Apple will have been planning this succession for a long time.
Rumours were circulating for a while that 65-year-old Tim Cook was thinking about stepping down, and while a few potential replacements popped up, the name which stuck was the firm’s vice president of hardware, 51-year-old John Ternus.
I had an informal meeting with him in the UK recently and I asked him then whether he really was heir apparent to the Apple throne.
He laughed and very smoothly gave me what’s known in the newsroom as a “politician’s answer” – that is, he didn’t actually answer the question at all.
Instead, he enthused about Tim Cook’s leadership. But there was no other obvious reason why I was suddenly invited to have coffee with him at that moment, some 25 years after he joined the firm.
I found Ternus polite, friendly, and everything he told me was perfectly delivered, if a bit bland.
I wish I could tell you I got some good gossip, but there wasn’t a single unguarded moment. Apple is frustratingly good at curating to the letter what it chooses to say, even in private.
You could say Cook has chosen a replacement in his own mould: calm, steady, reliable.
