John Ternus has been featured on the cover of the “Best Inventions of 2026” edition, available October 26. Ternus succeeded Tim Cook as Apple’s CEO on September 1 and unveiled the iPhone Duo eight days later.
John Ternus: cover feature and background
Ternus joined Apple in 2001 and previously served as the company’s senior vice president of hardware engineering. He told interviewer Andrew R. Chow that he was eight years old when his father bought an Apple II and that he “started playing games on it and fell in love with Apple.” On the new foldable iPhone, Ternus said, “The other examples in the world felt kind of cheap and crappy.”
Leadership transition and Cook’s role
Tim Cook remains at Apple as executive chairman, focusing primarily on engaging with policymakers around the world. Ternus said of Cook, “He has great relationships and loves Apple. So wherever he can help, he is happy to help.” In a separate interview, Cook said he is “not meddling” with Ternus.
AI partnership and product priorities
Apple’s large language models that power Siri AI are, according to a joint announcement from Apple and Google earlier this year, “based on Google’s Gemini models and cloud technology.” When asked about that arrangement, Ternus said Apple does not always have to make the whole widget: “There’s not really a goal that we have to make every single thing in a product,” adding, “We make the things where we can really bring differentiation.” He also emphasized focus, saying, “You can’t do everything. So we kind of try to constrain ourselves to the stuff that matters most—and then put all of our effort into those things.”
