On Apple, Ascension, and Accessibility
Apple dropped the proverbial bombshell this week: Tim Cook is stepping down as CEO.
Replacing Cook will be John Ternus, the company’s senior vice president of hardware engineering. At 30,000 feet, I’m admittedly keenly interested in the palace intrigue of Cook’s (and the Board’s) decision to tap Ternus for the catbird seat in Apple Park. Why Ternus? What makes him so special? Why not someone else? Beyond someone on Apple’s executive team not wanting the job, I’m simply curious as to what made Ternus the obvious choice, as he was unanimously voted as Cook’s successor by the Board.
Cook gave an answer in the press release, albeit one predictably bereft of intrigue.
“John Ternus has the mind of an engineer, the soul of an innovator, and the heart to lead with integrity and with honor,” Cook said in Monday’s announcement. “He is a visionary whose contributions to Apple over 25 years are already too numerous to count, and he is without question the right person to lead Apple into the future. I could not be more confident in his abilities and his character, and I look forward to working closely with him on this transition and in my new role as executive chairman.”
Ternus is pumped for the new challenges that await him.
“I am profoundly grateful for this opportunity to carry Apple’s mission forward,” he said in a statement of his own. “Having spent almost my entire career at Apple, I have been lucky to have worked under Steve Jobs and to have had Tim Cook as my mentor. It has been a privilege to help shape the products and experiences that have changed so much of how we interact with the world and with one another. I am filled with optimism about what we can achieve in the years to come, and I am so happy to know that the most talented people on earth are here at Apple, determined to be part of something bigger than any one of us. I am humbled to step into this role, and I promise to lead with the values and vision that have come to define this special place for half a century.”
One aspect about the Cook-to-Ternus transition is accessibility. As I wrote last month, as someone who’s coped with multiple disabilities my entire life and who loves Apple products—never mind my journalistic interest in covering Apple for 13 years running—what remains to be seen with Ternus, even now, is how he plans to steward the company’s commitment to accessibility. I’ve neither met nor interviewed Ternus (yet?), but my understanding is he’s just as bullish on, and just as much of an advocate for, accessibility as Cook and the rest of the company’s executive team. I was heartened by learning in this NYT profile of Ternus that his senior project at Penn involved “[designing] a device that allowed quadriplegics to use head motions to control a mechanical feeding arm.” Nobody does something like that were they not touched personally by disability in some way. It means Ternus has sensibility towards disability.
Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) is next month. Will it be Cook who posts to social media about Apple’s newest accessibility innovations? Will Ternus say something too as part of the peaceful transfer of power, as it were? Whose voice(s) will be present in the press release when Apple presumably previews the new features coming to iOS 27, et al? Apple is not performative or patronizing when it comes to serving the disability community—as Cook said in one shareholders’ meeting, “when we work on making our devices accessible by the Blind, I don’t consider the bloody ROI”—and, to me, this year’s GAAD would be a great opportunity for Ternus to show his allyship of the disability community. Accessibility is something Cook name-drops often in interviews… it shouldn’t be left to him, whether now or as executive chairman.
Consider too this bit of (good) palace intrigue. My friend Jessie Lorenz, a gold medalist Paralympian who now works at Microsoft on accessibility, wrote on X about Apple’s CEO transition, saying in part Ternus ought to “put us in the roadmap, put us in the room, [and] put us in the org chart.” Her post resonated with me because it pointed to another way Ternus could make his mark: Give Apple a chief accessibility officer. If Microsoft and Canada can have one, there’s no reason Apple couldn’t too. The who is somewhat immaterial, as a hypothetical CAO—as opposed to Apple’s new CHO—would put us, the disability community, more “in the room” and “in the org chart.” A CAO would put a face to a community, not unlike how Craig Federighi is seen within the broader Apple community as the face of Apple software writ large. (Sarah Herrlinger, whom I’ve interviewed numerous times, is Apple’s senior director of global accessibility policy and initiatives. She’s more or less Federighi’s analogue.) At the least, if chief hardware officer can exist at Apple, so could chief accessibility officer.
Cook’s relinquishment of the CEO role is, while expected, headline news. Ternus will be critiqued on ostensibly more pressing metrics, particularly when it comes to product strategy, accessibility is damn important too. It’ll be extremely interesting to see how he approaches a vital part of Apple that is undoubtedly an incubator for innovation.
