Apple CEO’s best bet: channelling both Jobs and Cook

Since assuming the top job in 2011, Tim Cook has excelled in making everything at tech giant Apple run smoothly. ​New iPhones rolled out regularly, supply chains hummed, the company’s value ballooned to $4 trillion, and even his ‌surprise exit, announced Monday, looks to be carefully planned. He faced an imposing task when he took over from co-founder and industry icon Steve Jobs. Incoming CEO John Ternus, who currently leads hardware engineering, inherits an equally daunting challenge: mixing the best attributes of his two ​predecessors.

The nagging concern at Apple – which set the blueprint for modern computing twice over – was that it ​was becoming a one-trick pony when Cook took over. That’s even truer today. The iPhone accounted for half the company’s revenue in the quarter before he became CEO in 2011, and some 60 percent in ​the most recent quarter. This still understates matters: Apple’s services business is built upon people using iPhones.

Of course, there are ​only a few major products in any technological generation, and Apple nailed perhaps the most important one to yet exist. As Steve Jobs emphasized, focus isn’t about saying yes, it’s about saying no to 1,000 merely good ideas. Apple mostly lives by this ethos. For ​example, the company spent a decade trying to develop a car, only to abandon the effort. Aside from Tesla, ​automakers tend to trade at meager valuations compared to the $4 trillion smartphone kingpin, so the upside was probably small.

But Ternus faces seismic ‌shifts. Apple has largely sat out the artificial intelligence frenzy. That’s been to shareholders’ benefit, as it allowed continued capital returns as others splurged on investment. Yet prior technological revolutions overthrew former industry goliaths.

If AI can power a viable consumer product, Ternus probably has the right hardware background to make it happen. He started out designing virtual reality headsets, and at Apple ​saw the AirPod earbuds to ​production and righted the Mac computer line, both to major success.

Of course, new form factors simply might not make sense. Ternus’ task is divining the worthwhile from the fanciful. Like Cook, he must milk ​the iPhone for all it’s worth. But if there is a revelatory new device ​to make, then doing it right will be every bit as important as Steve Jobs’ 2007 unveiling of the iPhone. Jobs teased the gadget with a mocking tagline: he had just “one more thing” to show the audience. Hitting on a second thing would be no small ​wonder.

Apple announced on April 20 that John ​Ternus, senior vice president of hardware engineering, will become the company’s next CEO effective on September 1. Current Chief Executive Tim Cook will become executive ​chairman of the board.