{"id":179622,"date":"2026-08-06T04:51:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T04:51:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/179622\/"},"modified":"2026-08-06T04:51:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T04:51:10","slug":"can-new-ceo-john-ternus-bring-back-apples-design-mojo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/179622\/","title":{"rendered":"Can new CEO John Ternus bring back Apple\u2019s design mojo?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Apple's<\/a>Apple\u2019s incoming CEO John Ternus<\/p>\n

As Tim Cook hands the reins to hardware engineering chief John Ternus in September 2026, the company faces its biggest leadership transition in 15 years. While Cook\u2019s tenure delivered massive revenue growth and operational excellence, many former employees and analysts say Apple has lost the product-first, risk-taking design culture that defined the Jobs years. Fortune explores whether Ternus can shift the company from steady iteration back to true innovation.<\/p>\n

Sebastian Herrera for Fortune<\/a>:
\u200e<\/p>\n

\nMatthew Rogers remembers Apple\u2019s scrappy days when, as an engineer fresh out of college, he could debate ideas directly with Steve Jobs\u2026 \u201cI was 23, 24 years old, and I interacted with Steve Jobs. That\u2019s crazy, right? But that\u2019s the organization he ran,\u201d Rogers told Fortune from his Silicon Valley office (he now runs food-recycling startup Mill).<\/p>\n

Back then, Apple\u2019s hierarchy was much flatter. What made Apple special, he said, is that Jobs surrounded himself with consumer-minded product leaders who were expected to argue. The mandate was to build \u201cthe best thing out there\u201d and take real risks. Some of Apple\u2019s most iconic products came out of a skunkworks team across the street from the main office.<\/p>\n

That much-mythologized era continues to shape \u2014 and perhaps burden \u2014 Apple as it navigates its biggest leadership transition in 15 years. Somewhere along the way, Apple lost a part of its design and product magic, Rogers and several former design and hardware employees, investors, and analysts said. The September handoff from Tim Cook to incoming chief executive John Ternus, who currently leads hardware engineering, has Rogers and other longtime Apple watchers wondering: Can the company reclaim its product-first soul?<\/p>\n

Rogers, who also cocreated smart home company Nest with former Apple executive Tony Fadell, said Ternus now faces a defining test. \u201cI\u2019ll put it this way,\u201d he said. \u201cHe has a tall task, but a big opportunity.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\u200e
MacDailyNews Take: As we posted on X just yesterday<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Under Tim Cook, Apple systematically strayed from Steve Jobs\u2019 core vision. Product Design, the very soul of the company Jobs rebuilt, was demoted, sidelined, and subordinated to operations, supply-chain efficiency, and services revenue. The result? Fifteen long years of polished, but profoundly boring iteration: thinner bezels, faster chips, incremental camera bumps, and endless \u201cPro\u201d variants that rarely moved the industry forward the way the original iPhone, iPad, or even the aluminum unibody MacBooks once did.<\/p>\n

Jobs put Design at the absolute top of the food chain. Jony Ive\u2019s group wasn\u2019t a service department; it was the engine. Cook flipped the hierarchy. Hardware engineering, operations, and finance called the shots (poorly; witness Luca Maestri famously rejecting calls to invest in AI early on which is why he\u2019s now sidelined). Design became reactive instead of directive. The Vision Pro launched as an impressive, but overpriced, underbaked curiosity. After billions spent, the Apple Car evaporated. True category-defining leaps simply did not happen.<\/p>\n

Now comes John Ternus, a product person, a hardware guy who has spent his career shipping actual devices rather than optimizing margins. Early signals are encouraging: bringing trusted hardware lieutenants back into the fold and already embedding himself with the industrial design group. That is exactly the right instinct.<\/p>\n

If Ternus moves quickly to restore Design to its rightful place at the apex of Apple\u2019s decision-making, the company might finally escape the long, comfortable, lucrative mediocrity of the Cook era. Apple doesn\u2019t need another fifteen years of safer, prettier, or just different iterations. It needs the return of products that make people stop, stare, and rethink what a computer in their pocket, on their wrist, or on their face can be.<\/p>\n

The hardware engineer is about to become CEO. The question is whether he has the will \u2014 and the authority with Cook looming as Executive Chairman \u2014 to put Design back on top where Jobs left it. The next few years will tell us if Apple can innovate again\u2026 or if the iteration treadmill simply continues under a new CEO.<\/p>\n

Fingers crossed!<\/p>\n

\u200e
Please help support MacDailyNews \u2014 and enjoy subscriber-only articles, comments, chat, and more \u2014 by subscribing to our Substack: macdailynews.substack.com<\/a>. Thank you!<\/p>\n

Support MacDailyNews at no extra cost to you by using this link to shop at Amazon<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Apple\u2019s incoming CEO John Ternus As Tim Cook hands the reins to hardware engineering chief John Ternus in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179623,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[23148],"tags":[81239,28533,2344,81240,1021,628],"class_list":["post-179622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-john-ternus","tag-aplple-desing","tag-apple-innovation","tag-john-ternus","tag-matthew-rogers","tag-steve-jobs","tag-tim-cook"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/117046771210303548","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}