{"id":625849,"date":"2026-06-07T11:02:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-07T11:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/625849\/"},"modified":"2026-06-07T11:02:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-07T11:02:10","slug":"its-the-new-apple-ceos-first-big-outing-he-is-about-to-answer-a-very-big-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/625849\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s the new Apple CEO\u2019s first big outing. He is about to answer a very big question"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three or four times a year, Apple<\/a> holds an event to show off its new things to the world. Next week, it will happen again. Alongside all the other new things \u2013\u00a0software updates for all of its platforms, new features, perhaps new hardware \u2013 there will be a whole new kind of new thing: its incoming chief executive, John Ternus<\/a>, who will take over this year.<\/p>\n

Though the handover from Tim Cook<\/a> doesn\u2019t actually happen until September, it will at least unofficially be Mr Ternus\u2019s first appearance as the head of one of the world’s most powerful companies. And he has a lot on his plate.<\/p>\n

First up \u2013 at least for this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference, which begins on 7 June and serves as Apple<\/a>‘s annual software event \u2013\u00a0is artificial intelligence<\/a>. Two years ago, Apple was facing sustained criticism from shareholders<\/a> and commentators over the fact that it had not done enough to integrate AI into its products, so at 2024\u2019s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) it introduced Apple Intelligence, a whole suite of features.<\/p>\n

But soon after that, it became clear that many of them weren\u2019t ready. During that year\u2019s keynote, it showed off deep and complex AI features including the ability to speak naturally to Siri and have it call on your personal context \u2013\u00a0but it didn\u2019t turn up, and still hasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

At last year\u2019s WWDC, Apple largely didn’t mention AI, seemingly keen to get on with actually building the promised features, though executives indicated in interviews that it had made a mistake in building them and that it was now on the right track. Instead, it spent 2024 talking about its new Liquid Glass redesign \u2013 which brought its own controversies<\/a>, as users complained it was ugly and illegible.<\/p>\n

This time around, Ternus has both the blessing of the opportunity to turn that story around and the curse of the world expecting him to do so. He might be just the person to do it. <\/p>\n

\"AppleApple CEO Tim Cook speaks during Apple’s ‘Awe-Dropping’ event at the Steve Jobs Theater on the Apple Park campus in Cupertino, California, on 9 September, 2025 (AFP\/Getty)<\/p>\n

Ternus\u2019s history at Apple is as a product person \u2013\u00a0he joined shortly after university and has been building things ever since. The success of that took him to leading all of Apple\u2019s hardware efforts until he got the call-up to be chief executive.<\/p>\n

That stands in contrast with Cook\u2019s history, which focused on logistics and made him chief operations officer, before taking over from Steve Jobs. He transformed the company using that history<\/a>, building it into a behemoth able to produce hundreds of millions of iPhones a year \u2013 but leading to criticism that it had become stale or unimaginative in its products.<\/p>\n

Now, with a product person at the helm, Apple has what seems to be a job it has uncharacteristically struggled with: turning AI into a product. (Much of the rest of the tech industry has struggled with the same question.)<\/p>\n

Apple has always been good at making exciting, if confusing or seemingly useless technologies into products, but it has struggled to do that with AI. Its attempts have either not turned up (such as the new and improved Siri) or been somewhat disappointing (such as its neglected Image Playgrounds app for making images).<\/p>\n

Its struggle to do so is holding back even the hardware products in which Ternus made his name, so the turnaround in AI matters even to those people who aren\u2019t excited about AI. Reports suggest that new products, including the new Apple TV and a HomePod with a screen, are both finished as hardware but are awaiting good enough AI features to actually launch them.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t Ternus’s first appearance in an Apple keynote. He has increasingly made an appearance in the company\u2019s regular presentations, which were presumably a way of introducing him to the world, at least in part. But his appearances so far have been limited to the hardware products that he looks after, particularly introducing its higher-end products.<\/p>\n

Now, as chief executive, he will take on parts of the company that are not necessarily harder but are at least more subtle. Artificial intelligence<\/a> is not simply a technical question, but a philosophical, cultural and ethical one; all situations in which there is not necessarily a correct answer.<\/p>\n

And AI is just one of those many tough questions that he will be facing as he takes over the company. There are political ones, such as how he deals with controversial but key stakeholders, including Donald Trump and the Chinese government. There are operational ones, including how to deal with tariffs and the rising controversy and complexity over the fact that so many of Apple’s products are built in China.<\/p>\n

As Ternus prepares to take over,\u00a0all of these questions are waiting for him. Next week, we will get our first look at what his answer might be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three or four times a year, Apple holds an event to show off its new things to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":625850,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-625849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=625849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/625850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=625849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=625849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=625849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}