Apple CEO Tim Cook is all set to step down from the job he inherited from the late Steve Jobs 15 years ago. Cook will hand over the CEO duties to Apple's head of hardware engineering, John Ternus, on September 1. He will, however, the company’s executive chairman, much like what Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Netflix's Reed Hastings did stepped down as CEOs.
For a company which was on the brink of bankruptcy during the mid-1990s, Apple saw its market value rise by more than $3.6 trillion during Cook’s tenure. He was recruited by Jobs from Compaq, and made his reputation at Apple by building out its supply chain with contract manufacturers in China. Even today, despite opening assembly operations in India and Vietnam, Apple still sources several key parts and subsystems from China. Cook was the first Fortune 500 CEO to come out as gay in 2014 and took public stances on workplace diversity and corporate sustainability.
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The choice of Ternus as the next CEO seems like the next natural step as far the company’s future is concerned. The long-time hardware chief will be tasked with steering the company after as the iPhone maker prepares for industry-wide shifts driven by artificial intelligence.
Ternus holds a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, and worked as a mechanical engineer at Virtual Research Systems, before joining Apple's product design team in 2001. He became a vice president of hardware engineering in 2013. The 50-year-old joined the company's executive team in 2021, when he took on his current role of senior vice president of hardware engineering, reporting to Cook.
Ternus has overseen some of Apple's most prominent hardware ventures in recent years, including the teams behind the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and AirPods. He has played a key role in reviving sales of products such as Apple's Mac computers, which have gained market share in recent years. He was the brain behind the Mac laptop line adopting processors designed by Apple itself, ending more than a decade of reliance on Intel. The move boosted Mac performance and battery life, increasing sales in recent years.
His attention to detail and perfectionism, which should hold the company in good stead, came to the fore when he revealed recently that, early in his career, he argued with a supplier over the grooves on a screw that goes on the back of a monitor. He had noticed it had 35 grooves instead of the 25 Apple specified.
Ternus most recently showed the company's ultra-thin iPhone Air, the biggest revamp of the iPhone since 2017, and the MacBook Neo.
He will take over the company at a time when the Cupertino-based tech giant has lost its place as the world's most valuable company to Nvidia.
Apple also said that Johny Srouji, who has overseen Apple's custom chip and sensor designs, has been named chief hardware officer. Srouji will continue to oversee that group, along with the hardware engineering group that Ternus once led, which will now be overseen by Tom Merieb.
