No longer Tim Cook: John Ternus is Apple's new "Design Chief"
Since the departure of COO Jeff Williams, Apple's CEO had the final say in design. Now the hardware chief gets his turn – as a potential successor to Cook?
John Ternus, here at the iPhone 17 keynote.
(Image: Apple)
A new additional role for Apple's powerful Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering: John Ternus took over the role of the ultimate responsible designer at the iPhone manufacturer at the end of 2025. According to a US media report, his portfolio now also includes "Design Work". Ternus is said to serve internally as an "Executive Sponsor" who mediates between all design teams and the top manager. It remained unclear whether the position is as powerful as that of the retired Chief Operating Officer (COO) Jeff Williams once was.
Management in Flux
The statements from the financial news agency Bloomberg, which are based on informed circles, further state that Ternus is to oversee both the hardware and software design teams. In this area, Apple recently lost Alan Dye, the controversial head. He defected to Meta, of all places, to use, among other things, “AI as a new design material”. Dye was previously responsible for the new Liquid Glass look of all Apple operating systems.
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Apple's management of the design department has been in flux since 2019. At that time, Chief Design Officer Jony Ive left the company. He founded his own design studio LoveFrom, which initially had Apple as one of its clients. However, that only went well for a few years. Ive no longer works for Apple but is working on billion-dollar AI hardware for OpenAI.
Cook's Succession Already in the First Half of the Year?
After Ive's departure, several designers were actually promoted to lead the team. However, one of them, Evans Hankey, quickly left the company and now works for Ive again. COO Jeff Williams then took over the position as an additional task. But as mentioned, he retired last year, after which initially CEO Tim Cook himself took responsibility.
That is now over. Ternus will now apparently be the overall responsible person. This points in the direction that has long been rumored, that the hardware chief is being considered as Cook's successor. In the meantime, it was said that the CEO could leave the post in the first half of 2026. If that were true, Cook would not leave Apple, but would move to the position of Chairman of the Board.
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