Apple CEO John Ternus has been featured on the cover of TIME Magazine's "Best Inventions of 2026" edition, available October 26. Ternus, who joined Apple in 2001 and was formerly its senior vice president of hardware engineering, succeeded Tim Cook as the company's CEO on September 1. This paved the way for Ternus to unveil the i Phone Duo just eight days later. He believes the device stands apart from other foldable smartphones.
"The other examples in the world felt kind of cheap and crappy," said Ternus in an interview with TIME's Andrew R. Chow. Ternus was eight years old when his father bought an Apple II computer. "I started playing games on it and fell in love with Apple," he said.
Cook remains at Apple as executive chairman, focusing mainly on engaging with policymakers around the world. "He has great relationships and loves Apple," Ternus said of Cook. "So wherever he can help, he is happy to help." In a separate interview, Cook said he is "not meddling" with Ternus. Apple's large language models that power Siri AI are "based on Google's Gemini models and cloud technology," according to a joint announcement from Apple and Google earlier this year.
Asked about this, Ternus said Apple does not always have to make the whole widget, focusing instead on areas that offer "differentiation." "You can't do everything," he added. "So we kind of try to constrain ourselves to the stuff that matters most—and then put all of our effort into those things."
Source: MacRumors · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing