Apple watchers wondering: Can the company reclaim its product-first soul?
Rogers, who also cocreated smart home company Nest with former Apple executive Tony Fadell, said Ternus now faces a defining test. “I’ll put it this way,” he said. “He has a tall task, but a big opportunity.”
MacDailyNews Take: As we posted on X just yesterday:
Under Tim Cook, Apple systematically strayed from Steve Jobs’ core vision. Product Design, the very soul of the company Jobs rebuilt, was demoted, sidelined, and subordinated to operations, supply-chain efficiency, and services revenue. The result? Fifteen long years of polished, but profoundly boring iteration: thinner bezels, faster chips, incremental camera bumps, and endless “Pro” variants that rarely moved the industry forward the way the original iPhone, iPad, or even the aluminum unibody MacBooks once did.
Jobs put Design at the absolute top of the food chain. Jony Ive’s group wasn’t a service department; it was the engine. Cook flipped the hierarchy. Hardware engineering, operations, and finance called the shots (poorly; witness Luca Maestri famously rejecting calls to invest in AI early on which is why he’s now sidelined). Design became reactive instead of directive. The Vision Pro launched as an impressive, but overpriced, underbaked curiosity. After billions spent, the Apple Car evaporated. True category-defining leaps simply did not happen.
Now comes John Ternus, a product person, a hardware guy who has spent his career shipping actual devices rather than optimizing margins. Early signals are encouraging: bringing trusted hardware lieutenants back into the fold and already embedding himself with the industrial design group. That is exactly the right instinct.
If Ternus moves quickly to restore Design to its rightful place at the apex of Apple’s decision-making, the company might finally escape the long, comfortable, lucrative mediocrity of the Cook era. Apple doesn’t need another fifteen years of safer, prettier, or just different iterations. It needs the return of products that make people stop, stare, and rethink what a computer in their pocket, on their wrist, or on their face can be.
The hardware engineer is about to become CEO. The question is whether he has the will — and the authority with Cook looming as Executive Chairman — to put Design back on top where Jobs left it. The next few years will tell us if Apple can innovate again… or if the iteration treadmill simply continues under a new CEO.
Fingers crossed!
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NO ONE should ever forget, that besides being nonchalant per design and iteration, Cook was more focused on green sht. It was SO important to him he told stock holders to f-off…” find another stock” if you don’t like “my” pursuit of “saving the planet”, while using shareholder $$.
This idealogical hubris from a CEO was shocking & sickening. I will never forget this atrocious/out of place paradigm.
Ternus better bring back design mojo. If not, AAPL will become the next General Mills…or Intel (needing govt partnership).
Needed – iMac with big screen.
Tim Cook was a bean counter a supply chain manager who brought order to Apple but he should never have been put in charge of innovative wildly imaginative tech company. Some thing he never understood. Steve Jobs demise was sudden in panic Cook was appointed and the fund managers and investors saw him leverage everything invented and created by some one else to provide value. they were happy to ride that , a new phone a faster Mac etc but like the car and the washing machine these products eventually stop evolving in they get better but most consumers don’t need a faster dryer.
He never understood innovation got rid of anyone who challenged him and developed an obsession with getting an Oscar and reinventing a car. The car was up his street because like everything else it was trying to leverage something some one else created. He forgot to keep an eye on the Chinese and the fact that apple was not a car factory. He cost the company millions or billions. Where did all the R and D money go invested during his tenure. The Apple Vision Pro was an incredible invention and he jumped the gun on it, ruining it to cover some of his other errors . John Terminus purported lack of support for the Vision Pro is a big mistake. Eventually even the big investors realised that leveraging the existing portfolio of products would come to an end or slow down. Now John Terminus is left with the task of playing catch up on AI and new products. Lets hope he’s not a time Cook clone or hell mess both up.
Stop the share buy back invest in innovation people and product!!!!!
Same old bullshit. As an Apple investor, thank you Tim Cook. As an Apple fan, welcome John Turnis. Apple’s designs dominate every sector they enter. Tim Cook is not just a bean counter, who quintupled the company values MDN’s tired take on Cook, misses the massive growth he brought to the company. Before his death Steve Jobs told Tim Cook to be his own man. He has been, while preserving Job’s legacy. Humans vary. Steve is dead. Long live John Ternus
Steve Jobs left an amazing array of products an new products to be released. Look what happened at Nokia of you don’t invent you die Tim Cook success was predicated on a supply manager delivering Steve Jobs vision not moving forward. Your response is that a short term investor and not a long term investor who saw Steve Jobs innovation and dream so be it.
Roger misses the entire point. The article was a fair assessment of Apple.
“Somewhere along the way, Apple lost a part of its design and product magic, Rogers and several former design and hardware employees, investors, and analysts said.”
Tim has not promoted an environment of product innovation or excellence. His customer base has not been those who use Apple products but those who seek financial profit off Apple. Tim’s agenda has been financial and social/environmental issues. If you agree with Tim’s agenda than you’ll have a favorable view of his tenure and Apple’s present state. If not, you’re likely hoping for some dramatic changes come September.