Start the music. Players walk clockwise in a circle. When the music stops, everyone sits in a chair. Big Tech is setting in motion its plans for the next gen of lead designers, engineers, AI chiefs, and even CEOs.<\/p>\n
In Cupertino, Apple execs with familiar faces are retiring or reducing responsibilities. Who\u2019s in and who\u2019s out? Well, chief operating officer Jeff Williams retired in November, and the speculation is that CEO Tim Cook could follow in the near term. Lisa Jackson, who has led Apple\u2019s sustainability efforts<\/a> since 2013, is now set to retire in January too.<\/p>\n There\u2019s also the squad of Apple staffers who have been lured away to work with OpenAI<\/a>, notably Apple\u2019s former chief design officer Jony Ive<\/a> after his independent stint at LoveFrom<\/a>. In 2024, Molly Anderson was named<\/a> industrial design leader, heading up a team of mostly fresh faces. Others have gone to Meta, such as Apple\u2019s VP of human interface design, Alan Dye, who just this week was poached<\/a> to head up a new Reality Labs design studio. At Apple, he\u2019s been replaced by long-time UI designer Stephen Lemay. Phew.<\/p>\n In this swirl of shifting talent, John Ternus, who has worked for Apple since 2001, and served as SVP of hardware engineering for the last four years, reporting directly to Tim Cook, is emerging<\/a> as the frontrunner to succeed Cook as Apple CEO, reportedly as soon as next year. WIRED asked Apple for comment but didn\u2019t hear back before publication.<\/p>\n Alongside a steady drip of \u201cleaks\u201d on succession planning and Ternus\u2019 position at the front of the pack, since 2023, Ternus has been given more prominence at product launch events. He announced the iPhone Air<\/a> onstage this past September, and has appeared alongside other senior Apple leaders in press interviews and in-store Apple events.<\/p>\n \u201cI think they’re testing to see what sentiment is like. Apple likes to control the narrative. So these \u2018leaks,\u2019 they\u2019re not happening unintentionally,\u201d suggests Anshel Sag, principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. \u201cApple\u2019s lost a lot of people. I think it might actually be a net positive because it will create a fresh crop of people that have more power now than they did before.\u201d<\/p>\n New Names to Know<\/p>\n It\u2019s always tricky to pick up an individual\u2019s contributions at Apple, beyond the odd detail, such as John Ternus himself reportedly being behind the MacBook\u2019s TouchBar. Bertrand Nepveu worked in the Apple Vision Pro<\/a> team from 2017 to 2021, after Apple acquired<\/a> his VR headset startup Vrvana, and now runs Montreal-based VC firm Triptyq Capital<\/a>. During his three and a half years, mostly working on the Vision Pro\u2019s pass-through capabilities, the team ballooned from 300 to around 1,200. \u201cJohn Ternus, even though I never worked with him, the feedback I got is that he\u2019s a great product person,\u201d he says, \u201cand I think that’s what is needed for the next phase of Apple, especially with AI and with XR.\u201d<\/p>\n With this future in mind, Nepveu sees the combination of Ternus-as-CEO working well with other personnel moves at Apple, including the news in March that Rockwell was taking over development of Siri<\/a> from the head of AI, John Giannandrea. In another major future-facing reshuffle, Giannandrea was replaced this week by Amar Subramanya<\/a>, who spent 16 years at Google, including work on Gemini and DeepMind, before a six-month stint at Microsoft.<\/p>\n \u201cMike Rockwell, I worked with him in the Vision Pro group, I think he\u2019s the right person for that because they [XR and AI] work in tandem,\u201d says Nepveu. \u201cHe used to joke that Siri was crap. I liked him because he didn’t drink the Kool-Aid. I was happy when I saw that he got promoted. I think in tandem with someone who is more product-focused [Ternus], it’s the way to go for Apple.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Start the music. Players walk clockwise in a circle. 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