Apple’s changing of the guard with John Ternus, the low-key Head of Hardware Engineering, set to replace CEO Tim Cook in a matter of months launches a new era at the tech giant.
The question is — what will that look like?
Hardware is key, obviously. Investors and fans would love a truly transformational device. It’s been a beat since the iPhone, or the Apple Watch. Software runs the hardware. Services, a sprawling division that includes Apple TV, Apple Music, Apple App Store, Apple Pay (and on and on), is the glue that binds people to their Apple devices. AI, which many say Apple has been slow to develop, is filtered through Services.
Ternus is well liked inside the company, often referred to as a “great guy,” and not very Hollywood, who shares outgoing CEO Cook’s values. Cook himself is said to be extremely nice. He’s had a sharp focus on privacy and pushed Apple to be carbon neutral.
People inside Apple’s Cupertino HQ and in L.A. also call Ternus a fan of the streaming service and watches its programming. “If anything, John wants to make it more competitive,” says one Apple insider. Will that mean continuing to bankroll expensive original series like Severance, Masters of the Air and The Morning Show? Apple’s commitment to film is unclear despite blockbuster F1 last year.
Ternus attended Apple TV’s F1 premiere and is a known racing fan. Apple TV last fall inked a five-year rights deal for Formula 1 in the U.S. Ternus also is said to have a strong relationship with Apple Services SVP Eddy Cue, who oversees Apple TV.
One tech insider speculated that the well regarded Cue, 61, could get an expanded role, another that Cute might retire, which would be “a huge gut punch,” the person said. At SXSW last year, Cue sat with Severance director and executive producer Ben Stiller just before the series’ Season 2 finale. “It’s been amazing for me and Apple, and an incredible honor to work with you on this. We couldn’t be prouder,” Cue said. “Apple picks its projects very carefully.”
As the CEO news rippled through the NAB Show in Las Vegas, where giants like Google and Amazon as well as a number of smaller tech firms are showing their wares, the reactions were favorable, and Ternus was seen as a logical choice to take over for Cook.
“There’s no real surprise here,” one senior tech exec told Deadline. “They’d been working on the succession process and if you’re a company at that scale, continuity is key. I thought the whole process was managed really smoothly,”
Brian Wieser, who runs the strategic advisory firm Madison and Wall, observed in a blog post after the news, “Early indications suggest we’re in for more of the same under Ternus.” The new CEO comes from hardware, he noted, “and has likely been part of the decision-making framework that prioritized a controlled, tightly integrated user experience.”
That hasn’t been the case with other tech handoffs. Amazon, after Jeff Bezos passed the CEO baton to Andy Jassy, moved aggressively into advertising. Within the first couple of years of Jassy at the helm, Prime Video had turned on the jets and was bringing in billions in ad revenue. Don’t expect the same kind of pivot under Ternus at Apple, Wieser cautioned.
Cook’s orientation toward privacy and away from ads was highlighted in Apple’s announcement of the CEO transition, Wieser noted. That product philosophy is apt to continue under Ternus. As it stands, Apple ranks 13th in ad revenue, and has about 1% of the total market, making it a much smaller player than Meta, Google and other tech giants.
Cue and a few other Apple executives were rumored to be in the succession mix months ago but the transition to Ternus has been in the works for some time in a surprisingly smooth, leak-free and seemingly low-drama transition. He’s been looped in with Cook on decisions and internal discussions. The longtime CEO, who took over for legendary Apple founder Steve Jobs in 2011, will transition to executive chairman. Cook grew Apple’s sales, market cap and share price tremendously, navigated though Covid disruptions, and has successfully advocated for the company in challenging political times.
Big AI Reveal?
This summer will be a the first major test for Apple and its new CEO, who doesn’t formally take the role until September 1 but will be front and center months earlier.
Unlike most companies, which pass the CEO baton at annual shareholder meetings, Apple will present its new chief on a massively bigger stage: the annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC26) from June 8-12. Ternus has been at the event before, but never font and center. Last year’s livestream had 824,000 viewers. This upcoming edition was already the buzziest in years since usually secretive Apple has publicly promised to showcase anticipated AI advances.
Now, when it does, the company will have a new face to do it.
“I’m very optimistic at this choice. But he’s on a shorter leash following a world-class CEO in Tim Cook. He needs to show success out of the gate. It’s important he starts out on the right foot in June,” says Wedbush Securities technology analyst Dan Ives of Ternus, a 50-year-old mechanical engineering grad from University of Pennsylvania who has been with Apple for almost his entire career.
AI is only getting more sophisticated and so-called “agentic” AI is coming. Wall Streeters have noted how basic Apple’s Siri is compared with chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. Apple has been licensing from others but is being pressed hard to develop its own.
As scary for Apple investors, Jony Ive, the company’s longtime chief design officer, has set up shop at OpenAI.
Wedbush’s Ives is upbeat on Services. He thinks Apple’s AI strategy rests there. “That’s the way they are going to monetize the billions of users they have around the world. And even though [Ternus] is a hardware-centric CEO, “success generally will require success in services as much as hardware.”
A non-Apple tech-industry executiveDeadline spoke with said Ternus gets good reviews from colleagues personally. They say he pays attention, is willing to take in new ideas, is innovative and technically very strong as Apple focuses on the next wave of products to take it into the future.
He feels the appointment signified a desire to break things open with new products, and “the fact that they are a device company at the end of the day.”
Delivering Penn Engineering’s 2024 commencement address, Ternus made clear he sweats the details.
“The care that you put into your work, it really matters,” he said.
“My first project at Apple was The Cinema Display. It was a large desktop monitor. It had a beautiful, clear plastic enclosure that was held together with some screws coming from the back. These screws were made of stainless steel and the head of every screw [had] a pattern of concentric grooves.
“At some point in my first year, I found myself in a supplier facility. I was far away from home. It was well past midnight. I was using my magnifying glass to count the number of grooves on the head of the screws, which, remember, live on the back of the display. And I was arguing with the supplier because these heads had 35 grooves and they were supposed to have 25.
“And I distinctly remember stepping back for a minute and thinking to myself, ‘What am I doing? Is this normal?’ I thought about it, and I said, ‘No. It’s not normal. But it is right.’ Because I already spent months working on that product. And if you’re going to spend that much time on something, you should put in your very best effort. Maybe a customer notices, maybe they don’t. But whenever I saw one of those displays on someone’s desk, it mattered to me.”
Dade Hayes contributed to this report.