For only the third time since 2000, Apple has a new chief executive. John Ternus officially took control of the company on September 1, succeeding Tim Cook after 15 years at the helm. Unlike Steve Jobs, Ternus is not a charismatic founder returning to rescue his creation. Unlike Cook, he did not make his name mastering one of the world's most complicated supply chains. Ternus is, first and foremost, an engineer. And that may tell us something about where Apple believes its future lies.
The 50-year-old joined Apple's product design team in 2001, when the company was still years away from launching the iPhone. He became vice president of Hardware Engineering in 2013 and joined Apple's executive team as senior vice president of Hardware Engineering in 2021. Over the years, Ternus has overseen engineering across the iPhone, Mac, iPad, Apple Watch and AirPods. He was closely involved in one of Apple's most consequential technical transitions: abandoning Intel processors in Macs and moving to Apple's own custom-designed silicon. He has also worked on newer bets such as the Vision Pro and became an increasingly familiar face at Apple product launches.
Now he inherits something enormous. When Cook became CEO in 2011, Apple was worth roughly $350 billion. By the time he handed the company to Ternus, it was worth more than $4.5 trillion. Annual sales had risen from $108 billion to $416 billion. Cook turned the company Steve Jobs built into one of the most formidable commercial machines in history. But he left his successor with an uncomfortable question: what comes after the iPhone?
The greatest immediate challenge is artificial intelligence. Apple helped popularise the digital assistant when it introduced Siri in 2011, but the generative AI revolution has largely been led elsewhere. OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Meta and others moved aggressively while Apple's attempts to reinvent Siri suffered delays. That puts Ternus in the unusual position of inheriting perhaps the world's most powerful consumer technology ecosystem while simultaneously having to make it catch up in the technology increasingly expected to define the next decade.
AI therefore cannot remain another feature buried inside the iPhone. Ternus will have to work out how intelligence fundamentally changes Apple's devices, and that could ultimately play directly to his strengths. Rather than competing simply by building another chatbot, Apple could make AI a more natural part of everyday technology, allowing AirPods to interpret their surroundings, watches to offer more sophisticated health guidance and home devices, glasses and other wearables to take on tasks that currently depend on the smartphone. Apple has spent years building the ingredients for such an ecosystem, the custom silicon, enormous computing power inside small devices, cameras, microphones, sensors and more than 2.5 billion active devices. Ternus now has to connect those pieces.
His appointment is consequently interesting. Apple could have selected an executive primarily associated with services, finance or operations. Instead, it handed the company to its hardware chief. His first major product event as CEO could make that symbolism difficult to miss. Apple is expected to unveil its first folding iPhone, entering a category Samsung and Huawei have occupied since 2019. The device could cost more than $2,000 and would represent the most dramatic physical redesign of the iPhone since Apple removed its home button in 2017.
The company is arriving characteristically late, but Apple has done this before. It did not invent the MP3 player, smartphone, tablet, smartwatch or wireless earphones. Its great strength has often been waiting until a technology matures and then building a version compelling enough to push it into the mainstream. If it succeeds, the product would provide Ternus with an immediate demonstration of the philosophy likely to define his Apple: engineering first, enter carefully, then attempt to redefine the category.
But his job extends well beyond designing beautiful machines. Apple remains heavily exposed to the geopolitical rivalry between Washington and Beijing. The company has been diversifying production away from China, with India increasingly central to iPhone manufacturing and Vietnam playing a growing role in other products. Ternus must manage that transition without damaging the extraordinary margins Cook spent decades constructing. He must also navigate regulators challenging Apple's control of the App Store, defend a services business now generating more than $100 billion annually and manage political relationships that have become increasingly important to the company's operations.
There is one important safety net: Tim Cook is not disappearing. He has become Apple's executive chairman and is expected to remain involved particularly in relationships with governments and policymakers. That gives Ternus something Cook himself never had when Steve Jobs died in 2011 his predecessor sitting beside him during the transition.
The bigger question is whether Ternus will simply protect Cook's Apple or build his own. Cook's genius was turning Apple's innovation into scale. Ternus now has to prove Apple can still create the future. His tenure will probably not be judged by whether he sells another hundred million iPhones. It will be judged by whether, ten years from now, the iPhone is still the centre of personal technology.
