Apple announced that Tim Cook will become executive chairman of Apple’s board of directors and John Ternus, senior vice president of Hardware Engineering, will become Apple’s next chief executive officer effective on September 1, 2026. The transition, which was approved unanimously by the Board of Directors, follows a thoughtful, long-term succession planning process.
As I put on my amateur Apple enthusiast analysis hat, having followed (and occasionally put pen-to-paper fingers-to keyboard about) the org for nearly 20 years now, I think this is a really strong move.
Apple has gone from — in the modern era — a cranky perfectionist with no hardware or software background in the case of Steve Jobs, to the supply chain wizardry of Tim Cook, and now, for the first time ever, rests the future of the org in the hands of someone best known for overseeing hardware.
It’s a shrewd move for sure. Ternus had become one of the faces of the organization in recent years, specifically around the shift to their own silicon (the M-Series chips), and is a clearly spoken, calming, and knowledgable presence — at least in the format of Apple’s Keynotes.
I don’t want to say Apple has thrown in the towel towards their AI ambitions — clearly, the next version of iOS is supposed to be the one to “get it right” — but I wonder if they realized the smarter move is not to be the one burning cash chasing the trend, but earning cash as the hardware of choice for all of these competing tools.
But again, I’m just an amateur follower of the org who reads a lot of books and blogs about it.
What are the real pundits saying?
John Gruber at Daring Fireball:
Jobs made the right pick for his successor. And while only time will tell, it sure feels today like Cook has too. Cook has never been a product person and to his credit, he never once pretended to be. (That was John Sculley’s downfall, in a nut.) With the table set by the budding iPhone and nascent iPad products Jobs left behind, Apple didn’t need a product person at the helm in the 2010s. They needed someone to let the existing products blossom and expand. Today, it feels to me like Apple needs a product guy at the helm again. Someone with the itch to spearhead the creation of new things. Of course Cook’s successor came from within the company’s ranks. And John Ternus, more than anyone else at the company, seems like that person.
Jason Snell at Six Colors:
n spite of its success, or perhaps because of it, Apple has been a company in stasis for 15 or 20 years. When everything’s going great, and all the executives just stick around no matter how rich they get on stock options, it’s really hard to make changes. The arrival of any new person in charge, not just John Ternus in particular, is an opportunity to shake things up. New leaders have the freedom to make their mark. That could be good for Apple.
I’m also struck by the fact that John Ternus comes from a product-focused background. All in all, it was probably for the best that Tim Cook was as different in skill set from Steve Jobs as possible, because that was an impossibly hard act to follow. Cook, as an operations guy, got to put his faith in the product teams that were executing and guided them at a very high level. I think it would’ve been a disaster if Apple’s first post-Jobs CEO had been trying to cosplay as Steve. Cook couldn’t pull off wearing that turtleneck.
But it’s been 15 years, and maybe it’s a good thing for Apple to get a CEO who’s closer to the metal? Ternus knows the ins and outs of product development at a different level than Cook ever could. Given that Apple is, at its heart, a company that makes physical products and sells them, having someone who has spent decades at Apple working on those products feels like an opportunity for a positive change.
One thing worth noting — in his new role at Apple, it sure looks like Tim Cook will continue running interference on, and being the scapegoat toward, the current administration.
Among all this, if there’s anything I hope that the team at Apple is reading, it’s this blog post from developer Marco Arment.
Apple doesn’t settle for fine, functional, or good enough in its hardware (and thanks for your incredible work on that). We love making and using products that aren’t just great, but greater than they need to be, always raising the bar of greatness for its own sake. Software, services, revenue sources, and world impact need to be held to that same standard.
Focus on making great computers with great user experiences above all else, and you can trust that every other major goal will follow: profit, market share, expansion, impact, and benefit to the world.
Making great computers must remain Apple’s top responsibility, because if you don’t do it, nobody will.
Here’s to hoping this is the beginning of an era that returns the company from Cupertino towards building great products first — and figuring out how to monetize them second.
If I had my druthers? Kill off the advertising in the App Store, the forthcoming advertising in Apple Maps, and make Apple News+ totally ad free. You can afford to. It’s little things like that which, when adding up, will return users to a state of confidence…and if you fix up Liquid Glass in the next big OS updates? That’s a huge win.