As Key Talent Abandons Apple, Meet The New Generation Of Leaders...

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.

In Cupertino, Apple execs with familiar faces are retiring or reducing responsibilities. Who’s in and who’s 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’s sustainability efforts since 2013, is now set to retire in January too.

There’s also the squad of Apple staffers who have been lured away to work with OpenAI, notably Apple’s former chief design officer Jony Ive after his independent stint at LoveFrom. In 2024, Molly Anderson was named industrial design leader, heading up a team of mostly fresh faces. Others have gone to Meta, such as Apple’s VP of human interface design, Alan Dye, who just this week was poached to head up a new Reality Labs design studio. At Apple, he’s been replaced by long-time UI designer Stephen Lemay. Phew.

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 as the frontrunner to succeed Cook as Apple CEO, reportedly as soon as next year. WIRED asked Apple for comment but didn’t hear back before publication.

Alongside a steady drip of “leaks” on succession planning and Ternus’ position at the front of the pack, since 2023, Ternus has been given more prominence at product launch events. He announced the iPhone Air onstage this past September, and has appeared alongside other senior Apple leaders in press interviews and in-store Apple events.

“I think they're testing to see what sentiment is like. Apple likes to control the narrative. So these ‘leaks,’ they’re not happening unintentionally,” suggests Anshel Sag, principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. “Apple’s 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.”

It’s always tricky to pick up an individual’s contributions at Apple, beyond the odd detail, such as John Ternus himself reportedly being behind the MacBook’s TouchBar. Bertrand Nepveu worked in the Apple Vision Pro team from 2017 to 2021, after Apple acquired his VR headset startup Vrvana, and now runs Montreal-based VC firm Tript

Source: Wired