John Ternus replaces Tim Cook as CEO of Apple. But you are facing a big challenge in AI
For anyone who pays close attention to Apple, Monday’s CEO change came as no surprise.
The company’s outgoing CEO Tim Cook is approaching retirement age, aged 65. He has helped Apple for 15 years since founder Steve Jobs stepped down due to illness, and has taken the company from a $350 billion market capitalization to nearly $350 billion. $4 trillion US. Again the media has been to report that the supply it may work for months.
Meanwhile, incoming chief John Ternus – currently vice president of hardware engineering and will step up as CEO in Sept. 1 – has played a major role in recent years, often taking the stage at the launch of a new product. Most notably, it was Ternus, not Cook, who unveiled the new MacBook Neo at a live event in New York City last month.
“The amount of time that managers get in front of the audience at these product events depends on what stage they are in [at Apple],” said John Gruber, who writes the Daring Fireball blog about all things Apple. “And, you know, Ternus has been very visible in the last five years.”
Ternus, despite not being a household name, has spent the past 25 years at Apple overseeing the company’s key transformations. But questions remain about how it will dominate, especially as Apple navigates major AI-related challenges.
Who is John Ternus?
An Apple veteran, Ternus has spent most of his career with the tech giant.
He spent a short time with a company called Virtual Research Systems after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in mechanical engineering.
Since joining Apple’s product design team in 2001, Ternus rose to vice president of hardware engineering in 2013. He oversees the hardware that goes into each iPhone, iPad and Mac — and has been a part of launching new products like AirPods, as well as the recently released rugged yet affordable MacBook Neo.
“John Ternus has the mind of an engineer, the soul of an inventor and the heart to lead with integrity and respect,” Cook said of his successor in the company’s announcement, adding that “without a doubt” he is the right person to take over.
Gruber says that Ternus’ biggest mark on the company is likely to be shepherding Apple’s silicon – the company’s in-house chips.
While Apple has used its chips in its phones and iPads since 2010, Cook announced in 2020 that the company will switch to silicon chips for all products, rather than relying on Intel for them. That allows it to make the chips work as it likes in each product, and enables additional features, such as better noise cancellation in the second-generation AirPods Pro.
“The whole Apple Silicon organization … John Ternus was involved with,” given his role in hardware, Gruber said.
Chris Deaver, founder of leadership consulting firm BraveCore and an HR business partner with Apple who previously worked with Ternus, says the incoming CEO is a good leader who is respected internally.
“[I] I was very impressed with the way the leader worked and how he was able to bring the teams together … and build strong relationships so that a lot of the technical stuff that was going on, they could deal with any conflict and have healthy debates about it,” Deaver said.
Despite that reputation in the tech world, McMaster University business professor Marvin Ryder says the fact that he’s relatively unknown gives Ternus something of a “blank slate” for how to lead the company.
“The good news for Mr. Ternus is now he can write or paint any picture he wants the world to see,” Ryder said, adding that he expects him to be more like his predecessor Cook or the type of leader Jeff Bezos – who focuses on internal issues rather than being an external “cheerleader” of the business.
AI challenges are coming
Despite arriving early with its Siri voice assistant, Apple has lagged behind in the AI race — and that’s a major hurdle tech experts agree Ternus will have to clear.
“The last two years haven’t been good for Apple on the AI front,” Gruber said.
When Apple introduced Apple Intelligence in 2024, the functions were not initially available on hundreds of millions of iPhones and the technology was not yet widely adopted.
Again it misses its own target by releasing an AI-powered version of Siri in 2025, and instead says the upgrade is coming sometime this year — something unusual for Apple, Gruber said, which often delivers on its promises.
Also, privacy has long been a top priority for the company. And since AI works with large amounts of data, Deaver says Apple has a unique challenge to measure the security of that information. For example, it has partnered with Google to use Gemini in the new version of Siri, and experts say that Google’s possible access to user data to improve its algorithms is a concern.
In the past few months, Apple has lost several key executives and there is talk that longtime CEO Tim Cook may be ready to step down. Nationally, CBC’s Ashley Fraser reveals what’s behind the move and why some say the company’s AI system may be to blame.
Monday’s press release from Apple didn’t touch on AI, or how Ternus plans to achieve it.
But Deaver said it’s common for a company not to be a carrier early on.
“They’re never interested in being the first. They’re always interested in being the best,” he said, noting that he expects the company is likely to approach AI capabilities similarly.
Still, since Ternus’ background is in hardware rather than software, some have questioned whether he’s the right person to help Apple in the AI era. However, Gruber says that criticism may be short-sighted.
“In the same way that they didn’t have to hire someone with cellphone experience outside of the company… [1990s]”I think it’s true that Apple can stick to what it does best,” Gruber said.
And that means building beautiful computers that are easy to use for “non-computer experts,” according to Gruber. He says Apple’s move to make Ternus its CEO telegraphs that the company will remain focused on hardware as it moves forward. Establishing itself as a hardware maker that uses AI software from other companies can itself be its own AI strategy.
“No matter how big AI becomes in everyone’s daily life, you’re going to need devices to interact with it. And who better than Apple to make those devices?”
