John Ternus, the swimmer leading the race to succeed Tim Cook at Apple

John Ternus, 50, is the perfect candidate. Apple, which has been preparing for Tim Cook’s succession for some time, doesn’t seem to have planned any surprises in choosing its next leader. Ternus, with a solid and brilliant career inside the company, where he is senior vice president of hardware engineering, gives off that aura of the impeccable student who gets straight A’s, wins the swimming meets, and, on top of that, is liked by everyone.

Cook, who just turned 65, is the current CEO and a key figure in the company’s history. He has been at the helm of Apple since 2011, when he succeeded Steve Jobs. In that time, the company’s market capitalization has grown from $348 billion to $4 trillion. According to the Financial Times, it is unlikely that the company will name a new chief executive before its next earnings report at the end of January.

Internal sources cited by Bloomberg emphasize that Ternus has the full confidence of Cook and the board of directors. His combination of youth (50, the same age Cook was when he took over in 2011) and strong technical experience make him an attractive candidate, especially after the departure of other veterans like Jeff Williams, the former chief operations officer. He has been with the company for nearly 24 years, having joined in 2001. Today he oversees the teams that develop the iPhone, iPad, AirPods, Mac and other devices.

Apple has been giving Ternus an increasingly prominent role. In May, he led the presentation of the new iPad Pro and iPad Air, and made a strong impression. The previous year he traveled around Europe to talk about sustainability, a key issue for Cook. But the most telling moment came in December, in a half-hour television interview focused on chips. It wasn’t his specialty, but he handled it well. Bloomberg summed it up as “a pivotal moment.” They tested him — and he delivered.

According to the same outlet, a person close to the executive team said that Cook holds Ternus in high regard because of his ability to give strong presentations, his friendly demeanor, his caution when communicating by email, and his prudence when making decisions. The person also noted that he shares many management qualities with Cook himself. For his part, Christopher Stringer, a former hardware designer at Apple, described him as a trustworthy figure who, in his view, has never fallen short in any of the roles he has held.

Ternus was a college swimmer, and in 1994 he won the 50-meter freestyle and the 200-meter medley while competing for the University of Pennsylvania. He studied mechanical engineering and graduated in 1997. He then worked as a mechanical engineer at Virtual Research Systems, a company focused on developing virtual reality technologies. There he took part in designing headsets for this simulation system and gained hands-on experience with emerging human–machine interface technologies.

He joined Apple in 2001 as part of the product design team, at a pivotal moment for the company. Jobs had retaken the helm, and devices like the iMac were beginning to mark a new stage for Apple, which was preparing to transform the tech industry.

His first assignment was the design of the Apple Cinema Display, a large-format external monitor aimed at the Mac ecosystem. From that project onward, Ternus began expanding his scope, taking part in the development of various products and consolidating his reputation within the hardware teams.

After more than a decade at the company, in 2013 he was named vice president of hardware engineering. From that role — under the supervision of Dan Riccio, then head of the division globally — he went on to coordinate key projects tied to the evolution of the Mac, multiple generations of the iPad, and products such as the AirPods. In 2020, he took over leadership of the iPhone hardware engineering department, the company’s flagship product.

In early 2021, the company announced Ternus’s promotion to senior vice president, also of hardware engineering. With this move, Ternus became the top executive responsible for the physical development of Apple’s devices. His influence continued to grow: at the end of 2022, he was also put in charge of Apple Watch hardware, effectively consolidating nearly all of the company’s device engineering under his leadership.

Throughout his career, this engineer has left a deep mark on nearly Apple’s entire product lineup. He was a central figure in launching the AirPods, revolutionizing the wireless-audio experience, and he led the historic transition of the Mac to Apple’s own processors. His work has also covered other iconic products such as the iMac Pro, the modular Mac Pro, and the Apple Watch, bringing sustainability criteria into materials and design.

In a 2023 interview with CNBC, he highlighted the pride he feels for having worked on almost the company’s entire range of products, singling out the AirPods and the transition to Apple Silicon as milestones that marked a turning point. He advocates a philosophy based on total integration between hardware and software as the engine of innovation.

For a company that has made internal stability one of its trademarks under Cook’s leadership, the simultaneous departure of several top executives marks a notable shift. Cook himself has sent mixed messages about his future: in January, he told CNBC he couldn’t imagine “doing nothing” and would always want to stay active. Even so, Bloomberg has suggested he could follow figures like Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates and eventually take on a non-executive chairman role.

Choosing Ternus would not only confirm Apple’s preference for in-house talent, but also signal its commitment to betting on technological innovation. At a time when the iPhone can no longer carry the company on its back, and amid challenges like the Apple Vision Pro and the race for artificial intelligence, putting an engineer in charge might be exactly what Apple needs to write its next chapter.

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