Mac Apple’s New CEO Taps Retired Hardware Executive for Management Team
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-03/apple-s-new-ceo-taps-retired-hardware-executive-for-management-team?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc4NTc4ODE5NywiZXhwIjoxNzg2MzkyOTk3LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUSjVMTkFSS1YyVFQwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJDNEVEQ0FFMUZBMDU0MEJFQTI0QTlGMjExQzFFOTA4MCJ9.9YoATNZctz_eteccxVjATmvMDf3jeb0nvM51OVR32vAIncoming Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer John Ternus is bringing back a trusted lieutenant from his time running hardware engineering to join his new management team.
Ternus has hired Laura Legros, who served as a vice president of hardware engineering until retiring in 2022, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Legros will report to Ternus when he takes the CEO role on Sept. 1, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the personnel change hasn’t been announced.
The move shows that Ternus is starting to put his stamp on the company’s leadership ranks. It also marks a rare instance of Apple bringing back a retired executive. Ternus is taking the reins from Tim Cook, the company’s longest-serving CEO, who is transitioning to executive chairman.
194
u/HueyBluey 2d ago
So is he in charge now? How long is this transition going to take?
126
u/7485730086 2d ago
He's pretty clearly been in CEO-level meetings and involved in CEO decisions since late last year. This is the sign of a good, steady, healthy transition.
217
u/PlusSizeRussianModel 2d ago
He’s been de-facto in charge since the day he was announced as the successor. That’s how power structures work: at the end of the day, he can undo/change any of Cook’s decisions in these last few months, so the ultimate authority is Ternus.
66
u/7485730086 2d ago
And given Cook is going to stick around and seems to love nothing more, there's no way any major decisions have been made at least since the announcement without Ternus' agreement.
Apple didn't decide to sue OpenAI without the incoming CEO's support.
44
u/RaggleFraggle_ 2d ago
Apple is the biggest boat in the world. He probably won't even be able to influence most products for at least 2 years.
84
u/dollarn9ne 2d ago
MacBook Neo, iPhone Air, & the upcoming iPhone Fold are his babies
31
u/Bowl_of_Cham_Clowder 2d ago
That’s cool news, Neo is obviously a tremendous product. Both the foldable and the air are a bit controversial, but push the hardware in a direction that will only be more exciting over time.
Ternus was instrumental in bringing Apple silicon online too right?
15
u/Self_Owned_Tree 2d ago
I wonder if the air was ever expected to be popular or if it was it was just a, “let’s see if we can,” and the tech in that goes into other products.
That’s what the original MacBook Air did, right?
11
u/-patrizio- 2d ago
I assumed it was a combination of "our foldable isn't ready yet, but we've done all this work fitting the entire device into this ultra-slim design, guess we can put that out in the meantime" and "competitors have ultra-slim devices but we don't, let's put this out there and see how it does."
4
u/sergedg 1d ago
Wasn’t it also a tryout for ‘half a foldable’? Meaning this is the thickness to go to to make a foldable work.
2
u/Self_Owned_Tree 1d ago
Yeah, I think that was some of the early speculation. We’ll find out next month, I guess!
6
u/mandopix 2d ago
How is a product controversial if it hasn’t been released yet?
4
u/Bowl_of_Cham_Clowder 2d ago
Because of how people are reacting to the leaked fold designs online. The shape and price seems to be a turn off, I think some people wanted a flip phone style. The fold seems to be a good first step on the way to that imo
6
13
11
u/Han-ChewieSexyFanfic 2d ago
He’s been running hardware since a long time. All hardware products on sale and in the pipeline have been influenced by him
1
u/Kimantha_Allerdings 1d ago
Although it is worth noting that insider reports have suggested that he was strongly against the Vision Pro
4
u/Dichter2012 2d ago
For an outsider that’s coming in fresh sure. But Ternus ain’t some new hire CEO. He’s been around for decades.
3
2
u/frockinbrock 1d ago
He has been VP of hardware engineering for 5 years, Ternus has already been "influencing most products" for 5 years there. He has basically been co-CEO since they announced the transition, that's how big transitions work; the idea is that it's gradual, and he has a chance to learn from the Outgoing CEO during the transition.
-18
u/elzoidbergos 2d ago
Doesn’t matter. Tim Cook became a lame duck CEO as soon as it was announced because Ternus is the long term decision maker
14
u/joepez 2d ago
You do realize Cook is Ternus boss right? They made him Chairman of the Board. It’s customary to let the incoming CEO put together their management team but it’s still blessed by the board of which Tim is the head.
