Stepping into his new role as Apple Inc.’s chief executive officer on Sept. 1, John Ternus won’t have much time before the company begins its annual fall product rollouts. This year the lineup will include an unusually ambitious slate of devices he’s been teasing for months internally, including the first foldable iPhone and a smart display that can recognize who’s speaking and tailor content to them.
Ternus spearheaded those devices in his previous job as Apple’s hardware chief, while also overseeing work on products that won’t be ready for this fall, including AirPods with cameras that can interpret a user’s surroundings, smart glasses, a home security system, a home display attached to a robotic arm and a camera-equipped pendant that can be worn as a necklace or clipped to a shirt. All these devices will be crucial to Apple’s plans to address the most pressing question facing the company: How can it extend its decades-long run of success into the era of artificial intelligence?
Apple is a gadget company at heart, and Ternus has spent 25 years helping perfect its devices, first as an engineer designing Macs. Later he took over iPads, AirPods, iPhones and eventually the entire hardware engineering operation.
He’s less experienced at the other aspects of the CEO job, such as finance, sales, legal affairs, government relations and procurement, so he’ll need to rely heavily on Apple’s other executives. Chief Operating Officer Sabih Khan, Chief Financial Officer Kevan Parekh and Eddy Cue, the services chief, are all poised to take on bigger and more influential roles, according to people close to the company. (Like others who spoke to Bloomberg Businessweek for this story, they did so on condition of anonymity to discuss Apple’s inner workings.)
Bloomberg
