John Ternus is spending real time in Apple's design studio now that he runs the company.
Since taking over as CEO last month, Ternus has been visiting Apple's industrial design and human interface teams several times a week, sometimes more than once a day, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. That's a steep jump from predecessor Tim Cook, who reportedly stopped by the studio for about an hour, once a month, at most. Ternus already worked closely with design as Apple's head of hardware engineering, but Gurman says he's now immersed in it. He's also handing finance to CFO Kevan Parekh and supply chain to operations chief Sabih Khan to free up his time.
Apple spent the Cook decade optimizing margins and supply chains, with design decisions flowing through committee rather than one champion. An engineer-CEO who shows up in the studio daily looks like a bet that hardware execution, not operational polish, is Apple's next edge. It also echoes the Jony Ive era, when one person's taste shaped products for better and worse, a dynamic that ended with Ive's 2019 exit and years of comparatively cautious design.
Whether that produces bolder hardware or just a busier calendar for Ternus remains to be seen; showing up isn't the same as having a vision.