John Ternus has spent 24 years engineering Apple’s hardware, and when he takes over as chief executive on 1 September, he inherits a company defined by iPhones and silicon rather than prestige television.
Yet one of the first things Apple’s incoming boss chose to talk about in public was neither. Speaking to reporters at the Los Angeles premiere of the fourth season of Ted Lasso this week, Ternus said he wanted to keep building on the momentum Apple has found in film and television, describing a service full of “amazing programs with great characters and stories,” according to Reuters.
It was a small remark, though a telling one. Ternus made his name as the hardware chief who oversaw the iPad and the shift to Apple silicon, and his rise to the top job was widely read as a bet on engineering discipline at a moment when Apple is playing catch-up on AI.
So the fact that he used an early appearance to signal continuity in entertainment matters, because it suggests the division, expensive and unprofitable as it is, is not going anywhere.
The transition itself has been settled since April, when Apple confirmed that Tim Cook would move to executive chairman after nearly 15 years as chief executive and that Ternus, currently senior vice-president of hardware engineering, would succeed him. Cook stays on to steer the handover and will keep a hand in policy and regulatory work, but from September the company is Ternus’s to run.
