{"id":597279,"date":"2026-04-21T09:09:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T09:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/597279\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T09:09:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T09:09:08","slug":"apples-new-ceo-is-a-product-perfectionist-taking-on-the-ai-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/597279\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple’s New CEO Is A Product Perfectionist Taking On The AI Age"},"content":{"rendered":"

April 20 (Reuters) – To understand how Apple\u2019s new CEO John Ternus will run the company, pay attention to what he refuses to sell. While software rivals at Microsoft and Google<\/a> are spending hundreds of billions to push artificial intelligence into every corner of their businesses, the man set to lead one of the world\u2019s most iconic companies appears to treat AI with a deliberate, almost stubborn pragmatism. \u201cWe never think about shipping a technology,\u201d Ternus, 50, said in a recent interview about AI with tech review site Tom\u2019s Guide. \u201cWe always think about how can we leverage technology to ship amazing products.\u201d<\/p>\n

When he succeeds Tim Cook on September 1, that distinction will matter enormously. Ternus\u2019 focus on the product makes him a steward of Apple tradition at a time when the Cupertino-based tech giant has lost its perch as the world\u2019s most valuable company to Nvidia.<\/p>\n

Apple\u2019s delayed rollout of its revamped Siri assistant, and a reliance on Google for the AI to power it, have led some analysts to question its strategy for the new technology.<\/p>\n

That has yet to affect iPhone sales. But technology experts say advances in AI could usher in a once-in-a-generation change that threatens the smartphone\u2019s central role in people\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n

Rivals, including Samsung and OpenAI, are betting that Apple\u2019s stumble is an opening. Meta has also found an early success with its Ray-Ban smartglasses that come with AI features.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe question is whether he has the appetite for the kind of bold, occasionally uncomfortable decisions that defining a new platform requires,\u201d said Francisco Jeronimo, vice president of client devices at research firm IDC.<\/p>\n

\u201cBuilding great hardware is a well-defined problem. Building an AI platform that developers and enterprises genuinely adopt is a different challenge entirely.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018EVERYONE LOVES HIM AT APPLE\u2019<\/p>\n

Ternus, a 25-year Apple veteran who started out designing external displays, arrives in the top job with decades of experience as a hardware engineer who has spent his career building the case that the best defense is a better device.<\/p>\n

In a 2023 interview with Reuters about new Apple products made with recycled materials, Ternus came across as thoughtful and measured, with a detailed grasp of not only how Apple\u2019s new products were built but how their supply chains could be ramped up to include more recycled materials across Apple\u2019s lineup.<\/p>\n

That style has shown up offstage too. While returning to his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, as the engineering school\u2019s undergraduate commencement speaker in 2024, he urged graduates to \u201calways assume you\u2019re as smart as anyone else in the room, but never assume that you know as much as they do,\u201d mixing self-assurance with a dose of humility. He also described his own perfectionism to them, recounting how late one night early in his career, he found himself arguing with a supplier over the grooves on a screw that goes on the back of a monitor. The screw would rarely be seen by customers but Ternus had noticed it had 35 grooves instead of the 25 Apple specified. \u201cIf you\u2019re going to spend that much time on something, you should put in your very best effort.\u201d<\/p>\n

Analysts say Ternus is widely respected at Apple and enjoys a strong backing across ranks. \u201cEveryone loves him at Apple. All the execs I know speak very highly of him,\u201d said Ben Bajarin, an analyst at Creative Strategies.<\/p>\n

By prioritizing devices over pure software, the new CEO has more in common with Apple co-founder Steve Jobs than with his immediate predecessor. Jobs was similarly uninterested in technology for its own sake, famously saying, \u201cYou\u2019ve got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology – not the other way around.\u201d Ternus, who worked under Jobs early in his Apple career, promised on Monday to keep leading the \u201cvalues and vision that have come to define this special place for half a century.\u201d He has overseen some of Apple\u2019s most consequential hardware, from the iPad to AirPods. He more recently introduced the ultra-thin iPhone Air and the MacBook Neo, a laptop that starts at $599, a price made possible by using the same chip as the iPhone 16 Pro. One of Ternus\u2019 biggest tests came when he steered the Mac laptop line onto processors Apple designed itself, ending more than a decade of reliance on Intel and marking a big bet by the company often accused of playing it too safe.<\/p>\n

The move has boosted Mac performance and battery life, sparking a resurgence in sales in recent years.<\/p>\n

Recalling the thinner, faster Macs the new chips made possible, Ternus told CNBC in 2023 that \u201cit was almost like the laws of physics had changed.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Reporting by Aditya Soni in Bengaluru and Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Peter Henderson and Sam Holmes)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"April 20 (Reuters) – To understand how Apple\u2019s new CEO John Ternus will run the company, pay attention…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":597280,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,517,181,507,154868,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-597279","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-apple","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-artificialintelligence","12":"tag-john-ternus","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=597279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/597280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}