Meet John Ternus, the former 50 -year -old swimming champion who would succeed Tim Cook as Apple CEO.
Apple has discreetly orchestrated its most important management transition for more than a decade, and at the Center for the Succession Planning is John Ternus, 50 years old, senior vice-president of the company’s material engineering. While Tim Cook is approaching his 65th anniversary next month, Apple’s observers and Apple initiates are increasingly tarnished as the candidate most likely to inherit the reins of one of the most precious technological companies in the world, according to a new report by Mark Gurman de Bloomberg, which has accurately reported from Apple for years.
Speculations intensified after Apple’s operating director Jeff Williams, formerly considered as Cook’s natural successor, resigned from his operational responsibilities in July and will leave the company by the end of the year. With Williams out of competition, Gurman says that Ternus has become “the most likely presumptive heir”.
Ternus brings a combination of technical expertise and institutional knowledge to conversation on succession. According to his LinkedIn profile, the mechanical engineer joined the Apple product design team in 2001 and supervised the hardware engineering of almost all the major products of the current company portfolio. Its fingerprints are on each generation of iPad, on the latest iPhone range and on AirPods. He played a crucial role in the transition from Mac to Apple Silicon. He also played a leading role in the latest Apple Keynotes, presenting products like the new iPhone Air.
The moment when the visibility of ternus has increased is not a coincidence. Apple’s public relations teams began to “highlight tarnish”, according to Gurman, which indicates that the company could prepare for a progressive transition of power. Beyond the launching of products, Ternus has assumed responsibilities which extend far beyond traditional material engineering, by influencing the roadmaps of products, functionalities and strategic decisions generally reserved for senior executives.
At 50, Ternus reflects the age of Cook when he became CEO in 2011, which positions him for potentially a decade or more leadership. This longevity factor seduces the Apple board of directors, which prefers stability in management transitions. His engineering training also corresponds to the orientation that Apple takes as a business, by exploring emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and mixed reality.
The Chemin de Ternus to Cupertino
Ternus’ route to the Apple summit started at the University of Pennsylvania, where he distinguished himself both academic and sporting. In 1997, he obtained a baccalaureate in engineering sciences, with specialization in mechanical engineering. But ternus did not focus only on his studies: he was a competition swimmer who made his mark in the pool.
A 1994 report in the Pennsylvanian daily revealed the athletic prowess of ternus when he won the 50 meter free and the 200 meter four individual swimming during a university swimming competition. Even more remarkable, Ternus is a “winner of all time” for the male swimming team of the UPENN, representing the university swimming team a record number of times.
The first years: from VR to Apple
After graduating, Ternus joined Virtual Research Systems as a mechanical engineer. Virtual Research Systems, although little known today, was part of the first virtual reality wave of the 1980s and 1990s, working on VR headsets and immersive technologies. This four-year stay exposed tarnish to advanced display technology and human-machine interfaces, an experience that will prove to be invaluable during its subsequent work on products such as Apple Vision Pro.
Ternus joined the Apple product design team in 2001, at a pivotal moment in the history of the company. Steve Jobs was back, the iMac had revitalized the company and Apple was preparing to launch products that would redefine entire industries. Having started as a relatively junior member of the product design team, Ternus first worked on external Mac monitors.
In 2013, Ternus had been promoted vice-president of material engineering, supervising the development of AirPods, Mac and Ipad. His portfolio widened in 2020 when he took care of the material engineering of the iPhone, previously supervised directly by Dan Riccio. When Riccio resigned in January 2021 to focus on the Apple Vision Pro project, Ternus was promoted to senior vice-president of material engineering, making him a member of the Apple management team.
Apple’s public relations teams began to “highlight tarnish”, according to Gurman, which indicates that the company could prepare for a progressive transition of power. This change is obvious in the increased visibility of ternus during product launches and industry events. He became a regular presenter during the main Apple events, revealing the updates of the IMAC and the MacBook Pro, presenting the 2018 iPad Pro, revealing the Imac Pro and presenting the 2019 Mac Pro 2019. Basically, Ternus was also responsible for unveiling Apple Silicon in the world, as well as the new iPhone Air.
“Ternus stands out,” wrote Gurman in his latest report. “It is charismatic and well considered by Apple’s faithful and has the confidence of Cook, who has granted more responsibilities to Ternus. The manager has become a key decision-maker on roadmaps, features and product strategies, extending his influence beyond the traditional scope of a material engineering chief.”
“When Apple began to sell the iPhone 17 range last month, it was Ternus that welcomed customers in the company’s Regent Street store in London (a role that Cook occupied on Apple’s fifth avenue),” continued Gurman.
Apple’s leadership in transition
The question of succession has become urgent while Apple faces a more important staff rolling. John Giannandrea, senior vice-president responsible for Apple’s strategy of Apple, would have an uncertain future following the setbacks of Siri’s development, according to Gurman, who added that the chief of material technologies, Johny Srouji, “assesses his future”, and that the head of environmental policy, Lisa Jackson, also plans to retire.
For a company that has boasted of its organizational stability throughout Cook’s mandate, the simultaneous departure of several senior executives marks a significant change. Cook himself gave mixed signals on retirement projects, declaring to CNBC in January that he could not consider “doing nothing” and that he would always want to work “. However, Bloomberg reports that Cook could possibly move to the role of president, like the measures taken by Jeff Bezos at Amazon and Bill Gates at Microsoft.
The choice of tarnish would represent Apple’s preference for internal promotion rather than the search for external leadership. This would also point out an evolution towards a priority given to technical innovation rather than purely operational excellence, while the company seeks to invigorate categories of products beyond the iPhone which generates the majority of its income. The difficulties of the company with the Apple Vision Pro and its efforts to compete in the field of artificial intelligence suggest that technical leadership could be exactly what Apple needs for its next chapter.
For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help a first draft. An editor checked the accuracy of the information before publishing it.
