Apple on Tuesday named John Ternus, a 25-year veteran at the tech giant as its next Chief Executive Officer. He would take up the new role on September 1, 2026. Tim Cook is set to step down after 15 years at the helm and would take up as the Apple Executive Chairman.
Ternus will be the eighth CEO of Apple, since its foundation in 1976. On April 20, while naming Ternus as the next Apple CEO, Tim Cook said, “John Ternus has the mind of an engineer, the soul of an innovator, and the heart to lead with integrity and with honour. He is a visionary whose contributions to Apple over 25 years are already too numerous to count, and he is without question the right person to lead Apple into the future. I could not be more confident in his abilities and his character, and I look forward to working closely with him on this transition and in my new role as executive chairman.”
A mechanical engineer at heart, rose to VP hardware engineering
Tetanus is a mechanical engineering graduate of the University of Pennsylvania (class of 1997). Before joining Apple, Cook cut his teeth in the tech industry spending 12 years working at IBM, helping the company manufacture computers. He also spent time at former PC maker Compaq as a vice president of corporate materials. Cook graduated from Auburn University in 1982 and received an MBA from Duke University in 1988.
He joined Apple in 2001 after a four-year stint as an engineer at Virtual Research Systems. In his initial days at Apple, John started with working on screens for Apple’s Mac line of production. He accompanied former senior engineer and VP hardware engineering, Dan Riccio.
The man behind ‘thoughtful’ hardware of Apple’s products
Ternus came across as thoughtful and measured, with a detailed grasp of not only how Apple’s new products were built but how their supply chains could be ramped up to include more recycled materials across Apple’s lineup, says Reuters.
John Ternus, who started with designing external displays has decades of experience as a hardware engineer who has spent his career building the case that the best defence is a better device. He is credited for developing the hardware technology of iPhones, iMac and iPads, Apple Watch, AirPods and Vision Pro.
Soon after, Tetanus took over as senior VP hardware, essentially overseeing hardware for everything Apple made. In 2013, he was elevated to vice president of hardware engineering. By 2021, he had the top hardware role at the world’s most valuable consumer electronics company.
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He more recently introduced the ultra-thin iPhone Air and the MacBook Neo, a laptop that starts at $599, a price made possible by using the same chip as the iPhone 16 Pro. One of Ternus’ biggest tests came when he steered the Mac laptop line onto processors Apple designed itself, ending more than a decade of reliance on Intel and marking a big bet by the company often accused of playing it too safe. The move has boosted Mac performance and battery life, sparking a resurgence in sales in recent years, states Reuters.
Ternus rejected screw with 35 grooves instead of 25
While returning to his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, as the engineering school’s undergraduate commencement speaker in 2024, he urged graduates to “always assume you’re as smart as anyone else in the room, but never assume that you know as much as they do”, mixing self-assurance with a dose of humility.
At one instance, John Ternus found himself arguing with a supplier over the grooves on a screw that goes on the back of a monitor. The screw would rarely be seen by customers but Ternus had noticed it had 35 grooves instead of the 25 Apple had specified. “If you’re going to spend that much time on something, you should put in your very best effort”, reports Reuters.
Ternus is credited with taking tactical decisions accredited with sound engineering practice. He prioritises hardware instead of solely focusing on software, a trait similar to Steve Jobs.
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John Ternus on AI
Jobs was similarly uninterested in technology for its own sake, famously saying, “You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology – not the other way around.” Ternus, who worked under Jobs early in his Apple career, promised on Monday to keep leading the “values and vision that have come to define this special place for half a century.”
“We never think about shipping a technology,” Ternus, 50, said in a recent interview about AI with tech review site Tom’s Guide. “We always think about how can we leverage technology to ship amazing products.”
Away from office, Ternus is a cycling and car-racing enthusiast, also known to take his colleagues for off-road rally car racing, states Bloomberg.
John Ternus maintains a ‘lowkey’ LinkedIn profile. Users on social media platforms have been contemplating on productivity, outcome and visibility.