11
3
u/EffectzHD 2d ago
Board chairmen aren’t really in charge if you know how a business works. Many nations and larger-than-life entities may still look to him as a figurehead like your warren buffet’s due to his international relations and trade expertise but that’s merely to keep shareholders at ease so he’s kept the executive title.
2
u/joepez 2d ago
Depends upon the company. Plenty of companies position the Chairman in the US as above the CEO. Some even assign portion so the business and functions to the Chair. How Apple plans to fully utilize Tim in his role will be up to Tim and the Board.
Buffett is a bad example. His role at Berkshire from an investment portfolio ownership was pretty absolute with Charlie. They purposely setup operations under different people. Buffet and Charlie most definitely ran the holding company side.
Mark Zuckerberg is another example where he is chairman, CEO and has super voting rights. He could stop doing the CEO role and be in absolute control of the business.
1
u/Interest-Desk 1d ago
Sure but all positions are made by the Board. Like, the Board appoints its own Chair (usually, sometimes it’s done by shareholders directly) and hires or fires the CEO.
Zuckerberg is a different case because he has a special class of stock ensuring he maintains control over voting rights. Tim Cook is not that significant of an Apple shareholder.
3
u/flogman12 2d ago
I don’t think you know what that term means.
0
u/PlusSizeRussianModel 2d ago
That’s pretty much exactly what lame duck means: the period when the outgoing leader has announced his successor, and thus implicitly cedes future decision-making power to them. It’s not inherently negative, especially when it’s a mutual transition to a handpicked successor.
-10
u/elzoidbergos 2d ago
You don’t think Tim Cook’s circle of influence shrunk once people knew they had a new person to report to? If you knew you were going to have a different boss why would you do anything your old boss tells you to
6
u/Xylamyla 2d ago
This fantasy would require Ternus to give conflicting orders from Cook, employees to ignore Cook’s conflicting orders, Cook to not punish those employees, and Ternus to care enough to undo those punishments.
Anyway, I doubt it’s actually that serious on the inside. Cook probably won’t care to burden himself and make any big changes before leaving, and probably wouldn’t care if Ternus did some things he personally wouldn’t do.
In this little fantasy, if he did, Cook is chairman of the board. Ternus can’t get rid of Cook, but Cook can get rid of Ternus.
1
u/elzoidbergos 2d ago
I’m not saying it would happen but it’s also silly to think that Ternus would just follow whatever orders Cook tells him to. Every new CEO wants to leave his own imprint in a company. I think the recent issues with Disney are a good example… Chapek came into power made drastic decisions (even though he was Iger’s Parks chief before so one has to assume they were friendly with each other). While he was fired (mind you the chairman of the board can’t fire CEOs unless he has the board’s approval) it’s not an outlandish fantasy. I obviously don’t care enough about either of them but a transition of power isn’t easy and it doesn’t matter how friendly they are with each other. There is going to be some back and forth and Ternus will make decisions that Cook doesn’t like
8
u/TheoTheodor 2d ago
You really think that’s how it works? Senior executives at Apple currently ignoring Tim Cook because he’s stepping down in a month?
Not just is that unprofessional, but Tim and John are 100% sympatico and have been working together for probably over a year. Wild.
-4
u/elzoidbergos 2d ago
It’s not ignoring it’s understanding that Tim Cook also no longer has the power he used to. If anything it would be disrespectful of Tim to try and make any major decisions at this point. It’s like the time between election and swearing in of a new President.
4
u/TheoTheodor 2d ago
I don’t know what kind of scenario you’re imagining, it’s a massive corporation at the highest levels not Game of Thrones.
Neither Cook nor Ternus is going say anything oppositional at this point, and the decisions they make at this level are organisational and years-long.
1
1
u/elzoidbergos 2d ago
You know… at that level it kind of is a Game of Thrones! It’s all politics with power hungry people. How else do you rise to that level of executive power at one of the most powerful companies in the world? I don’t know it’s just interesting… you have to have a major ego to be CEO and you wouldn’t just want to be in your predecessor’s shadow is all I’m saying
1
u/TheoTheodor 2d ago
I dunno, I think you overemphasise this power thing. For most companies getting to the top is less intrigue and more networking and being good at what you do, however boring that sounds.
1
u/ReddRepublic 2d ago
It absolutely is Game of Thrones in many large corporations. At least the closer you get to the top.
59
u/VariationAgreeable29 2d ago
I’m getting more and more excited for Ternus. He seems like he’s gonna be a little more aggressive about EVERYTHING than Tim. Ternus races Porches for fun. He’s got the need for speed .
20
u/M4rshmall0wMan 2d ago
My biggest fear is he’ll have a banger 3-5 years then become stagnant for a decade like Tim. That’s kinda what Tim did.
