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John Ternus makes himself the final decision maker on Apple design
Apple CEO John Ternus works hands-on in the design studio several times a week, Bloomberg reports, against Tim Cook's roughly monthly visits. With no chief design officer search underway, Apple's former hardware chief now has the final say on its software interfaces too.
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What happened
- Bloomberg says Apple plans to put Molly Anderson forward as its industrial design lead and Steve Lemay as its human interface lead.
- When COO Jeff Williams left last year, Apple said the design teams would report to Tim Cook, but they reportedly reported to Ternus during his transition to CEO.
- Apple has lost designers to rivals, including Alan Dye, who left for Meta, while OpenAI has hired away many Apple employees.
- Ternus has spent much of his attention refilling design roles, and Apple has promoted many junior designers and hired new talent from outside.
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Why it matters
- constraint Without a chief design officer, final calls for two design teams depend on the calendar of a CEO who also runs the rest of Apple.
- capability With one decider over both industrial design and human interface, a disagreement between how a device looks and how its software behaves can be settled by one person in the studio.
- exposure Meta and OpenAI have already recruited from the same pool of designers Apple is now promoting into vacated roles, so the rebuilt team is still open to poaching.
A designer on Apple's human interface team now shows a screen to the executive who used to run hardware engineering [7]. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman wrote that Ternus "has immersed himself in the industrial design and human interface teams." According to people familiar with the department, he is "sometimes visiting multiple times in a single day" [5].
Count "several" at its low end, two visits a week, and Ternus is in the studio at least eight times a month. That is about eight times Cook's rate [1].
In 9to5mac's account, Apple has lacked a true design lead since Jony Ive left in 2019 [1]. Until last year, design belonged to an operations executive, COO Jeff Williams [2]. After Williams left, the reporting line Apple announced was different from the one people reportedly worked under [3]. Given that, I would take the billing of Molly Anderson and Steve Lemay as design leads [11] as a statement about who presents the work. Bloomberg puts approval with the CEO [11].
Ternus has been CEO for about a month [4]. The reporting does not tie any specific product or interface decision to him. Claims that Apple's products will change direction are ahead of the evidence.
In my view the cost is concentration. The rebuilt team [9] will take its standard from one reviewer. By 9to5mac's account, that reviewer is a CEO who lacks a traditional design background [12].
An operator deciding how close a senior executive should sit to design work can sort the options with two questions. The first is how often the executive is in the room, weekly or monthly. The second is who holds the final call, the executive or the named design lead. Per Bloomberg, Apple is now weekly with the executive deciding [5][11]. Answers come quickly, and the named leads have only as much authority as the CEO leaves them. The Cook years, with Williams owning design, were closer to monthly visits and a separate owner [2][6]. If the executive keeps the weekly visits but hands the final call to the lead, the executive becomes a coach. The arrangement to avoid is monthly visits with the executive still deciding, because work queues up for a judge who is rarely there.
What to watch
- Whether Apple opens a search for a chief design officer, which Bloomberg says is not underway.
- The first hardware or interface release that reporting credits to a design call made by Ternus.
- Further departures from Apple's design teams to Meta or OpenAI, or whether the newly promoted designers stay.