John Ternus is making his mark on Apple by focusing on the company’s design work, with the CEO taking an almost Jobsian approach to making design great again.
Tim Cook’s era as Apple CEO was one of growth, with sales and manufacturing at the heart of his tenure. Under Ternus’ leadership, design is once again becoming a top priority for the company, as Ternus aims to add more to the company by strengthening its weakest areas.
Writing in Sunday’s “Power On” newsletter for BloombergMark Gurman writes about a conversation between Ternus and Cook and how Ternus needed to be himself as CEO instead of emulating Cook. For Ternus this was a clear turning point.
Cook had spent his tenure as CEO working on where he could generate “the most value for Apple,” Ternus told employees. Therefore, Ternus believed he had to do the same, while being himself.
The result is that the areas Cook has focused on, such as financial strategy and supply chain, are managed by CFO Kevan Parekh and COO Sabih Khan. Ternus, who is primarily an engineer, is instead working closely with hardware manager Johny Srouji and hardware engineering leader Tom Marieb.
At the same time, much more time is being spent on design, which has lagged since Jony Ive’s departure in 2019. There were leaders working for the industrial design and human interface design groups, but they were separate rather than a single executive covering both areas.
These leaders also reported to former COO Jeff Williams, who had experience in manufacturing but not design. When Williams retired in 2025, those teams were said to report directly to Cook.
It didn’t last long, as Cook handed over design responsibility to Ternus prior to the CEO transition. During the transition itself, the design leaders were effectively the only direct reports Ternus had before taking the top job at the company.
A Jobsian change
Ternus has previous experience working with the design studio, in his role as head of hardware engineering. After becoming CEO, he became even closer to the design teams and reportedly worked directly in the studio numerous times a week.
This is in stark contrast to Cook, who focused heavily on the other areas of the business he knew best. Cook only visited the studio for about an hour once a month, the report said.
Cook’s down-to-earth approach to design was also a major departure from that of his predecessor, Steve Jobs. Jobs was famous for being deeply involved in design, which Ternus seems to emulate.
Raising the profile of design at Apple is a tall order, especially after Ive’s departure. Part of this is actually due to Ive’s design studio, LoveFrom, taking part of the design team out of the company.
Apple’s design is led by Steve Lemay (left) and Molly Anderson, during the launch of the iPhone Duo – image credit: Apple.
There have also been losses to OpenAI’s hardware team and other tech companies, thinning the studio’s ranks. Then there are the departures of software design leader Alan Dye and industrial design head Evans Hankey to OpenAI.
The current vice president of industrial design, Molly Anderson, did not have a high profile and also had not managed a team as large as Apple’s before taking on the role. But even so, Gurman says there is no ongoing search for an external chief design officer.
Instead, there has been an effort on Apple’s part to shore up what it already has and to rebuild. This included bringing Anderson and Dye’s successor, Steve Lemay, to the forefront with the launch of the iPhone Duo, as well as hiring more designers for its team.
Apple may not be looking for someone to take over the design teams right now. Considering how much focus he has on design right now, Ternus might believe he can do it himself.
