The world of Apple enthusiasts & critics alike was lit up like a Christmas tree yesterday at the news that long-time Apple CEO Tim Cook was preparing to step down and John Ternus was taking on the mantle as top dog of the fruit company, effective September 1.

And now everybody has an opinion on what this means. Will John Ternus mix it up, change everything, kick off all the initiatives he couldn't pursue as long as Darth Cook was lording it over the hapless engineers? Or will he keep the trains running on time, the big money flowing in, and generally not rock the boat for years to come? Will he this? Will he that?

Here's the one thing I can tell you which I believe is an undeniable fact: John Ternus will do what is best for Apple. That is literally the job description. He's not going to go after his little pet projects, or invite a bunch of bloggers & podcasters into a room and ask them how to "fix" Apple, or magically make the App Store not totally suck, or put macOS on iPad, or put Linux on Macintosh, or tell Trump to go take a short walk off a tall pier, or whatever wild conspiracy theory-esque scenarios you might conjure up in your imagination.

You don't spend decades working at Apple managing large teams and pipelines and product strategies, simply to go hog-wild the moment you're given the big chair.

However…that doesn't mean he's going to rubberstamp a 2 or 5 or 10-year plan put in place by his predecessor and then twiddle his fingers. I do anticipate a lot of changes are coming to Apple. But these changes will happen slowly, incrementally, deliberately, and at the right times with the right people in place. That pace of change certainly won't be fast enough for some, but I suspect it'll be fast enough for Apple—an institution which has always marched to the beat of its own drum.

The following is my analysis—based on over 25 years of writing about Apple and using a wide variety of Apple products—of what I think are the most obvious areas of improvement under John Ternus' upcoming leadership.

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Putting a Stop to Kneecapping Product Categories

One of the most frustrating aspects of the Cook era has been the sense that Apple is afraid to "cannibalize" its own products. It's frustrating because it's the opposite approach to the strategy Steve Jobs famously pursued during his tenure. Yes, I know, it's foolish to ask the question WWSJD, but I truly feel like designing bold products which are drool-worthy—regardless of if they might take sales focus away from other products you already sell—was and is a core part of Apple's DNA.

Some examples of Cook-isms which just haven't made much sense for a long time:

• No MacBooks with touchscreens or cellular modems. Because those features are too iPad-like.
• No iPads with a Unix terminal/open computing layer. Because those features are too Mac-like.
• No iPhone which can properly morph into a desktop-like environment when attached to a display/keyboard/mouse. Because those features are too iPad-like.
• No smart home speaker with a screen. Because those features are too iPad-like.
• No standalone music player. (Bring back the iPod, you cowards!) Because those features are too iPhone-like.
• No web browser on the Apple TV. Because that feature is too Mac-like.

Now one might argue in many of these cases that nobody wants a "toaster-fridge" and thus it's good to keep clean separations of functionality between different device categories. The problem with that theory is that it assumes everyone wants to (or can afford to) buy every product category. When they don't, or can't, they end up with a subpar UX. And that's a real shame for a company which—above all else—is known for having the best UX in the business.

I'm not saying John Ternus will swoop in and change all of these aspects of modern Apple culture overnight. But John Ternus is first-and-foremast a person who knows how to craft product. Unlike Tim Cook, whose primary instinct for any product inevitably was "how will we manufacture and move this product through our sales channels alongside all our other products?", John Ternus' primary instinct will be "how will the design of this one product match customer expectations of what they hope to get done with it?"

I think the MacBook Neo is a great example of this. We were all a little bit shocked when the Neo was announced, because this didn't really feel like a Cook-era Apple product. It had the potential to cannibalize existing product categories like the MacBook Air. The internal design, far more reparable and potentially expandable than any other Apple laptop in ages, feels like a blueprint for future higher-end products. The design of the product gave the impression MacBook Neo was intended to be delightful more than it was intended to be profitable (though I'm sure Apple will do just fine in this regard). The A18 chip used is an older one, which sounds logical until you realize Apple has only so many of them lying around, creating a future logistical headache (as reported so well by Jason Snell). Apple setting itself up to scramble in the future to figure out a supply chain constraint? Doesn't sound like the kind of thing Tim Cook would be too happy to take on…but not a problem for a CEO who cares more about wowing customers than putting a neat little bow on every single manufacturing pipeline. So what if we end up with MacBooks Neo being a bit hard to come by for a period of time this summer? Frankly, the optics of that aren't bad at all.

Ending Fights with the Loyalists

Developers, developers, developers, developers! chanted a sweaty Steve Ballmer once at a Microsoft conference. He was trying to make the point that Microsoft is nothing without its developer community, gleefully building software & services to run on Windows. Despite his meme-worthy cringe delivery, he was right.

Apple, for a time, realized that too. Despite Steve Jobs' reputation as a mercurial bully who'd screw over anybody in a heartbeat to further his own personal agenda, his "second coming" at Apple was marked by a slew of changes to court new developers, patch relationships with old developers, and generally make the Mac platform once again the best computing system for attracting the finest talent and an eager userbase willing to spend real cash on great apps.

And it worked. Throughout the 2000s, and well into the 2010s with the fast expansion of Apple's computing universe via the arrival of iPhone and then iPad, the best apps were designed for Apple platforms. You simply couldn't claim to be a great software developer or launch a viral new online service without robust support for Mac/iPhone/iPad.

But then something happened. Developers started to sour on their relationship with Apple. It went from a beautiful symbiotic relationship to a toxic one. Developers felt taken advantage of. Apple felt like they had a right to extract their pound of flesh. How dare these greedy developers act so high and mighty, when they wouldn't exist without Apple's technical prowess and business largess.

