Apple expands hardware chief Ternus' role in latest sign of CEO candidacy

By Mark Gurman

 

Apple Inc. has expanded the job of hardware chief John Ternus to include design work, solidifying his status as a leading contender to eventually succeed Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook. 

 

Cook, who has led Apple since 2011 and turned 65 in November, quietly tapped Ternus to manage the company’s design teams at the end of last year, according to people with knowledge of the matter. That widens Ternus’ role to add one of the company’s most critical functions.

 

The responsibilities have special significance at Apple. The role, which includes overseeing both hardware and software design, has long been entrusted to a senior leader. Going back to the Steve Jobs era, the company’s success has always been closely linked to how its products look and feel. 

 

 

The role was held by Jony Ive, Jobs’ longtime design partner, until his departure in 2019. Cook oversaw design from 2015 to 2017, when Ive temporarily stepped back from the position. Jeff Williams, Apple’s longtime chief operating officer and Cook’s top deputy, most recently held the job until his retirement at the end of 2025.

 

Ternus is now billed internally as the “executive sponsor” of all design on Cook’s management team, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the change wasn’t public. That entails being a bridge between design staff and Apple’s top brass. He represents the design organization in executive team gatherings and manages the group’s leaders.

 

A spokesman for Cupertino, California-based Apple declined to comment.

 

Even with the change, there are no signs within Apple that Cook is poised to step down soon. And when he does eventually retire, the executive is expected to stick around as chairman. Apple told shareholders this month that its current chairman, Art Levinson, would remain in his role past the company’s February shareholder meeting — despite the fact that he’s now 75, the usual retirement age for directors. That implies a chairman transition won’t happen until at least 2027. 

 

The Ternus move was made discreetly: The heads of Apple’s design teams continue to report directly to Cook in both internal organizational charts and the company’s public disclosures. People with knowledge of the move said that Cook himself is trying to expose Ternus to more parts of the company’s operations. 

 

As senior vice president of hardware engineering, Ternus already worked closely with the industrial design team, which focuses on hardware. But he hadn’t previously been responsible for that group or the one developing the user interface in Apple’s software. 

 

The move is seen as an acknowledgment that Ternus may be better suited to the design role. Cook, who rose through Apple’s sales and operations ranks to become CEO, is known to keep a distance from design decisions. He’s had limited involvement with product design since taking the reins. 

 

Still, Ternus isn’t the final arbiter for design decisions, which have been made by consensus for several years. Craig Federighi, who runs software engineering, is heavily influential in software design, and marketing chief Greg Joswiak is also a strong voice. Ternus was already part of that process on the hardware engineering side.

 

Having Ternus oversee the design teams while they still technically report to Cook is a strange arrangement, according to Apple employees. But it’s a sensitive situation. Changing the reporting structure would affirm Ternus’ status as a rising star, at a time when the company is still keeping its succession planning under wraps. 

 

Such an acknowledgment also risks undermining Cook by making it seem like he retreated from the design role. Apple only announced that he would take on the duties six months ago.

 

Bloomberg News first reported in 2024 that Ternus was a frontrunner to eventually take over for Cook and that Apple had intensified its succession planning. In October, Bloomberg reported that Ternus’ stature had grown further, with the executive becoming a key decision-maker on product road maps, features and strategy — duties that went beyond the traditional scope of a hardware chief.

 

At 50, Ternus is the youngest member of Apple’s executive team, giving him the longest potential runway as chief executive. He is well regarded by Cook and former COO Williams and is viewed by some board members as a leader capable of reshaping Apple’s devices for the artificial intelligence era.

 

Beyond Ternus, the other internal CEO candidate is Sabih Khan, Apple’s newly appointed chief operating officer. Khan oversees the company’s supply chain and occupies the same role Cook held prior to becoming CEO. His predecessor, Williams, had also been viewed as a contender for the top job.

 

In the more immediate term, the company is undergoing a broader shake-up — with several top executives announcing their departures late last year. Other senior vice presidents are also nearing the ages when Apple executives have traditionally retired. 

 

Johny Srouji, Apple’s executive in charge of custom silicon chips and related technologies, told Cook at the end of last year that he was seriously considering leaving the company and could take a role elsewhere, Bloomberg reported. Though he later told employees he wasn’t departing “anytime soon,” the discussion underscored growing uncertainty within Apple’s leadership ranks.

 

Ternus’ duties expanded further last year, when he assumed oversight of robotics teams and took sole responsibility for hardware engineering on the Apple Watch. That followed the breakup of the company’s artificial intelligence group and Williams’ retirement.

 

Apple has also increasingly positioned Ternus as a public face of the company. He introduced the iPhone Air and has led many of the major interviews following recent product announcements, often taking a more prominent role than Cook.

 

The latest shift marks another leadership change within Apple’s design organization. In 2024, the company named team veteran Molly Anderson as head of industrial design. Alan Dye, the company’s chief of human interface design, departed for Meta Platforms Inc. in December. Many staffers who worked under Ive, meanwhile, have since left for his design studio, LoveFrom, or startups such as OpenAI.