Apple CEO John Ternus Is Working in the Design Studio Several Times a Week

Apple CEO John Ternus has made design one of his top personal priorities since taking over the company, and now works directly with designers in Apple's studio several times a week, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.

People familiar with the department told Gurman that Ternus sometimes stops into the studio more than once in a single day. By comparison, former CEO Tim Cook reportedly visited about once a month, typically for around an hour.

The report, published in Sunday's edition of Gurman's Power On newsletter, says a conversation with Cook convinced Ternus that he needed to lead as himself rather than try to replicate his predecessor.

Ternus is said to have told employees that Cook spent his tenure focused on where he could generate "the most value for Apple," and that he plans to do the same while leaning on his own strengths.

In practice, that means areas Cook oversaw closely are now in other hands. Financial strategy sits with CFO Kevan Parekh, while the supply chain falls under COO Sabih Khan. Ternus, who spent years running hardware engineering, is instead working closely with chief hardware officer Johny Srouji and hardware engineering leader Tom Marieb, in addition to the time he spends with the design teams.

Apple has not had a single executive overseeing all of design since Jony Ive left the company in 2019. Industrial design and human interface design have operated as separate groups, and for several years their leaders reported to then COO Jeff Williams, whose background was in operations rather than design.

When Williams stepped back ahead of his retirement in 2025, Apple said the design teams would report to Cook. Cook later handed that responsibility to Ternus as part of the leadership transition, and the design leads were effectively Ternus's only direct reports during that period.

Ternus succeeded Cook as CEO roughly a month ago.

Ternus is also reportedly putting significant effort into staffing. Apple's design ranks have been thinned by a string of departures in recent years. Former human interface design chief Alan Dye left for Meta, and a number of Apple designers have joined OpenAI's hardware effort, which is being developed with Ive's design firm LoveFrom. Evans Hankey, who led industrial design after Ive, has also left the company.

To fill those gaps, Apple has promoted a number of junior designers and brought in new hires from outside the company.

Apple is not currently searching for a chief design officer to fill the role Ive once held, according to the report. Instead, the company has given a more public profile to Molly Anderson, its vice president of industrial design, and Steve Lemay, who took over human interface design after Dye's exit. Apple added both to its leadership page in March, and the pair featured prominently around the launch of iPhone Duo last month.

Gurman notes that Anderson had not previously managed a team as large as Apple's industrial design group. Ternus, meanwhile, serves as the final decision maker on design across both teams.

Ternus's level of involvement is closer to that of Steve Jobs, who was known for being deeply involved in the details of Apple's product design, than to Cook, whose tenure centered on operations, growth, and the supply chain.

It is not yet clear whether Apple will eventually appoint a single design chief, or whether Ternus intends to fill that role himself for the foreseeable future.