John Ternus Takes a Hands-On Role in Apple’s Design Studio
Apple CEO John Ternus is taking a more hands-on role in design, working directly with the teams responsible for industrial and interface design, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman says. In Bloomberg Tech, Gurman argues that the shift marks a change from Tim Cook’s more limited involvement, as Ternus brings his engineering experience to the CEO’s office. The effects may take years to appear in products, given the length of Apple’s development cycles.
Ternus is taking design work into the CEO’s office
Apple has no chief design officer or head of design, and the position has not been filled since Jony Ive left in 2019. That gap helps explain why John Ternus’s new involvement matters: rather than leaving design entirely to other executives, he is spending substantial time in the studio and working directly with the teams responsible for industrial design and human-interface design.
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman said he expected Ternus to focus on design. The work is divided between Molly Anderson, who heads industrial design, and Steve Lemay, who heads user-interface design. Gurman said they work together and had been reporting to Ternus for some time. Now that he is CEO, Ternus is spending time with both parts of the studio, working with their leadership and designers.
That makes his participation a change in how Apple’s chief executive engages with design. Gurman contrasted Ternus’s hands-on approach with Tim Cook’s: Cook attended quarterly reviews, but was not generally in the thick of the work. As Gurman put it, “They'd be lucky to see him in there for an hour a month.” Ternus, by contrast, is trying to get his hands dirty with what is happening in design.
A graphic shown during the discussion listed a new HomePod mini and Apple TV, a touchscreen OLED MacBook Pro, and an OLED iPad mini among products in Apple’s pipeline. The graphic gives context for the range of products under development, but Gurman did not say that Ternus had prioritized any one of them, or identify a product that would first reveal his influence.
His engineering experience is longstanding; the CEO role changes where it is applied
Ternus is not entering product development as an outsider. Gurman said he has been part of Apple’s engineering process for decades and has been closely involved in that work. What is notable now is carrying that experience into the CEO role and extending his attention more directly to design.
The effects may take time to become visible. Gurman said design and product development can take three, five or seven years, depending on the product, and described Ternus as working on longer-term projects. The timeline makes it difficult to connect his current involvement to any particular product that may reach customers soon.
Gurman also described Ternus’s attention to design as distinct from his approach to finance, operations and sales. He characterized Ternus as taking the opposite approach to Cook in this respect—not as a general change to how the company is run, but as a difference in where each chief executive spends time. Cook’s instruction to Ternus, Gurman said, was to focus on the areas where he could add the most value. Ternus’s current hands-on work in design is one expression of that principle.