Cheyenne Suarez

John Ternus to lead Apple into the age of AI

Article (news)

Agence France-Presse

<div><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1788142418298AFP__20260728__C3CA8ZW__v1__MidRes__AppleTvSTedLassoSeason4Premiere.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/>John Ternus takes over as Apple&#x27;s chief executive on Tuesday, inheriting a company that towers over the smartphone market but trails its rivals in artificial intelligence.</div>SAN FRANCISCO, United States — John Ternus takes over as Apple&#x27;s chief executive on Tuesday, inheriting a company that towers over the smartphone market but trails its rivals in artificial intelligence.One of his biggest challenges will be balancing the company&#x27;s dependence on China while parrying acute political pressure from the White House.The handover ends Tim Cook&#x27;s 15-year run, replacing the operations specialist who built Apple&#x27;s supply chain with the engineer who built its hardware.Ternus, 51, joined Apple&#x27;s design team in 2001 and worked his way up to senior vice president of hardware engineering, reporting to Cook.He leads the engineering teams behind Apple&#x27;s entire product lineup, including the iPhones that generate most of the company&#x27;s revenue.He gets barely a week to settle in, with Apple holding its annual iPhone event on September 9, where it is expected to unveil its first foldable handset.&quot;Tim Cook left the house in phenomenal order,&quot; said Dan Ives, partner and senior managing director at investment firm Yorkville Ives &amp; Co.&quot;But now it&#x27;s about Ternus defining the AI chapter.&quot;Ives expects the new chief executive to lean into what he knows.&quot;There&#x27;s no reason to fix what&#x27;s already working,&quot; he said, predicting Ternus will concentrate on hardware innovation while leaving Cook&#x27;s supply chain intact.Some analysts had argued software chief Craig Federighi was the more logical pick for a company scrambling to catch up on AI.Carolina Milanesi, an analyst at Creative Strategies, said that misreads how consumers actually adopt technology.&quot;Consumers are still buying hardware first, and it&#x27;s going to be like that for a long time,&quot; she said. &quot;You&#x27;re not going to discover the value of AI if you&#x27;re not interested in the hardware.&quot;Ternus earned a bachelor&#x27;s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and worked as an engineer at Virtual Research Systems before joining Apple.Inside the company he is credited with driving a push to make products more durable, reliable and resilient, and with design work that cut their carbon footprint.The harder question is what kind of leader he becomes.&quot;Even people that know him now don&#x27;t know him as a CEO,&quot; Milanesi said.&quot;You might know him as the head of engineering, but once you&#x27;re CEO, things change. Your responsibility is bigger, your power is bigger. You&#x27;re dancing a different kind of dance.&quot;<div>&#x27;Learn on the job&#x27; </div>Nowhere is that gap wider than in the geopolitical role Cook excelled at, courting both Beijing and Donald Trump&#x27;s White House to protect a supply chain that runs largely through China.Apple&#x27;s manufacturing operation is among the most complex in corporate history, a web of hundreds of suppliers and assembly lines that Cook painstakingly built over decades.Cook in recent years began shifting some of the work elsewhere -- iPhone assembly to India, other production to Vietnam -- but the diversification has been gradual with China, one of Apple&#x27;s biggest consumer markets, still anchoring the system.Complicating matters, Trump has repeatedly demanded Apple build iPhones on American soil, threatening tariffs on those made overseas.Cook avoided the heaviest blows of Trump&#x27;s trade war by cultivating the president directly, making US investment commitments and political donations -- all while also keeping Beijing onside.The tricky political terrain will be new for Ternus.&quot;He knows Apple Park like the back of his pocket in terms of hardware,&quot; Ives said of Ternus. &quot;But on the global stage -- that&#x27;s probably one of the biggest areas where he&#x27;s going to have to learn on the job.&quot;Cook is not going far. He becomes executive chairman of Apple&#x27;s board on the same day, with a mandate the company has said includes engaging policymakers around the world.&quot;That was really clever,&quot; said Milanesi, arguing the arrangement frees Ternus from a role Cook has handled alone for years.The September 9 iPhone event will be the first public measure of the handover.A foldable iPhone would be the most significant redesign in years, and Ternus will be its face -- eight days into the job.&quot;This is a moment that they created for him,&quot; Milanesi said.

John Ternus takes over as Apple's chief executive on Tuesday, inheriting a company that towers over the smartphone market but trails its rivals in artificial intelligence.

John Ternus takes over as Apple's chief executive on Tuesday, inheriting a company that towers over the smartphone market but trails its rivals in artificial intelligence.