JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Apple products are everywhere - the iPhones in many of our pockets, the iPads taking payment at your local coffee shop, the AirPods you may be listening to NPR on at this very moment. And now the guy in charge of all of that hardware will be CEO of the entire company. John Ternus is his name, and he's been at Apple for 25 years, working under both Steve Jobs and outgoing CEO Tim Cook. And I'll note that Apple is a financial supporter of NPR.
We wanted to know more about what having a product guy in the top job might mean. So we called up Jay Peters. He reports on technology for The Verge. Welcome.
JAY PETERS: Hey, nice to be here.
SUMMERS: Thanks for being here. So I want to start by just getting a sense of what John Ternus has done at Apple so far. Twenty-five years is a lot to cover, so just start by giving us a couple of the highlights. What are some of the most significant products he's worked on?
PETERS: Yeah. He's been the face of Apple's Mac lineup - Mac computer lineup for a very long time. He helped spearhead the first Macs with Apple's homemade chips. So they're Apple silicon chips which have just profoundly transformed Apple's computer lineup. They're very efficient. The battery life is great, and they last for many, many, many years. And since then, he's taken on a bigger remit. He previously was their SEP of hardware engineering - so, you know, overseeing all of their hardware lineup - and now he's being elevated to the top job.
SUMMERS: OK. So we've talked about some of the successes. What about flops? Are there products that he's worked on that haven't quite hit?
PETERS: There's been reporting that he was involved with a thing on the Mac. There was a - at one point, there was a little touch bar, is what it was called, that went - it was, like, at the very top of the keyboard. It was, like, a very long, thin kind of touch-screen strip. And the idea is that you could, like, have different functions that show up on there 'cause it was just a display in and of itself. But it wasn't really widely picked up or liked by consumers, and so Apple eventually killed it. And the reporting is that he's the one that not only helped lead and get that on the Mac in the first place, but also the decision to kill it.
SUMMERS: I am not an expert, but AI has been the one place where Apple really seems to trail its competitors, right?
PETERS: Yeah. That's how it feels right now. They - two years ago, at a big developer conference in 2024, they made this big push about making Siri much more AI-infused, much smarter. But the rumor is that they're going to be announced sometime - perhaps the next developer conference in June. And that for the regular users, they'll probably show up in products sometime this fall. But Apple, in waiting, may also benefit in that we're seeing some, I think, cooling in the interest in the AI industry or folks are maybe a little bit more wary about AI tools and services. And Apple, with a big focus on hardware, will - perhaps by sitting out some of all the AI investment and everything, they can just continue to build out their really strong hardware business and maybe make - continue to make that their focus instead of pivoting entirely into AI.
SUMMERS: What do people you've spoken with say about Ternus' leadership style and how he might direct this company?
PETERS: My understanding is that the common thread of who John Ternus is, is that he's a very nice person and that he's very good to work with, that he inspires a lot of loyalty for the folks that he works with. With a company as big as Apple, that's actually really important because it's a giant company with many products that are extremely successful. So, you know, you don't want him to be somebody who's probably going to be rocking the boat a lot internally. You want somebody who can help push a lot of innovation but also make sure that the iPhones ship every single September, so that the folks who want to get their new iPhone in September know exactly when to get it in September.
SUMMERS: What are you going to be watching for when Ternus takes over later this year?
PETERS: I think the biggest thing is Ternus takes over on September 1, and Apple usually announces its big round of iPhones in the first full week or second full week of September. And so, presumably, this - that big moment is going to be John Ternus' real coming out party. And the rumor this year is that Apple is going to have an iPhone with a foldable screen for the first time. Competitors like Samsung have had foldable phones for many, many, many years, but this is not something that Apple has had. And so this device is - will probably be very premium, very expensive but also very flashy and very cool and very new. And I suspect John Ternus is going to be, perhaps, the face of helping introduce that one to the world.
SUMMERS: Jay Peters, senior reporter for The Verge, thanks so much.
PETERS: Thanks so much for having me.
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