My time with Apple gear began at school. In English, I was unceremoniously plonked in front of a Mac Classic running PageMaker and told to design a school magazine. The reasoning? “You like computers!” Which was true, but I mostly played games on my Commodore 64. It’s testament to the Mac that I muddled through. And maybe that’s why, come the mid-1990s, I chose a Mac over a PC for uni art and multimedia projects, despite prevailing wisdom that Apple was ‘doomed’.
Back then, Gil Amelio was Apple’s CEO. He didn’t last long, in part because his one really good decision cost him his job. Amelio had Apple buy NeXT. With that, Steve Jobs returned. One boardroom coup later and Amelio was out. Jobs revitalised Apple, steering the company almost until his death in 2011. Since then, it’s been Tim Cook’s Apple. But now he’s stepping down. No boardroom coup this time, though – Cook will become executive chairman of the board. And in his place as Apple’s new CEO? John Ternus.
One good Ternus
Ternus is no Apple newbie, though. He joined in 2001 and climbed the hardware ranks to run the show by 2021. His CV reads like an Apple’s greatest hits. AirPods! iPad! A whole bunch of iPhones, Macs and Apple Watches!
This alone feels exciting. A product guy is about to run Apple again, rather than someone whose pre-CEO superpowers were boosting margins and optimising supply chains. And if that nudges the company back to product-first thinking, I’m all for that. But a new Apple CEO creates far more opportunities.
Cook famously loves consensus. Jobs famously didn’t, and was often the final arbiter of taste at Apple. Ternus, by most accounts, sits somewhere in between, but leans closer to Jobs. He’s said to be decisive and not keen on groupthink. If that holds, I hope that means more products that feel like they should exist, with a clear market fit.
There are hints already. Ternus was reportedly sceptical about Apple Car (cancelled) and Vision Pro (probably should have been), yet strongly backed the MacBook Neo and was a driving force behind the iPhone Air.
Ternus the tide
We can argue about how successful those last two products have been. (Some have cooled on the Air, but Neo sales have gone nuts.) But they do suggest Ternus can work within constraints and make smart trade-offs. That doesn’t guarantee the balance is always right, but it does bring clarity, designing around limits to ship distinct products that land.
That will only matter more and more. The economy is tight. The tech industry is struggling with AI companies gulping down RAM and storage. Ternus already hinted we will see more products in the MacBook Neo mould. Good. The game has changed and Apple must change with it.
Similarly, I hope Ternus will shift the balance of Apple’s relationship with users. The company used to be unapologetically user-first, whereas now it often just says it is. Services are over-eager. App Store ads border on the parodic, swallowing up almost the entire results screen. First-party upsells are everywhere. Yes, those things make money, but they chip away at the notion Apple is on your side. I can’t imagine Ternus signing off Macs slathered in physical ads, and so the same must be true elsewhere.
Ternus the screws
Then there’s software. Apple’s not bad at it, but needs to do better. Unlike Apple’s elegant, considered hardware, its software is often unrefined. And the new design language is unfocused. For all its claims to be content-first Liquid Glass remains full of visual noise that gets in your way, from flashing UI elements to overbearing shadows.
This is where I’d like Ternus to apply his hardware mindset. Apple software should have the same razor-sharp focus and polish as Apple hardware. Ternus reportedly likes Liquid Glass, but that shouldn’t rule out course-correction. And while that’s going on, he needs Apple to course correct elsewhere: repair developer relations so third-party apps remain a strength; figure out AI; and ensure Apple does not promise what it cannot ship.
It’s a doozy of a to-do list. So one final thing I’d like to see isn’t on Ternus – it’s on us: patience. Much of what Apple ships over the next couple of years will be Cook-era Apple with Ternus’s input. It’ll take time before Apple is fully his company. Alas, history suggests that’s the least likely of my wishes to be granted.
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