Name three Apple CEOs.
You can probably hack Steve Jobs and Tim Cook and maybe Throw in John Scully. But—and I know Michael Spindler will chime in on the comments after Stans says this—Apple there are probably more forgotten CEOs than you realize.
John Ternus, who He will replace Tim Cook as Apple CEO in September, can Becoming a famous CEO like Steve Jobs and Tim Cook. Or it could be someone else Gilbert F. Amelio. Before betting on which type of ternus you need to know:
Within Apple, he is known for being a sweetheart
Steve Siefert, Ternus’ first Apple boss, New York Times profile said that when Ternus had the opportunity to move from the open-plan workspace where he sat with his children to a private office, he refused. Siefert called him “a man of the people.”
Cameron Rogers, another former Apple employee who worked with him, said in the same profile that Ternus is “someone you want to be around,” adding, “Everybody loves him because he’s great.”
Could the CEO’s courtesy to the insiders mark a change in vibe for Apple? After all, Steve Jobs supposedly was div when he doesn’t get what he wants from his employees and Tim Cook has a reputation as a magician who is more profitable than having multiple personalities, good or bad.
But Apple has maintained a relatively sweet reputation as a place to work, even in our technologically critical times. There is this above average Glassdoor rating (if that makes sense) and that cuts tend not to have large, headline-grabbing periods. So as internal vibes go, a nice guy CEO would be more of a continuity than a hiatus.
Now Apple will be led by an engineer.
Ternus can talk at length about which chips are in which gadget and why:
According to AppleTernus studied mechanical engineering at Penn, got a job as an engineer at a virtual reality company, and then moved to Apple, where he started as an engineer. external monitors. He oversaw the creation of the original iPad and AirPods and focused on the new generations of the Mac, Apple Watch and iPhone.
According to BloombergAn anonymous Apple veteran who reportedly worked under Jobs and Cook at Apple noted that Cook doesn’t get into the nitty-gritty of product development, but Ternus is “a real engineer.” That article’s portrait of Ternus is that of a demanding technician with a deep understanding of the inner workings of Apple devices, enabling him to overcome product degradation. He also has a more creative side, the profile notes, and oversaw the development of an as-yet-unreleased desktop robot device.
This would be in stark contrast to Doll, a renowned master of silicon supply chain logistics, not silicon itself.
But the Bloomberg profile also says that Ternus has one quality in common with Cook: risk aversion. According to Bloomberg, some of Apple’s ventures into artificial intelligence and smart home devices are linked to Ternus. However, this article claims from an anonymous Apple insider that Ternus is aware of the criticism regarding the need for exciting new products and (allegedly) stronger AI implementation.
Apple’s future remains a mystery
Yes, this point is almost too obvious to bring up, but I mention it because so much is up in the air right now. Apple has been hammered for being bold in AI, however depending on how the next few years goif Ternus goes down in history as the CEO who resisted putting all his company eggs in the AI basket before it turned out to be an AI bubble, it might be more of a stroke of genius than a mistake.
Ternus also takes the reins New uncertainty surrounding US-China relations. Tim Cook’s tenure at Apple has been largely defined by US-China trade from the start. Apple was already a US company with products assembled in China, but Cook made it a company increasingly dependent on China as a customer base. One side of this equation is solid: Apple has moved some production to Vietnam and India. It cannot shake its dependence on Chinese factories. There are signs that the other party is further shaken: iPhone is losing market share in China.
Moreover, political realities are changing. Here’s a look at Cook in 2026 It appears in the Oval Office and friend around a deeply unpopular, far-right presidenteither out of sheer corporate convenience, or because President Trump’s policies align with his, or some combination of the two—Cook is very private, so it’s unclear. Twelve years ago, however, Big Tech was in a different political universe, and Cook’s reputation, deserved or not, was as a progressive corporate hero. he claimed Witnessing an anti-black hate crime “is etched in my mind forever and it will change my life forever.”
Ternus, for its part, boasts a rather impressive origin story. According to the New York Times, His senior project at Penn was “a device that allows a quadriplegic to use head movements to control a mechanical feeding arm.” Right now is not a good time to believe in the possibility of tech corporations being benign, but if the vibe changes for the better, Ternus is making that unlikely event less and less likely based on the data currently available.