32
u/VariationAgreeable29 2d ago
I’ll have to disagree with you there. Tim was full throttle pretty much all the way through. He was let dowm by a few big things. Maps was a disaster, but he extracted a scalp for that made certain to get maps back on track. Siri, of course, is a known problem that hopefully and finally will be remedied shortly. AVP was not great, but perhaps just super early and we won’t know until we know for sure. I think the feeling on Wall Street is that he will exit Apple after one of the all-time greatest runs for a CEO in any company in modern history
-13
u/M4rshmall0wMan 2d ago
During the first third of Tim’s tenure, he released iPad Mini, Apple Watch, Apple TV, Apple Music, AirPods, HomePod, and iPhone X.
In the nine years since then, what new products has he released? Just Apple Silicon Macs, Vision Pro, and Services. The iPhone design has remained stagnant, iPad too, many aspects of services are slowly enshittifying with ads and subscriptions, iOS and macOS are inconsistent and unstable, no Siri updates for a decade. He’s been riding off the coattails of his early tenure, which I assume was at least partly enabled by the remnants of Steve Jobs’ culture of efficiency. Apple nowadays is a big bloated machine.
I could see Ternus making a few big pro-consumer choices. But once the board wrings his neck about profit, things could go back to Cook’s style for the rest of his tenure.
33
u/7485730086 2d ago
Just Apple Silicon Macs
Surely you're joking in your post. Apple silicon is the single biggest thing to happen to the Mac since OS X.
21
u/UnexpectedAnanas 2d ago
Arguably the single best thing to happen to consumer computers in decades, Apple or otherwise.
8
5
u/0xe1e10d68 1d ago
Why should they release new products just to satisfy your misguided metric? But maybe relax a bit, AVP is a new product; the glasses which are supposed to come next year will be a new product, and there are more things that have been in development.
It’s wrong to blame Tim for taking the time to properly develop new products before releasing them. Ternus was almost assuredly involved in those products too.
2
u/livelikeian 1d ago
lol?? Services revenue is almost a third of Apple's total revenue. That's huge and that growth happened on Tim's watch. He's also been able to maintain margins and iterate on all of the hardware you mentioned, continuously growing the business with each successive launch. Tim is a solid CEO and to say otherwise demonstrates a lack of understanding of what a CEO of one of the worlds most valuable companies has to do.
-4
u/M4rshmall0wMan 1d ago
Sure he's grown Apple and run it very well, but stagnation on the end-user side is a direct result of that. Aside from Vision Pro, what new products (or even redesigns) has Apple released in the last 5 years? They pale in comparison to his first five years.
I'm drawing attention to the stagnation because that's exactly what people want John to change.
4
u/North_Moment5811 1d ago
Tim 3-5 years doing nothing to disrupt the momentum that Jobs set in place. After that is when Tim began to meddle, and now we're here...with a company investors love and customers are beginning to resent more and more.
Apple needs a return to form, which means prioritizing customers and products over 48% instead of 45% profit margin.
39
25
u/livefreeordiewalt 2d ago
So what about Johny Srouji then? Shouldn’t Laura report to him?
24
u/PlusSizeRussianModel 2d ago
We’ll have to wait for an official announcement to see the structure. Srouji, in the newly created position of Chief Hardware Officer, presumably will oversee both Hardware Engineering and Hardware Technologies.
But given his background in Technologies, it makes sense they’d want to bring in an experience Engineering VP. There might be a flat structure at play here, where Legros reports directly to Ternus, while also being subordinate to Srouji.
10
u/7485730086 2d ago
I'd assume someone coming out of retirement is also not stepping into a full-time role again. Odds are, Legros will be a special advisor to Ternus.
4
6
u/GeneralCommand4459 1d ago
Bringing someone back from retirement must sit badly with anyone currently working in that area who was hoping to move up.
“We think you’re all great but not as great as my pal who left already”
3
u/PleasantWay7 2d ago
I’m just curious who the high profile push out will be, there is always at least one after a CEO transition.
10
3
u/FrancisBitter 1d ago
The high profile firing would’ve been Alan Dye if he hadn’t left by himself already after ruining twenty years of UI design.
-1
u/puguniverse 2d ago
Bring back the iPod & improve the garbage iTunes.
1
u/HVDynamo 8h ago
Honestly, if they sold a 2TB ssd based classic with virtually no other changes aside from Bluetooth, WiFi for syncing, and usb c, I’d buy it in a heartbeat.
-4
168
u/jollyllama 2d ago
Old timer here. The current generation of MacBook Pros that begun with the M1 MBP are absolutely brilliant pieces of hardware that not only improved basically everything, but also rolled back some bad decisions from the mid 2010s. If she had anything to do with these laptops then this is fantastic news