By Adam Levine

As Tim Cook exits the CEO role, Apple remains the most important consumer electronics company in the world. At last count, the company had roughly 2.5 billion devices in use worldwide. Cook has brilliantly used that base to build a services business with $109 billion in fiscal 2025 sales.

But Cook's astounding management of Apple's growth has moved Apple a little off its north star: the user experience. It's a philosophy Steve Jobs laid out during a raucous Q&A with skeptical developers at the 1997 Worldwide Developers Conference, his first after returning to Apple.

"You've got to start with the customer experience and work backward to the technology," he said. "You can't start with the technology and try to figure out where you're going to try to sell it."

But Apple in recent years has drifted off that singular focus with its so-called Liquid Glass interface that is especially unpopular on the Mac. Meanwhile, ads are coming soon to Maps, not exactly a user-first idea.

The Apple of today needs someone with that same Jobsian laser focus on user experience -- someone just like John Ternus, who was named CEO this past week.

Ternus worked his way up the hardware design ladder at Apple over a quarter-century, and is best-known for leading the shockingly smooth transition of Macs from Intel chips to Apple's own custom designs.

In September he will be running the company, with Cook as executive chairman "engaging with policymakers around the world." Cook is freeing up Ternus from three of the most challenging tasks facing an Apple CEO: dealing with Donald Trump, China's Xi Jinping, and India's Narendra Modi. Ternus gets to stay squarely fixed on what makes Apple great: an unparalleled user experience where the devices, software, and services work in harmony.

So what does the next 15 years look like for Apple? Besides the usual painstaking design choices every year for its existing products, Ternus has two big challenges at the top of his agenda.

The immediate one is making Apple Intelligence into something users really want to use. Apple's approach to artificial intelligence got off on the wrong foot in 2024. The crucial feature, a conversational Siri that lives up to Apple's standards of quality, security, and privacy still hasn't been implemented.

After trying and failing with its fully in-house approach, Apple is leaning on its longtime search partner, Google, to provide the back end technology for the next-generation of Siri. We should hear more about the implementation at WWDC 2026 in June, 29 years after Jobs first defined Apple's approach.

But Apple Intelligence hints at a more distant threat to Apple, one that will fall on Ternus's plate should he be lucky enough to match Cook's CEO tenure. The touch screen smartphone turns 20 in a year. Just as the smartphone supplanted PCs as people's main computing device, someday something will replace it.

It might be smartglasses or something else wearable. For now, ideas are converging around a new human interface that will eventually replace the decades-old graphical approach and feature conversations with Siri supplanting mouse clicks and finger taps.

In 2026, Apple needs a "product guy" at the top because in the long term, he will be in charge of building new devices with Apple Intelligence central to the experience.

I have a long history with Apple. My first Apple device was an Apple II+ in 1981 when I was 14 years old. My father convinced my mother to buy it for me by telling her that I would never again want anything so badly and, so far, he's been right. I bought my first share of Apple stock soon thereafter.

I've been a pretty continuous fan since Jobs' 1997 return, especially after Jobs' public appearances in 2005 and 2006 convinced me that an Apple smartphone was imminent. I sold my Apple stock, and every other individual security, before I joined Barron's staff in 2024, but I remain an ardent bull.

Yes, the high-growth days are likely behind Apple. It's a mature company now with products in mature categories. At a 30 price/earnings ratio for the next 12 months, near the top of Apple's historic range, the stock is hardly cheap. But Apple is also the rare Big Tech stock that's not reshaping its cash flow and balance sheet with AI investments. While Amazon.com, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, and Alphabet's Google spend $100 billion-plus a year on chips from Nvidia and others, Apple is keeping its powder dry.

And with Ternus aboard I'm more confident that Apple has a new iPhone-sized category up its sleeves, even if it takes years to materialize. Most importantly, the signal from Ternus' elevation to CEO is that Apple will remain focused on the user experience, which is what keeps them an essential company -- and an essential part of any tech portfolio.

Write to Adam Levine at adam.levine@barrons.com

This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 24, 2026 12:08 ET (16:08 GMT)

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