Author/Vincent

Editor/Jiajia

This year's September Apple event held iconic symbolic significance—its new CEO Ternus publicly hosted the entire event for the first time, unveiling Apple's new products. This also marked the official retirement of Cook.

For many Apple fans, this was good news. Although Apple has soared in terms of market value, revenue, and brand image over the past few decades, many geeks have had enough of Cook's pragmatic and incremental approach to product innovation, feeling that Apple's products no longer have the wow factor of the Jobs era.

With Ternus, a hardware engineer by background, taking over as the new CEO, many see Apple seemingly returning to the product logic of the Jobs era, where 'innovation is king.'

But for Apple as a company, is it really a good idea to downplay Cook's supply chain operational logic? Can Ternus, with a hardware product background, truly take Apple to new heights?

[1] Performance Reaches Its Peak

External opinions on Cook are polarized. On one hand, some believe Cook is Apple's most successful CEO ever, as he freed Apple from Jobs' personal influence and transformed it into a sustainably growing consumer enterprise in the secular (worldly) sense.

This is evident from many data metrics.

In terms of market value, when Cook stepped down, Apple's market value exceeded $4.6 trillion, compared to just $350 billion during the Jobs era—a 13.2-fold increase in fifteen years.

In terms of market influence, during the Jobs era, the iPhone was more of a geek symbol, with its market share once sliding to 10%. However, under Cook, the iPhone has transformed from a geeky gadget into a global fashion item, with its market share stabilizing at 16% and capturing over 65% of the premium smartphone market.

In terms of revenue, Cook increased Apple's revenue from $108 billion (FY2011) to $416 billion (FY2025), a 3.9-fold increase. Moreover, Cook transformed Apple's revenue structure from purely hardware-based to one where services revenue surpassed hardware products in FY2025, becoming Apple's largest revenue pillar.

On the other hand, many believe that behind Apple's soaring performance lies market conformity and a lack of innovation. Each year's product launches feel like iPhone innovations are being squeezed out like toothpaste.

From a product perspective, Apple under Cook has been unremarkable, launching the Apple Watch in 2015, AirPods in 2016, and the Apple Vision Pro in 2024.

The Apple Watch and AirPods received positive market feedback and strong sales, but in the eyes of many consumers, these were more like incremental innovations rather than groundbreaking products like the Macbook emerging from a brown paper bag or the iPhone that pioneered touchscreen smartphones in the Jobs era.

The only imaginative and innovative product, the Apple Vision Pro, received limited market response and failed to make significant waves.

It can be said that over the past fifteen years, Cook has led Apple to peak corporate performance, but for consumers, what they see is Cook continuously squeezing out incremental innovations for profit, without any truly epoch-making hardware products.

[2] Can Innovation Be Reignited?

Cook's focus on operations over product innovation stems from his professional background.

When Cook joined Apple in 1998, he served as Senior Vice President of Worldwide Operations, responsible for supply chain integration. After 2005, Cook became Apple's Chief Operating Officer, focusing on backend supply chain, inventory, and sales.

Before becoming Apple's CEO, Cook's work revolved around operations and supply chain management. Some have even evaluated Cook as an operations master capable of bringing Jobs' creative visions to life.

A company's strategic direction is often determined by its leader's professional background. Based on this, many Apple fans are excited because, unlike Cook's focus on operations and supply chain, Ternus comes from a hardware product background.

Ternus graduated in mechanical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 1997 and joined Apple's design team in 2001. He became Vice President of Hardware Engineering in 2013 and was promoted to Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering in 2021, entering the top management.

Judging by his resume, whether in terms of educational background or Apple roles, Ternus has been involved in technical R&D. Following the aforementioned pattern, after becoming Apple's CEO, Apple's strategic focus is expected to shift from operations and supply chain to product innovation and R&D.

Notably, at this year's autumn event, Apple unveiled its first foldable smartphone, the iPhone Duo, featuring a Samsung panel and liquid metal hinge for a crease-free screen.

'Back then, Apple didn't want the iPad to be just 'an enlarged iPhone'; today, it similarly doesn't want the Duo to merely stretch phone apps mechanically when unfolded,' Ternus said regarding Apple's foray into foldable smartphones, stating that the iPhone Duo's launch represents a holistic result of Apple rethinking hardware structure, software interfaces, operation methods, and industrial design.

(Source: Internet)

Whether it's the launch of the iPhone Duo or Ternus's post-event statements, it seems to indicate to the outside world that, unlike Cook's conservative approach to product innovation, Apple under Ternus will embrace bold innovation, returning to the awe-inspiring era of the Jobs era where product innovation reigned supreme.

But can this new CEO, who has been responsible for Apple's hardware R&D, truly lead Apple into a new era of product excellence?

[3] Reigniting Innovation Is a Pipe Dream

Whether Apple can reverse its operational-heavy, innovation-light strategy depends on Ternus's capabilities and Apple's corporate willingness.

First, capabilities. Contrary to popular belief as a technical expert, Ternus, as the hardware product leader, hasn't delivered many stunning performances in Apple's hardware products.

The most direct evidence is Apple's 'innovation trifecta' under Cook—the Apple Watch, AirPods, and Apple Vision Pro. As mentioned earlier, the Apple Watch and AirPods represent incremental innovations that won market acceptance but lacked groundbreaking impact, while the Apple Vision Pro underperformed in both reputation and sales.

Importantly, these three relatively mediocre products were all developed under Ternus's leadership. From this perspective, compared to Apple's boundless creativity and relentless pursuit of product excellence in the Jobs era, Ternus seems more like a technical supervisor completing R&D upgrades.

Next is Apple's corporate willingness.

For most Apple fans, they hope Apple will once again launch a groundbreaking product. However, this is just the expectation of C-end fans. For Apple's management, the most important thing is not for Apple products to go down in history but to maintain performance growth.

During Cook's era, Apple's growth came from services like App Store commissions, iCloud+ subscriptions, Apple Music/Apple TV+, Apple Pay, and AppleCare.

In today's AI boom, for Ternus and Apple's management, maintaining Apple's performance growth doesn't rely on hardware products but on AI businesses.

'AI opens the door to new product categories, and we're incredibly excited about our roadmap,' Ternus explicitly stated in a recent media interview, emphasizing that AI is Apple's future direction and the new opportunities it brings are the biggest driving force right now.

(Source: Internet)

The problem is, although the growth direction under Ternus is set, he holds a relatively weak hand:

In January 2026, Apple and Google jointly announced a multi-year AI cooperation agreement, with Gemini powering the next-generation Apple Foundation Models, for which Apple pays Google around $1 billion annually in licensing fees. This means Apple has officially abandoned its in-house large model development and adopted Google's Gemini model for its AI infrastructure.

In June, Apple released Siri AI, with improvements in personal context understanding, screen perception and visual intelligence, and cross-app operations. However, Bloomberg's testing revealed that the current version of Siri's overall capabilities are roughly on par with leading AI chatbots from about six months ago.

Currently, global large models are already performing multi-step Agent tasks, such as collaborative work and deep reasoning, while Siri AI functions more like a competent conversational assistant.

More importantly, Apple's AI team is experiencing talent drain. According to media reports, from June 2025 to January 2026, over a dozen AI researchers have left Apple's AI team to join giants like Meta and Google DeepMind, including Stuart Bowers, one of the highest-ranking executives on the Siri team.

It can be said that Ternus inherits not just Cook's legacy but also an Apple that's lagging in AI.

Therefore, under Ternus, Apple is unlikely to 'reignite innovation' as the outside world hopes. Instead, whether Apple can catch up and surpass in the AI field will be Ternus's core KPI.

END