Name the three CEOs of Apple?
You can probably annoy Steve Jobs and Tim Cook, and Perhaps Throw in John Scully. But—and I know Michael Spindler stance will be voiced in the comments after I say this—Apple has More Forgettable CEOs Than You Probably Realize.
John Ternes, who will replace Tim Cook as Apple CEO in September, can Become a celebrity CEO like Steve Jobs and Tim Cook. Or that other Gilbert F. Maybe Amelio. Here’s what you need to know before placing any bets on how Turnus will turn out:
Inside Apple, he has a reputation as a darling
Steve Seifert, Turnus’s first boss at Apple, said in a New York Times profile that when Turnus had the opportunity to move from an open-plan workplace to a private office where he sat alongside his subordinates, he declined. Seifert called him “a man of the people”.
Another ex-Apple employee who worked with him, Cameron Rogers, said in the same profile that Turnus is “the guy you want to hang out with,” and that, “Everyone loves him because he’s great.”
For those working within the company, will the CEO’s kindness mark a turnaround for Apple? After all, Steve Jobs was supposedly a monster when he didn’t get what he wanted from his employees, and Tim Cook has a reputation more as a profit-generating wizard than as a good-or-bad personality.
But even in our tech-critical age, Apple has maintained a relatively attractive reputation as a workplace. It has an above average Glassdoor rating (if you find that worthwhile), and doesn’t have big, headline-grabbing rounds of layoffs. So as far as inner feelings are concerned, a good man CEO will maintain continuity rather than break down.
Apple will now be led by an engineer.
Ternus can talk in detail about which chips are in which gadgets and why:
According to Apple, Ternes studied mechanical engineering at Penn, got a job as an engineer at a virtual reality company, and then moved to Apple, where he started as an engineer focusing on external monitors. He oversaw the creation of the original iPad and AirPods, and focused on the new generations of Mac, Apple Watch, and iPhone.
According to Bloomberg, an unnamed Apple veteran who reportedly worked at Apple under Jobs and Cook said that Cook does not get into the nitty-gritty of product development, but that Turnus “is a real engineer.” That article portrays Turnus as an accurate technologist with a deep understanding of the inner workings of Apple’s devices, which allowed him to reverse a decline in product quality. As the profile notes, he also has a more creative side, and has overseen the development of an as-yet-unreleased tabletop robot device.
This would be in stark contrast to Cook, who is an expert not on silicon but on silicon supply chain logistics.
But the Bloomberg profile also says Ternes has a common trait with Cook: risk aversion. According to Bloomberg, some of Apple’s embarrassment over AI and smart home devices extends to Ternus. However, that article includes a claim from an unnamed Apple insider that Turnus is aware of the criticisms surrounding exciting new products and the need for (allegedly) stronger AI implementations.
Apple’s future is a mystery
Yes, this issue is almost obvious to raise, but I mention it because a lot is still up in the air. Apple has been criticized for being shy on AI, but depending on how the next few years play out, if Ternes is remembered in history as the CEO who resisted putting all of the company’s eggs in the AI basket before the AI bubble formed, it could prove to be a masterstroke rather than a mistake.
Turnus has also taken command amid new uncertainty in US-China relations. Tim Cook’s tenure at Apple was largely defined by US-China trade from the beginning. Apple was already an American company with products assembled in China, but Cook made it a company increasingly dependent on China as a customer base. One side of this equation remains firmly in place: Apple has moved some manufacturing to Vietnam and India, while it can’t shake its reliance on Chinese factories. There are signs that the other side is weakening: The iPhone is losing market share in China.
Furthermore, political realities change. Here in 2026, Cook has a tendency to come into the Oval Office and befriend a deeply unpopular, far-right president, either purely out of corporate convenience, or because President Trump’s politics align with his, or some mix of the two — Cook is very private, so it’s unclear. However, twelve years ago, Big Tech was in a different political universe, and Cook’s reputation, deserved or not, was as a progressive corporate hero who claimed that witnessing an anti-Black hate crime “has been permanently imprinted in my brain, and it will change my life forever.”
Turnus, for his part, also boasts an inspiring origin story. According to the New York Times, his senior project at Penn was “a device that allowed quadriplegics to use head movement to control a mechanical feeding arm.” Right now is not a good time to believe in the possibility of tech corporations being altruistic, but if there is a vibe change for the better, Turnus feels – based on currently available information – as if he makes that unlikely event gradually less unlikely.
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