This morning’s Power On gave us the lighter MacBook Pro. The other half of Mark Gurman’s Sunday newsletter is the bigger story about who is actually steering how Apple products look and feel. Per Bloomberg, via 9to5Mac and AppleInsider, the answer is John Ternus, personally.
Several times a week, not once a month
Gurman reports that since becoming CEO, Ternus has immersed himself in Apple’s industrial design and human interface teams. People familiar with the studio say he works hands-on there several times a week, sometimes more than once in a day.
The comparison Bloomberg draws is blunt. Tim Cook reportedly visited the studio for about an hour, once a month.
This didn’t start on day one of the new job. When Jeff Williams left as COO, the design teams were publicly said to be moving under Cook. Gurman says Cook handed them to Ternus instead, and during the transition the design chiefs were effectively Ternus’s only direct reports.
Cook’s job went to other people
The framing matters here. Ternus reportedly told employees that Cook spent his tenure working where he could add the most value to Apple, and that he needed to do the same while being himself rather than playing Cook 2.0.
So the Cook specialties are being handed off. Finance sits with CFO Kevan Parekh and the supply chain with COO Sabih Khan. Ternus is spending his time with hardware leaders like Johny Srouji and Tom Marieb, and in the studio.
Still no Jony Ive replacement
Here’s the part that should get the most attention. According to Gurman, there is no search underway for an outside chief design officer. Apple is putting forward Molly Anderson for industrial design and Steve Lemay for human interface, both of whom were front and center at the iPhone Duo launch. It’s promoting junior designers and hiring from outside to refill a studio thinned by years of departures. Ternus sits above both teams as the final call.
That’s a real bet. Ternus is a hardware engineer, not a designer. Apple’s best-known design era ran through a CEO who obsessed over the studio and a design chief with the authority to say no. The current setup keeps the obsession and skips the second person.
Why it matters
Ternus’s first big launches already carry his fingerprints: the iPhone Duo, the October 13 home push, and now a MacBook Pro sold on what it removes. If the CEO is in the room this often, the products that come next are his taste with fewer filters in between. That could mean faster, more coherent decisions. It also means there’s no one between the CEO and the sketchbook when he’s wrong.
For now, design at Apple has an owner again. It just happens to be the person who also runs the company.
Reporting reference: 9to5Mac ↗