Who is John Ternos, Apple’s next CEO?

In 15 years, Tim Cook will do just that Handing over the role of CEO of Apple To John Ternos, the company’s senior vice president of hardware engineering. Starting September 1, Ternus will lead one of the world’s most valuable companies, but if you’re not a dedicated Apple fan, you’ve probably never heard of this guy, who has largely kept a low profile until now.

How long has John Ternos worked at Apple?

Ternus has worked at Apple for nearly half his life — he’s now 51, and has been with the company for 25 years.

He joined Apple’s product design team in 2001 as his second job out of college (his first job was at a small virtual reality hardware manufacturer called Virtual Research Systems). By 2013, Ternos was vice president of hardware engineering, and was promoted to senior vice president in 2021. Ternos — who is 15 years younger than him — was among the youngest Apple executives to hold the position of vice president. Rumor As a potential successor, which means Apple may be looking for someone to lead the company for a long time. After all, Apple has only had two CEOs this millennium, so continuity of leadership seems important to the company.

Ternus reports to Cook, whom he considers a mentor, and leads all of hardware engineering at Apple. That’s a pretty big deal for a company known for its ubiquitous devices like the iPhone and MacBook.

In his 2024 commencement speech at his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering, Ternos talked about the lessons he learned at Apple, which perhaps can tell us a little about his character — or at least a revised version of them.

“Always assume you’re as smart as everyone else in the room, but never assume you know as much as they do,” Ternos said in his essay. letter. “With this mindset, you will find the confidence you need to move forward, but more importantly, the humility to ask questions.”

In a technology ecosystem full of false egos, it’s refreshing to hear Ternus utter the word “humility.” Better yet, he doesn’t appear to have an X account.

What projects did John Ternos lead at Apple?

Ternus’ first project at Apple involved examining parts of the Apple Cinema Display, an early desktop monitor.

“At some point in my first year, I found myself at a supplier’s facility. I was far from home. After midnight, I was using a magnifying glass to count the number of grooves on the head of a screw (…) and I was arguing with the supplier because these parts had 35 grooves. They were supposed to have 25,” Ternos recalled in his commencement speech. “I distinctly remember stepping back for a minute and thinking: ‘What the hell am I doing? Is this normal?

As Ternos climbed the corporate ladder, his responsibilities grew. He may no longer spend as much time analyzing screws, but he still seems to take pride in getting the little details right. Recently interviewWhen asked about his favorite memory of Steve Jobs, Ternos mentioned the former Apple co-founder’s interest in craftsmanship.

“(Jobs) would move a piece of furniture, a chest of drawers, and pull it away from the wall and look back, and he was just thinking, you know, the carpenter who made it made it beautiful,” Ternos said. “He finished the back part as beautifully as the rest of it, even though no one was going to see it, right? And I think about that all the time because I think that perfectly embodies what we do here.”

From there, he continued to lead hardware development behind products across the Apple ecosystem, overseeing launches like AirPods, Apple Watch, and Vision Pro. He also had a hand in major technology upgrades at Apple, such as Apple’s move from Intel chips to its own products. Apple silicon.

Recently, Ternus has been involved in producing MacBook Neoa new, affordable laptop model from Apple that cuts costs through some smart trade-offs in hardware design, such as using an iPhone chip to power the device.

“We never want to ship junk. We want to ship great products that have Apple expertise and Apple quality. Doing that with Neo requires building something completely new from the ground up (…) leveraging both the technologies we’ve been developing like Apple silicon, but also the kind of expertise we’ve developed over many years of building Macs, building phones, building iPads, all of those things,” Ternos said. Tom’s guide.

As CEO, Ternus will have to guide Apple through the challenge it faces to catch up in the AI ​​race and figure out what to do with the core technology behind Vision Pro.

What else do we know about John Ternus?

Ternus was a member of the Penn swim team. For his senior project, he built a feeding arm that people with quadriplegia can control through head movements.

according to Public records Of political donations, Ternus donated $2,900 to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in 2021.

Otherwise, Ternus has maintained a relatively low profile.