John Ternus has spent 24 years engineering Apple\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Yet one of the first things Apple\u2019s 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\u00a0this week, Ternus said he wanted to keep building on the momentum Apple has found in film and television, describing a service full of \u201camazing programs with great characters and stories,\u201d\u00a0according to Reuters<\/a>.<\/p>\n It was a small remark, though a telling one. Ternus made his name as the\u00a0hardware chief<\/a>\u00a0who oversaw the iPad and the shift to Apple silicon, and his\u00a0rise to the top job<\/a>\u00a0was widely read as a bet on engineering discipline at a moment when Apple is playing catch-up on AI.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n TNW City Coworking space – Where your best work happens<\/p>\n A workspace designed for growth, collaboration, and endless networking opportunities in the heart of tech.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n The transition itself has been settled since April, when Apple confirmed that Tim Cook would move to\u00a0executive chairman<\/a>\u00a0after 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\u2019s to run.<\/p>\n The progress he referred to is real, if costly. Apple launched its streaming service in 2019 and, three years later,\u00a0CODA\u00a0made it the first streamer to win the Academy Award for best picture.<\/p>\n The hits kept coming after that.\u00a0Severance\u00a0helped carry the company to a record\u00a081 Emmy nominations<\/a>\u00a0in 2025, and\u00a0The Studio\u00a0became the\u00a0most-winning freshman comedy<\/a>\u00a0in Emmy history.<\/p>\n This summer\u00a0Ted Lasso\u00a0returned for a fourth season, five years after the show first turned Apple\u2019s platform into something people actually talked about.<\/p>\n Then there was\u00a0F1. The Brad Pitt racing film, released last summer, took\u00a0more than $600m\u00a0at the worldwide box office, becoming Apple\u2019s highest-grossing original and Pitt\u2019s biggest global hit before reaching the company\u2019s own platform in December.<\/p>\n For a studio that had struggled to turn critical praise into commercial scale, the film was the clearest sign yet that Apple\u2019s ambitions could pay off in cinemas as well as at awards ceremonies.<\/p>\n The economics remain awkward, even so. Apple\u2019s streaming operation was losing more than $1bn a year with around 45 million subscribers,\u00a0accord<\/a>ing to<\/a>\u00a0a March 2025 report from\u00a0The Information, a rounding error for a business that recently posted\u00a0$111.2bn in quarterly revenue<\/a>, but a stubborn one all the same.<\/p>\n