John Ternus is replacing Tim Cook as Apple CEO. But he faces a big

To anyone who pays close attention to Apple, Monday’s CEO switch-up wasn’t a surprise.

The company’s outgoing chief Tim Cook is approaching retirement age, at 65. He’s helmed Apple for 15 years since co-founder Steve Jobs stepped away due to ill health, and he’s taken the company from a market cap of $350 billion US to about $4 trillion US. And media had been reporting that a handover might be in the works for months.

Meanwhile, incoming head John Ternus — who is currently vice-president of hardware engineering and will step up as CEO on Sept. 1 — has had a bigger role in recent years, often taking the stage at new product launches. Most notably, it was Ternus, not Cook, who unveiled the new MacBook Neo at a live event in New York City last month.

“The amount of time executives get in front of an audience for these product events corresponds to where they are in the hierarchy [at Apple],” said John Gruber, who writes the Daring Fireball blog about all-things Apple. “And, you know, Ternus has appeared more and more over the last five years.”

Ternus, despite not being a household name, has spent the past 25 years at Apple overseeing some key changes for the company. But questions remain about how he’ll govern, especially as Apple navigates big challenges related to AI.

Who is John Ternus?

A veteran of Apple, Ternus has spent most of his career with the tech giant. 

He spent a brief period with a company called Virtual Research Systems after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania with a mechanical engineering degree.

Since joining Apple’s product design team in 2001, Ternus rose to become vice-president of hardware engineering in 2013. He’s overseen the hardware that goes into each iPhone, iPad and Mac — and has been part of introducing new products like AirPods, and the recently debuted sturdy-yet-affordable MacBook Neo.

“John Ternus has the mind of an engineer, the soul of an innovator and the heart to lead with integrity and with honor,” Cook said of his successor in the company’s announcement, adding he is “without question” the right person to take over.

Gruber says Ternus’s biggest mark on the company is probably shepherding in Apple silicon — the company’s in-house computer chips.

While Apple has used its own chips in its phones and iPads since 2010, Cook announced in 2020 that the company would transition to its own silicon chips in all products, rather than relying on Intel for them. That allows it to make chips that function exactly as it wants for each product, and enables additional features, like better noise cancellation in the second-generation AirPods Pro.

“The whole Apple Silicon movement … John Ternus was directly involved with,” given his role in hardware, Gruber said. 

Chris Deaver,…