Identify three Apple CEOs.
You’ll be able to most likely rattle off Steve Jobs and Tim Cook dinner, and possibly throw in John Scully. However—and I do know the Michael Spindler Stans will pontificate within the feedback after I say this—Apple has had far more forgettable CEOs than you most likely understand.
John Ternus, who will replace Tim Cook as Apple CEO in September, might develop into a star CEO like Steve Jobs and Tim Cook dinner. Or he might be one other Gilbert F. Amelio. Right here’s what to know earlier than you place any bets on which type Ternus might be:
Inside Apple, he has a popularity for being a sweetheart
Steve Siefert, Ternus’ first boss at Apple, said in a New York Times profile that when Ternus had the chance to maneuver to a personal workplace from an open plan workspace the place he sat along with his underlings, he declined. Siefert known as him “a person of the folks.”
One other ex-Apple worker who labored with him, Cameron Rogers, stated in that very same profile that Ternus is “somebody you wish to hang around with,” and that, “Everybody loves him as a result of he’s nice.”
To the folks working inside the firm, would niceness from the CEO mark a vibe shift for Apple? In any case, Steve Jobs was supposedly an ogre when he didn’t get what he needed from his staff, and Tim Cook dinner has a popularity more as a profit-generating wizard than for having oodles of personality, good or bad.
However Apple has maintained a comparatively cuddly popularity as a office, even in our tech-critical period. It has an above average Glassdoor rating (in case you discover that significant), and it tends not to have big, headline-grabbing rounds of layoffs. So so far as inside vibes go, a pleasant man CEO could be extra continuity than break.
Apple will now be led by an engineer.
Ternus can speak at size about which chips are during which gadget and why:
According to Apple, Ternus studied mechanical engineering at Penn, acquired a job as an engineer at a digital actuality firm, after which converted to Apple, the place he began off as an engineer targeted on external monitors. He oversaw the creation of the unique iPad and AirPods, and has taken level on new generations of Mac, Apple Watch, and iPhone.
According to Bloomberg, an nameless Apple veteran who reportedly labored at Apple beneath Jobs and Cook dinner famous that Cook dinner doesn’t get into the nitty gritty of product improvement, however that Ternus is “an actual engineer.” That article’s portrait of Ternus is as an exacting technical wiz with a deep understanding of the internal workings of Apple’s gadgets, which allowed him to reverse a decline in product high quality. He additionally, that profile notes, has a extra creative aspect, and has overseen the event of an as-yet unreleased tabletop robotic gadget.
It will distinction sharply with Cook dinner, who’s famously a grasp of silicon provide chain logistics, not silicon itself.
However Bloomberg’s profile additionally says Ternus has a top quality in frequent with Cook dinner: threat aversion. A few of Apple’s timidity round AI and sensible dwelling gadgets are chalked as much as Ternus, in line with Bloomberg. Nevertheless, that article features a declare from an nameless Apple insider saying Ternus is conscious of the criticisms round a necessity for thrilling new merchandise and (supposedly) stronger AI implementation.
Apple’s future is a thriller
Sure, this level is sort of too apparent to convey up, however I point out it as a result of a lot is up within the air proper now. Apple has been knocked for timidity on AI, however depending how the next few years go, if Ternus goes down in historical past because the CEO who resisted placing all the corporate’s eggs within the AI basket earlier than AI turned out to be a bubble, that might show to be a masterstroke moderately than a mistake.
Ternus additionally takes the reins amid new uncertainty around the U.S.-China relationship. Tim Cook dinner’s tenure at Apple was outlined from the start largely by U.S.-China commerce. Apple was already a U.S. firm with merchandise assembled in China, however Cook dinner made it an organization increasingly reliant on China as a customer base. One aspect of this equation is holding agency: Apple has shifted some manufacturing to Vietnam and India, even whereas it can’t shake its reliance on Chinese factories. There are indicators the opposite aspect is getting shakier: the iPhone is losing market share in China.
Furthermore, political realities change. Right here in 2026, Cook dinner tends to show up in the Oval Office and pal round with the seriously unpopular, far-right president, both out of sheer company comfort, or as a result of President Trump’s politics align along with his personal, or some mixture of the 2—Cook dinner may be very non-public, so it’s not clear. Twelve years in the past, nonetheless, Large tech was in a unique political universe, and Cook dinner’s popularity, deserved or not, was as a progressive company hero who claimed that witnessing an anti-Black hate crime “completely imprinted in my mind, and it could change my life without end.”
Ternus, for his half, boasts a moderately transferring origin story too. According to the New York Times, his senior mission at Penn was “a tool that allowed quadriplegics to make use of head motions to regulate a mechanical feeding arm.” Proper now is just not a great time for believing in the opportunity of tech companies being benevolent, but when a a vibe shift for the higher occurred to return alongside, Ternus appears—primarily based on the knowledge at present out there—like he makes that unlikely occasion incrementally much less unlikely.
