by Dan Moren
John Ternus takes over as SVP of Apple hardware as Dan Riccio moves to “new project”
Apple today announced Dan Riccio will transition to a new role focusing on a new project and reporting to CEO Tim Cook, building on more than two decades of innovation, service, and leadership at Apple. John Ternus will now lead Apple’s Hardware Engineering organization as a member of the executive team.
Riccio has been Apple’s senior vice president of hardware since 2012; interestingly, in the same press release is the note that his predecessor, Bob Mansfield, was returning to work on “future projects” at the same time (subsequently, it was largely reported that Mansfield was heading up Apple’s automotive ambitions). In December, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported that Mansfield was officially retiring from Apple (this time for real!), and that the car project would instead fall to the he senior vice president of AI and machine learning, John Giannandrea. It doesn’t seem out of the question that Riccio could also end up working on that project, if there’s a hardware component, though the emphasis on “new” product in Apple’s announcement means it might be something else entirely.
Ternus has been at Apple for nearly two decades, but he appeared prominently during some of Apple’s virtual events last fall. If you want a good idea of why he’s going to be the next member of Apple’s executive team, you don’t have to look any further than this line from Apple’s press release: “…he has been a key leader in the ongoing transition of the Mac to Apple silicon.”