On September 1, Apple will have a new captain. Tim Cook, who led the company for 15 years and increased its market capitalization by about $3.6 trillion, will step down, and John Ternus, 51, will take his place. The name may be unfamiliar in Korea. He has no flashy speeches or sensational backstory. Yet much of the iPhone in your hand and the MacBook on your desk passed through this man’s hands.
From swimming champion to Apple engineer
Ternus majored in mechanical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. In his student days, he shone more in the water than at a desk. He was a well-known collegiate swimmer with victories in the 50-meter freestyle and 200-meter individual medley. His personality, which favored steady efforts over the spotlight, later shaped the way he worked.
After graduating in 1997, he began his engineering career at a small company that made virtual reality headsets. He joined Apple in 2001. His first assignment had little glamour: designing Mac monitors. In the same year Steve Jobs was startling the world with the iPod, Ternus was a junior engineer wrestling with parts in a corner of the company.
25 years shaping the iPhone and the Mac
After 25 years, it is easier to find Apple products he did not touch. He oversaw every generation of the iPad, starting with the first model. The latest iPhone lineup, AirPods with noise cancellation, and the ultra-thin iPhone Air with a thickness of 5.6 mm are all his creations.
Above all, his greatest achievement is Apple Silicon. In 2020, Apple replaced the Mac’s brain from Intel chips with its own M-series chips. It was a risky operation that amounted to replacing the computer’s heart entirely, but the result is regarded as one of the most successful transitions in computing history. Ternus led that project.
He also steadily climbed the ranks. He became Vice President of Hardware Engineering in 2013 and Senior Vice President in 2021, taking charge of the entire iPhone, iPad, and Mac product lineup. His increasingly frequent appearances on Apple’s new-product presentation stages in recent years were no coincidence.
It was the result of the company identifying him as a future leader long ago and preparing him for the role. On the launch day of a new iPhone last year, he even visited Apple’s London store in person to greet customers.
Apple’s first “engineer CEO” since Jobs
The significance of Ternus’ appointment lies in the fact that he is an engineer. For the first time since founder Steve Jobs, Apple will have a CEO who understands products on a technical level. He is different from Tim Cook, a former accounting expert and master of supply chains and management.
Their working styles also contrast. While Cook was known for a style that gathered opinions from several executives and made decisions by consensus, Ternus is considered more decisive. Even before officially taking the CEO position, he had already begun changing the company.
After former design chief Jony Ive left in 2019, he revived a design team that had lost momentum and brought back retired hardware executive Laura Legro. His direction is clear: he wants to prioritize practical essentials such as battery life, performance, and connectivity over flashy aesthetics.
The biggest challenge ahead: AI
Despite his impressive résumé, the road ahead is not smooth. Apple is said to be lagging behind OpenAI and Google in the artificial intelligence race. The Siri overhaul, a core part of Apple Intelligence, has been repeatedly delayed. After 25 years of building hardware, Ternus must now compete on unfamiliar terrain: software and AI.
Ternus is not in a hurry. He describes the AI race as “a marathon, not a sprint.” His view is that even if Apple is behind now, it can eventually pull ahead through persistence. He has also cited Apple Maps, which started poorly but is now widely used, saying that “if you have a vision and stick with it, you can turn a bad start into a great outcome.” Critics note that he has yet to prove he can create and succeed with a product category from scratch, and that remains a question mark he must answer.
His predecessor Cook is not leaving completely. He will remain as chairman and handle relations with policymakers around the world. The arrangement is clear: Ternus will handle products, and Cook will handle politics. The engineer who never sought the spotlight has become the face of the world’s most valuable company.
What he has made so far are tangible machines, but what he must now prove is invisible AI. The next race has begun for the swimmer who once quietly piled up records in the pool.