AI First Priority for Apple's New Chief John Ternus

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
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This is Bloomberg Businessweek Daily, reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead, with insight on the people, companies, and trends shaping today's complex economy, plus global business, finance, and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Businessweek Daily podcast with Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec on Bloomberg Radio.

**Tim Stenovec** (0:32)
Well, it's the end of an era. Or is it? The reason I say is it is because the question I think a lot of people have is John Ternus, the new CEO who officially takes the reins starting tomorrow of Apple, is he going to be an extension of Tim Cook? It's a good question opposed to Mark Gurman. He's managing editor for Global Consumer Tech for Bloomberg News. He joins us from Los Angeles. He's the author of today's Big Take. It is one of the most read stories on the Bloomberg terminal. We've been waiting for this day. I know you've been waiting for this day. I encourage everybody to check out your Big Take. It's chock full of a great retrospective on what Tim Cook did over the last 15 years and also the challenges that John Ternus has over let's say the next 15 I guess maybe I'll pose the question to you about this.
You write about this in your piece, Mark.
Is this going to be like a Bob Chapek, Bob Iger situation or like an Andy Jassy, Jeff Bezos situation?

**Mark Gurman** (1:30)
I think it will be more of an Andy Jassy, Jeff Bezos type of situation where Tim Cook is still there. He's there to do the so-called dirty work on the government relation side while Ternus is running and sending the agenda for the company in the day-to-day basis. But Cook has a lot of experience. He'll be there in executive meetings. He'll be there going through numbers for Apple, he'll be working on important things like trying to fix the memory shortage, and he'll be there as an advisor to Ternus as well as that whole executive team and really the whole company, if you think about it, helping Ternus work through these decisions. I would expect that they're going to have a one-on-one still on the calendar, maybe something once a month, once a week. But this is going to be an ongoing transition for the next several months and I expect Tim Cook to be there in a really intimate way likely through 2029 or through 2028 into 2029 when Trump's tenure ends.

**Carol Massar** (2:22)
Yeah. Very interesting time for Apple, Mark, isn't it? Because this handover from Tim Cook to John Ternus isn't like the handover from Steve Jobs to Tim Cook, in terms of the composition of the executive C-suite ranks. I mean, there was a lot of continuity from the Jobs to the Cook era, but perhaps less so from the Cook to the Ternus era. He's going to have to replace a bunch of senior positions over the next three years. How do you think Tim Cook's continued presence will help with that transition?

**Mark Gurman** (2:55)
Yeah, that's all true. What Tim Cook had was a blessing and a curse. The blessing was that he was able to chart his own path and set his own agenda without anyone being able to really question what would Steve Jobs do. People posed that question, but Steve Jobs unfortunately had passed away. He wasn't there anymore. He wasn't there to get involved, right? And so from that standpoint, it was a clean break, so to speak.
John Ternus is not going to get that because Tim Cook is going to still be around. Now, on the other side of the coin, Apple and the world lost one of its greatest visionaries in world history with the passing of Steve Jobs. Apple lost its CEO, its founder, its leader, the person who set that agenda in almost a singular way. And so Tim Cook did not have, unfortunately, for him and for Apple and the world, that type of figure to lean on. Now, the benefit for Ternus on the other side of the coin is he will have that benefit to be able to lean on Tim Cook. Obviously, a great businessman, someone who was able to expand Apple.
One interesting stat in my big take was that the services and the revenue alone that Apple generates today because of expansions into new things like Apple Music, Apple Pay, Apple TV, the growing App Store, right? That business was bigger, that business now is bigger than Apple was in its entirety when Tim Cook took over at the end of 2011 So, a lot to like about Cook's tenure and a lot to like if you're Ternus being able to lean on him, but we'll see how quickly he's able to reshape Apple in his own image as Tim Cook was able to when he took over.