He told staff that the best-designed thing most of their customers own is an Apple product, and that he intended to make sure it stayed that way. It was a clear statement of intent, though turning that intention into a rebuilt organisation with genuine authority will take time and sustained commitment from the top.
When Tim Cook hands over the running of Apple to John Ternus on the first of September, he will be passing on one of the most profitable companies the world has ever seen. He will also be leaving behind a creative organisation that, by several accounts from people who know it well, has spent the better part of a decade losing its footing.
Ternus, who is 51 and has been with Apple since 2001, built his reputation in hardware engineering. He climbed steadily through the ranks, eventually overseeing the development of some of the company’s most important products, from the Mac to the iPhone. His appointment, announced earlier this year, signalled that Apple wanted someone steeped in the details of how things are actually built, rather than someone who came up through the financial or legal side of the business.
What he is walking into, however, is not simply an engineering challenge. According to a detailed account published by Bloomberg’s technology writer Mark Gurman in his regular newsletter, the part of Apple responsible for how its products look and feel has been steadily losing ground within the company for roughly ten years. Gurman, who has covered Apple closely for a long time and has a reliable track record on matters of internal company culture, describes the shift as significant.
The story of how that happened runs through one name above all others: Jony Ive. The British designer joined Apple in the early 1990s and over the following decades became the person most closely associated with the company’s visual identity. Under him and under Steve Jobs, the design group occupied an unusual position inside the company. Rather than being one department among many, it effectively set the direction for products from the earliest stages. Engineering, manufacturing and marketing all worked around decisions that began in the design studio.
That arrangement began to unravel after Ive stepped back from day-to-day oversight in 2015 and then left the company entirely in 2019 to establish his own independent venture. What came after was a slow but unmistakable change in how Apple’s internal power was organised. The design group was placed under the supervision of Jeff Williams, who ran Apple’s operations and later served as chief operating officer, rather than being given a direct line to the chief executive. Evans Hankey, who took over from Ive as head of industrial design, did not sit on Apple’s leadership team in the way her predecessor had. She departed in 2022. Williams, who retired earlier this year, eventually took direct charge of the design group himself, a decision described as a temporary measure to provide stability that stretched on far longer than anyone had anticipated.
Over those same years, a number of experienced designers who had been with the company for a long time quietly left. Some joined the studio Ive set up. Others moved to different technology companies or set out on their own. The accumulated effect, Gurman argues, was a team that found itself further from the centre of Apple’s decision-making than it had been at any point since the mid-1990s, when Jobs returned and rebuilt the company around the principle that design was not decoration but strategy.
The person now leading the industrial design side is Molly Anderson, while software design is overseen by Steve Lemay. Neither carries the kind of senior title that would place them prominently at Apple’s executive table, and it remains to be seen how Ternus will choose to structure things once he is fully in charge. Gurman reports that Ternus has already been spending considerable time with the industrial design group in the weeks leading up to his formal start date, and that he is said to believe the organisation needs meaningful changes.
At an internal meeting, Ternus was direct about where his priorities lie. He told staff that the best-designed thing most of their customers own is an Apple product, and that he intended to make sure it stayed that way. It was a clear statement of intent, though turning that intention into a rebuilt organisation with genuine authority will take time and sustained commitment from the top.
The challenge is real. Apple has recently been making efforts to hold on to the designers it still has, reportedly offering financial incentives to prevent some from being recruited away, including by Ive’s studio and by other technology companies making products that compete with Apple’s own. That kind of retention effort, while practical, is not the same as building back an institution.
What Ternus appears to understand is that Apple’s reputation has always rested on more than what its products can do. It has rested on what they look like, how they feel to hold, how easy they are to understand and how consistent the experience is across every surface a customer touches, from the device itself to the box it comes in to the shop where it is sold. That coherence is what Gurman says has become uneven, and what Ternus is now being counted on to restore.
His first major moment in the spotlight as chief executive is expected to come in the autumn, when Apple is due to unveil a foldable version of the iPhone — a product that will test not just the company’s engineering but its ability to deliver something that looks and feels unmistakably Apple.
About the Author
Marcel Chidozie is a tech analyst and writer covering foreign news, fintech, and emerging technologies at TechRegard. Based in Nigeria, He's passionate about translating complex tech developments into compelling, accessible stories for diverse audiences. His work focuses on how technology shapes innovation across Africa and globally.
