Apple’s new chief executive is not trying to remake the company, and that is exactly why the board chose him. After less than two months in the role, John Ternus sat down with Steven Levy for a profile in Wired that frames him as a product-first insider built for continuity.
The conversation followed this week’s low-key MacBook Pro event in Los Angeles, where Ternus also brought back the glowing Apple logo. Levy’s piece sits apart from an earlier Wired sit-down that focused on why Mac touch finally arrived.
Marketing chief Greg Joswiak told Levy that Ternus was picked for instinct you cannot train. “John innately has a great sense for great products, and that’s what Apple is,” Joswiak said. “You can’t teach that.”
Johny Srouji, whose group now reports to Ternus after Apple merged hardware engineering and technology under him, struck the same note. “John is going to be a great CEO,” Srouji said. “He’s a product guy at heart, but Apple’s secret weapon is the DNA, the culture, which is not going to change. Remember, John has been here for 25 years. It’s not like he’s going to come and everything’s going to be different.”
Asked which non-Apple CEOs he admires, or which business books shaped him, Ternus said he had not really thought about either. He pointed instead to colleagues inside Apple, and to the handful of interactions he had with Steve Jobs. “But I’ve always felt like sort of a student of Steve’s teachings,” he said. “And then being able to work very closely with Tim, I’ve been very lucky.”
Tim Cook remains close by as executive chair, and Ternus said that help is there whenever he asks. “Tim is available to help wherever I ask him, and it’s great to have him in that role,” he said. One meeting he has not taken yet is with Donald Trump.
On artificial intelligence, Ternus pushed back on the idea that Apple is either hopelessly behind on Siri or cleverly sitting out frontier-model spending. “Everyone has an opinion. I really like where we’re at,” he said. “We don’t want to ship AI for AI’s sake. When we’re doing it right, people won’t have to think about whether it was AI that made this happen or more traditional software. What matters is, did we build something that they really love?”
That product focus also colours how he describes a job that now spans services, infrastructure and corporate management far beyond launches such as the iPhone Duo in Canada. “I do love product,” he said. “I’m super passionate about it.” Before the interview wrapped, he asked Levy: “What did you think of the logo?”
Does a product-guy CEO feel like the right fit for Apple’s next decade, or do you want someone more willing to shake things up?
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