I don't have time to relitigate all of the problems with the past decade of the App Store, but it's been an ugly, ugly affair…and a real stain on Tim Cook's leadership. Besides the gross cozying up to fascist regimes like Trump's, when I think "Apple under Tim Cook" the first thing which comes to mind is "acting like a royal asshole" regarding all things App Store.

Clearly things have needed to change for a long time now, and I think an Apple run by John Ternus has the best chance to turn this ship around. By all accounts, Ternus is a friendly and charitable fellow. He deeply understands product, and he comes across as someone a lot more warm and empathetic than Cook who has always struggled with his public image (frequently coming across as wooden, stilted, even cold).

Even if Apple doesn't meaningfully make a ton of policy changes for a while, it's possible that having Ternus at the helm to meet with developers, listen to community feedback, and generally give the impression Hi, I'm John Ternus, and I care about you ☺️…that could go a long way to mend some fences and build some bridges. And he could have the right instincts needed to reboot a developer program which really gets talented people excited again about shipping great apps for Apple platforms.

Innovating New Hardware Designs

While it's absolutely the case that the technical underpinnings of Apple hardware has been stellar for years now—Apple Silicon is nothing short of a miracle and stands to completely reshape the landscape of computer hardware—one has not been able to say that so much for the shapes of those hardware products.

In a word, Apple products have been…boring.

When I look at a modern iPhone, iPad, MacBook (setting aside the Neo for a moment), iMac, or Mac mini, all I see is a metal slab. It's like all of the amazing and outstanding designs of past Apple hardware slowly melted away in a fog of Jony Ive-sian minimalism and we ended up left with mostly featureless surfaces of mostly gray.

While pro Mac laptops are in much better shape now than in that awful, awful period of the late 2010s (butterfly keyboard *shudder* & no array of ports *ugh*), they still don't look a whole lot different than—let's face it—the Titanium PowerBook G4. Now I'm not here to knock on classic designs—there's a reason people still want to buy a Minimoog or a Porsche 911 or Converse sneakers.

But you also got to prove you haven't run out of ideas. (“Can't innovate anymore, my ass!” 😉) And it really has felt in the last decade that when it comes to computers (and tablets and smartphones), Apple ran out of design ideas. The only truly holy shit what's that?! product we've seen arguably has been the Vision Pro. And while ambitious, the crazy expense coupled with a lack of compelling use cases resulted in a product nobody actually wants. And that's yet another negative mark on Cook's tenure at Apple.

But here we are, with the MacBook Neo feeling like the first fresh take on a familiar product category in some while, coupled with rumors of a foldable iPhone which might actually be extremely cool. Are we at the precipice of a new era of Apple hardware design, with products so gorgeous and attractive you want to lick 'em? I certainly hope so. I'd almost forgotten what to feels like to wait for an Apple keynote with bated breath.

John Ternus, fire up your ✨ reality distortion field ✨ and make me crave new Apple products again! 🤤

There's Still No Other Tech Company Like Apple

In spite of all of the problems with Apple under Tim Cook over the past decade or so, and in spite of the fact that the world of Big Tech generally sucks so bad these days, Apple continues to stand apart as a company people love and trust. The Mac faithful are still here, and I still count myself as one of them—heck, even when I'm using desktop Linux, I'm running it on Apple hardware. Because y'know what? Every time I look at other hardware vendors, and I witness all the compromises and design choices I simply cannot get behind, I realize that I'm still an Apple fanboy above all else. Though "boring", the Mac mini is an incredible desktop computer (especially if you get a killer deal on a used M2 Pro, as I recently did). The MacBook Air is an incredible consumer laptop. And now the Neo is cheap (!) and fun for a whole lot of entry-level use cases. Depending on what you need to do, the iMac, the MacBook Pro, and even the Mac Studio are fantastic machines. There's really nothing else out there like these…and that extends even more so into other product categories like the iPad. (Yes, I will defend that statement to my grave…there is only one great tablet market and it is iPad—which is still the mobile computer I use every day. I don't use a laptop!)

All my grousing, all my gripes with Apple in recent years isn't because I hate Apple. It's because I love Apple, and so it pains me every time this company seems to stumbling and tripping over its once deeply-held principles. John Ternus may not be a magic cure-all for everything which ails modern Apple, but I do believe he stands to course-correct in a variety of ways large and mostly small to bring the shine back to the Apple brand. 🌈

I'm so fucking pumped y'all. 🙌 I'm pumped. 💪

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Jared ✌️

🤔🌩️ Things that make you think:

In spite of its success, or perhaps because of it, Apple has been a company in stasis for 15 or 20 years. When everything’s going great, and all the executives just stick around no matter how rich they get on stock options, it’s really hard to make changes. The arrival of any new person in charge, not just John Ternus in particular, is an opportunity to shake things up. New leaders have the freedom to make their mark. That could be good for Apple.

I’m also struck by the fact that John Ternus comes from a product-focused background. All in all, it was probably for the best that Tim Cook was as different in skill set from Steve Jobs as possible, because that was an impossibly hard act to follow. Cook, as an operations guy, got to put his faith in the product teams that were executing and guided them at a very high level. I think it would’ve been a disaster if Apple’s first post-Jobs CEO had been trying to cosplay as Steve. Cook couldn’t pull off wearing that turtleneck.

But it’s been 15 years, and maybe it’s a good thing for Apple to get a CEO who’s closer to the metal? Ternus knows the ins and outs of product development at a different level than Cook ever could. Given that Apple is, at its heart, a company that makes physical products and sells them, having someone who has spent decades at Apple working on those products feels like an opportunity for a positive change.

–Jason Snell, writing for Six Colors