Unexpected Wins. It has been a successful first two weeks for Apple's new CEO, John Ternus. He shone during the company's annual launch event for its new iPhones, Watches, and AirPods last week, and has since chalked up a pair of unexpected smaller wins in quick succession. First at the Emmys, where Apple TV dominated the trophy haul, and then in the battle for auto makers' infotainment systems.

Last Wednesday, Ternus graduated from his usual supporting role at Apple's annual launch event to center stage. It was also his public taking of the reins from departing CEO Tim Cook. Ternus looked comfortable and confident as he unveiled new updated devices, along with Apple's first foldable and most expensive iPhone ever.

On Monday night, a tuxedoed Ternus showed up in a very different locale 350 miles down the coast from Apple Park: the Peacock Theater in downtown Los Angeles. He was there for the 2026 Emmy awards, happily showing off the iPhone Duo foldable on the red carpet, which was blue this year.

Ternus traded in Silicon-Valley-casual attire for black tie because, seven years after its launch with only nine titles, the Apple TV streaming service is hitting its stride. Though Apple TV is only a small part of the business, it's become a big player in TV streaming, and this year the company won the most Emmy awards, 29, including the most major awards, nine. Warner Bros. Discovery's HBO Max came in second with five major wins and 21 overall.

Almost half of Apple's tally came from its horror-comedy Widow's Bay, which took home the outstanding comedy Emmy, three of the four acting awards for which it was eligible, and two more for directing and writing.

It's a validation of Apple's strategy of quality over quantity, but it was originally HBO's. In 1993's edition of the awards show, HBO won the most Emmys, the first time a cable channel had done that. It put the whole business on notice and HBO turned it into its business model: court top talent and give them the type of creative freedom they could never get at a broadcast network, where executives and sponsors micromanaged every second of airtime. Not only did it create some of the most-loved series of all time like The Sopranos and The Wire, but it earned the network a rare commodity in Hollywood: loyalty from temperamental creatives.

Eventually, the Emmys became an annual victory lap for that strategy. Other cable networks like FX and AMC followed that path, and it was a golden era for quality scripted TV series. But as the streaming era dawned that became a less viable path. Streaming services all tried to compete with Netflix, which has a huge volume of content, some of which is original, but is mostly licensed from all over the world. The studio-based services like HBO Max, Peacock, Paramount+ and Hulu/Disney+ have their own large libraries of content that go back to the early years of Hollywood, and they are constantly adding to them. We see a proliferation of reality and documentary programming, which are cheaper to produce than scripted content.

Only Apple is left focusing on less content, higher quality, and deeper relationships with top Hollywood talent. Apple does have licensed content, like the old Peanuts specials and a handful of popular movies, but the service is dominated by originals. With shows like another Emmy-winner, Pluribus, as well as Silo, Murderbot, Foundation and others, Apple TV has become the number one destination for prestige science fiction.

This week Apple and its new boss chalked up another win in a realm well outside its core offerings: cars. Along with Alphabet's Android Auto, for many people Apple CarPlay is an irreplaceable link between their phones and their car's infotainment systems. Both project a connected phone's apps and functions onto a car's screen, speakers, and microphone, adding calls, music, podcasts, audiobooks, and navigation to the in-car experience from familiar apps. The services are a boon for consumers, most of whom update their smartphones more often than their cars, and more often than auto makers tend to update their infotainment software.

Tesla doesn't support these smartphone projection systems, and another major auto maker that was resisting was General Motors, which wanted to own the interface with the customer, seeing it as a possible services revenue stream down the road. It had released several electric vehicles without CarPlay, and said that it was going to phase it out entirely. Its replacement was GM's own software, which is undergirded by Google's back end services for navigation and the Google Play app store.

In a 2023 interview, Ford CEO Jim Farley cast shade on the strategy, hinting at GM's future. "In terms of content, we kind of lost that battle 10 years ago. So like get real with it, because you're not gonna make a ton of money on content inside the vehicle." Farley said that in the U.S., 70% of its U.S. customers are also Apple customers.

Nonetheless, GM forged ahead. "We have high conviction that this is the right path for us," GM software chief Baris Cetinok said in a 2024 interview.

That conviction met the reality of what consumers want. Customers protested and GM is now trying to find a middle ground with an optional split screen that has CarPlay or Android Auto and GM's interface. It will start rolling out in two 2027 model year pickup trucks later this year. CarPlay isn't a significant revenue source for Apple, but the episode only serves to underline how central the iPhone is in many people's lives-and cars-especially in the U.S.