Who is Apple's New CEO John Ternus, The Hardware Expert Taking On The AI Era

Decades after Steve Jobs defined Apple’s product-first mythology, and fifteen years into Tim Cook turning that vision into a $100 billion profit machine, Apple is now seeing a change of leadership. On 1 September, John Ternus will take over as CEO, inheriting one of the world’s most valuable tech companies. Cook, meanwhile, will take over as the Executive Chairman of Apple's board of directors.

But to understand what this all means, you have to understand that John Ternus is an engineer first, and everything else later.

Ternus, 50, joined the company in 2001 as part of its product design team and steadily climbed through the ranks, becoming vice president of Hardware Engineering in 2013 and then head of department in 2021. 

Products that debuted under his leadership include the wildly successful Apple Watch and AirPods (and the not-so-successful Vision Pro headset every tech influencer was talking about in 2023). But apart from that, he has been involved in the hardware development of the iPhone, Mac, iPad and practically every device Apple has shipped across the world. More recently, he led the teams behind the ultra-thin iPhone Air and the more affordable Macbook Neo. 

The new CEO’s focus on developing better hardware is similar to the ethos Steve Jobs built the company on, when he founded it with Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne back in 1976. Insiders have reportedly compared his approach to leadership to the calm, grounded disposition of Cook, with one publisher describing him as the “affable mechanical engineer” with a hand-on approach and an obsession for perfection. 

In his own admission at a speech he gave at his alma mater, University of Pennsylvania, in 2024, he is the kind of engineer that stayed up late arguing with suppliers over the number of grooves that go on a screw at the back of a monitor. It’s a detail that a customer would not notice at all, but as the engineer said, "If you're going to spend that much time on something, you should put in your very best effort."

It’s no surprise, then, that Ternus has been a company favourite and was the first name to come up when outgoing CEO Tim Cook informed Apple’s board of directors that he was considering stepping down from his role. 

But what’s interesting is the timing of the appointment: Apple had lost its position as the most valuable tech company to software giant NVIDIA. Its main competitors, Microsoft and Google, are embroiled in an AI arms race. Yet the incoming Apple CEO is more cautious of this change. Talking about artificial intelligence in a recent interview, Ternus said that Apple doesn’t aim to "ship a technology," but to use it to build better products. "We always think about how can we leverage technology to ship amazing products."

Ternus’ appointment might come as a u-turn in an industry-wide race for better software. More importantly, it might usher in an era where Apple stopped running the rat race and learned to love the gadgets that made it the giant that it is.