John Ternus set to reinvigorate Apple’s design team as CEO: report

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman wrote about it today The latest edition of the Power On newsletterIt’s reminiscent of the last decade of Apple’s corporate structure, where the influence of the design team at executive levels declined during the Cook era, bolstered by Jony Ive’s exit and talent departures as finance and operations increasingly had a say over product direction.

However, Gurman believes that incoming CEO John Ternus may be about to restore those relationships, reaffirming the design team’s importance to the company’s future.

After I left the company, former COO Jeff Williams took control of the design team. This was a major shift from the previous regime, where Ive’s industrial design team dictated the company’s product roadmap from the top down.

This arrangement was highlighted as far back as 2011, in a biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. According to Jobs, Ive has more operational power than anyone else at Apple except himself, “because of the way I set it up.”

Fast forward to today and it couldn’t be further from the current situation where many believe that the company’s design is less important than its operations department. Apple doesn’t even have a senior design role right now, and recently added the profiles of Molly Anderson and Steve Lemay. leadership page.

Incoming CEO John Ternus will likely be more involved with product than Cook, apparently looking to restore some authority to the design team. Gurman says Ternus has spent much of his time on the industrial design team as he prepares for his succession, which begins on September 1.

Ternus Gurman is quoted as saying, “The most beautifully designed thing most customers own is an Apple product. We’re going to make sure it stays that way.”

you can read Full profile at Bloomberg. Externally, Apple PR is touting Ternus as the face of recent design successes like the MacBook Neo, and Ternus’ first big public role after taking over will be to unveil the all-new foldable iPhone at a media event in the fall.