Your design teams no longer report to design

Tim Cook has placed John Ternussenior vice president of hardware engineering, will lead Apple’s design teams from the end of 2025. The move has not been officially announced and internal and external organizational charts do not reflect it yet, but Mark Gurman has made it public on Bloomberg.

Ternus now acts as an “executive sponsor” of all design at Apple. Manages communications between the design team and executive leadership, and represents design in leadership meetings. Decisions are still made by consensus among senior managers, but Ternus now has more influence than any other hardware chief in Apple’s recent history.

Why is it important. Only Apple’s most prominent figures have supervised design.

• Jony Ive did it until 2019.
• Cook briefly between 2015 and 2017.
• AND Jeff Williams from 2019 until its retirement in 2025.

Ternus now joins that list.

The difference is very notable: Ive was a designer, Williams came from operations and Ternus comes from product engineering, where his work has consisted of converting other people’s designs into manufacturing products. Now he is the one who oversees both phases: how the products look and how they work.

Between the lines. Apple has gone years without major aesthetic revolutions in its main products.

• The iPhone has maintained a similar visual structure for several generations. He air It is fine as a recent exception, but otherwise the same.
• Macs have converged on a predictable, established design language.

Apple’s recent innovation has focused on its own chips, integrating hardware, software and services; and in supply chain optimization. Exactly the areas where Ternus has excelled.

Placing him at the forefront of design certifies that at Apple execution increasingly matters more than aesthetics. The company seems to have accepted that its years of visual leadership give way to another stage and that its competitive advantage lies in systems engineering and the optimization of each component.

Yes, but. Design is still important to Apple, but it is no longer the department that sets the course. Ternus is not a designer and Cook “keeps his distance from design decisions,” according to sources from Bloomberg. Craig Federighi and Greg Joswiak They maintain a voice in Apple’s overall aesthetic.

Some company executives, as reported by Gurman, fear that Ternus is too risk-averse and uncharismatic. His main strength is his strong knowledge of the supply chain and attention to detail, but not the conceptual vision that Ive brought.

Marking agenda. This move consolidates Ternus as big favorite for Cook’s succession. At 50, he is Apple’s youngest senior executive and Cook is exposing him to more and more areas of the company. Apple has increasingly positioned him as the public face of the business.

Cook turned 65 in November. Although there appear to be no imminent plans to retire, succession planning is part of his responsibilities. And the signs are becoming clearer.

Featured image | Carles Rabadà on UnsplashApple

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