Casey Liss

Reading from Mark Gurman at Bloomberg.

Apple has expanded the job of hardware chief John Ternes to include design work, solidifying his status as a leading contender to eventually succeed chief executive officer Tim Cook.

Cook tapped Ternes to manage the company's design teams at the end of last year.

People with knowledge of the move said that Cook himself was trying to expose Ternes to more parts of the company's operations.

In this case, one that Cook doesn't know anything about.

Hey, the role was held by Johnny.

Oh, sick burn.

Until his departure in 2019, Cook oversaw design from 2015 to 2017 when I've temporarily stepped back from the position.

Jeff Williams most recently held the job up until his retirement at the end of 2025.

Ternus is now billed internally as the executive sponsor for all design on Cook's management team.

That entails being a bridge between design staff and Apple's top brass.

He represents the design organization in executive team gatherings and manages the group's leaders.

The heads of Apple's design teams continue to report directly to Cook in both internal organizational charts and the company's public disclosures.

Having Ternus oversee the design teams while they still technically report to Cook is a strange arrangement, according to Apple employees, but it's a sensitive situation.

Changing the reporting structure would affirm Ternus' status as a rising star at a time when the company is still keeping its succession planning under wraps.

So then in a different post, Mark Gurman writes, even with hardware chief John Ternus now overseeing the operation, there's no single design decision maker at Apple.

During the Steve Jobs era, the company co-founder was firmly in charge.

But after his passing, the ultimate design arbiter was Johnny Ive.

But it's more recently been a committee.

Besides Ternus, software head Greg Federighi and marketing chief Greg Joswiak and even services boss Eddie Q to some extent all have sway.