Incoming Apple CEO Ternus vows to restore design team’s clout

Incoming Apple ↗ 0.36% chief executive John Ternus has signaled that reviving the company's design culture will be among his first priorities when he takes over on September 1, 2026, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, who reported in his Power On newsletter on June 21 that Apple's design organization has lost its executive standing under the later years of Tim Cook's leadership.9To5Mac+1

A Design Team in Decline

Gurman's newsletter detailed how Apple's industrial design group — once the most powerful force in the company's product decisions under Jony Ive — has been hollowed out over the past decade. After Ive's departure in 2019, oversight of the design team passed to then-COO Jeff Williams. When Williams retired at the end of 2025, the role's stature had diminished further, with no senior design executive holding a seat on Cook's leadership team.ccstartup.com+2

Ternus, who was quietly given oversight of both hardware and software design teams in late 2025, has spent considerable time with the industrial design group as he prepares for the transition. In a recent internal meeting, he told employees: "We'll keep focusing on design, because design is core to what we do at Apple". In separate remarks reported by Gurman, Ternus said that "the most beautifully designed thing that most customers own is an Apple product. We're going to make sure that stays the case".9To5Mac+4

AI as a Means, Not an End

Ternus has also articulated a distinct philosophy on artificial intelligence, framing it as a tool to enhance products rather than a pursuit in its own right. In an interview days before his appointment was announced in April, Ternus described a vision in which "AI serves experience rather than technology itself" — a contrast to competitors pouring hundreds of billions into building large language models.aol+2

That philosophy is already taking shape internally. According to Bloomberg, Ternus introduced a new AI platform within Apple's hardware engineering division earlier this year to speed up product development, with plans to deploy similar tools across the company.9To5Mac

The Road Ahead

Ternus inherits a product pipeline that includes a foldable iPhone expected to debut at a fall event he will oversee as CEO, along with camera-equipped AirPods and smart glasses on the 2027 roadmap. Apple's formal leadership transition, unanimously approved by the board, will see Cook move to executive chairman while Johny Srouji becomes chief hardware officer.forbes+3