Apple bets on hardware in an AI world

TL;DR: Tim Cook is stepping down as Apple CEO on September 1, capping a run that turned the iPhone into the most profitable consumer product in history. Hardware chief John Ternus inherits the top job—and a tech empire that’s still figuring out its AI strategy and on a dry spell for showstopping product releases.

What happened: Under Cook, who became CEO in 2011 shortly before Steve Jobs’s death, Apple's market cap grew from about $350 billion to almost $4 trillion. Now Cook’s handing the reins to Ternus (and leaving him the same advice Jobs did). Ternus has spent the last 25 years at Apple and has been head of hardware engineering since 2021, a division that has recently produced about 80% of Apple’s revenue. Cook will remain on as executive chairman of Apple’s board of directors and leaves a legacy of both triumphs and question marks.

Cook’s wins:

• Streamlined Apple’s supply chain and transformed it into a global manufacturing machine that made mass-scale iPhone production possible.
• Turned services like iCloud and Apple Music and TV+ subscriptions into a revenue juggernaut, pulling in nearly $100 billion in 2024.
• Carved out Apple’s stake in wearables, releasing the Apple Watch in 2015 and the AirPods in 2016. (Though it came at a heavy cost: RIP to the headphone jack.)

And the notable misses:

• The Apple Car, killed in 2024 after a decade of development.
• The Vision Pro, which has sold far below Apple’s expectations.
• The big AI lag. Apple has been slower to roll out its strategy and has spent more modestly on AI, while other Big Tech firms develop frontier models and pour money into data centers.

The new CEO’s credentials: Ternus has worked on everything from the switch from Intel to Apple silicon chips to the development of the AirPods. More recently, he oversaw the launch of both the iPhone 17 lineup and the budget-friendly MacBook Neo, which has been a runaway hit.

The real test: Ternus inherits the perception that while Apple has kept shipping high-quality products, it hasn’t had a revolutionary new one in years. As former Apple product marketing exec Cameron Rogers put it to the New York Times: “Has he made any hard decisions? No. Are there hard problems he’s solved in hardware? No.”

We’ll see whether Apple’s hardware double-down is a misstep or a smart play for the AI race. A lot is riding on the revamped Siri, powered by Google’s Gemini, actually being useful. Apple is also reportedly developing display-free smart glasses aimed at Meta’s Ray-Ban turf.

Bottom line: Last December, one analyst summed up Apple’s AI posture to CNBC as, essentially, “We’ll blow you away with what we show next year.” Ternus is now the one who has to deliver—and prove Apple can still build era-defining products for the AI generation. —WK