Apple CEO John Ternus Reportedly Takes Direct Control of Design Teams

Apple’s design teams are now reporting directly to CEO John Ternus. According to Bloomberg‘s Power On newsletter, Ternus has taken a much more hands-on role with the company’s hardware and software design groups, spending several days a week in the design studio and sometimes stopping in more than once a day.

That’s a major change from how Tim Cook ran Apple, as Gurman reports Cook would visit the design studio for about an hour, at most once a month. Ternus, by comparison, is now closely involved in the work and has final say across both Apple’s industrial design and human interface teams. That lines up with earlier reports describing Ternus as a more decisive leader who planned to take a closer role in Apple’s product decisions.

Ternus, who officially became Apple CEO on September 1 after Cook moved to the executive chairman role, also does not plan to bring in an outside design chief. Apple has not had one executive overseeing both design groups since Jony Ive left in 2019. Molly Anderson continues to lead Industrial Design, while Steve Lemay heads Human Interface Design.

The setup started taking shape during Apple’s April-to-September CEO transition, after Apple announced Ternus would succeed Cook. During that period, the design leaders were effectively Ternus’s only direct reports. Gurman says Ternus is leaving financial operations to CFO Kevan Parekh and supply chain matters to COO Sabih Khan, while spending more of his time with chief hardware officer Johny Srouji and hardware engineering leader Tom Marieb.

Back in the day, Steve Jobs was directly involved with Apple product design alongside Jony Ive. Are we going to see some more breakthrough products now that Ternus is right in the mix of things, unlike Cook?