Ternus Pushes Software Shift

Apple is signaling a software-first turn under incoming chief executive John Ternus, telling employees its next chapter will center on artificial intelligence across its device base. (bloomberg.com) (9to5mac.com) In an internal memo reported April 20, Ternus told staff, “We are about to change the world once again,” and pointed to Apple’s 2.2 billion active devices as the scale for that push. (9to5mac.com) (apple.com) Apple paired that message with a hardware shake-up under Johny Srouji, who told employees the newly combined hardware group will be split into five areas: hardware engineering, silicon, advanced technologies, platform architecture, and project management. (bloomberg.com) (9to5mac.com) The immediate backdrop is Apple’s uneven artificial-intelligence rollout. Apple introduced Apple Intelligence in June 2025, expanded it in iOS 26, and later shipped new features including Live Translation and visual intelligence tools in September 2025. (apple.com 1) (apple.com 2) (apple.com 3) But Apple also drew scrutiny for moving more slowly on Siri than rivals. The Verge reported in June 2025 that Apple gave Siri only a brief mention at Worldwide Developers Conference 2025 as Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic pushed faster in generative artificial intelligence. (theverge.com) The chip piece matters because Apple is framing its in-house silicon as the engine for more on-device artificial intelligence. In October 2025, Apple said M5 has an improved 16-core Neural Engine and said that hardware speeds up Apple Intelligence models and developer tools built on its foundation models framework. (apple.com) Apple kept extending that pitch in March 2026, when it introduced M5 Pro and M5 Max for MacBook Pro and said the chips added Neural Accelerators in the graphics processor alongside the Neural Engine. (apple.com 1) (apple.com 2) Ternus has long been identified with hardware, not services software. His memo and Srouji’s reorganization suggest Apple wants its device teams, chip teams, and operating-system ambitions moving on a tighter schedule as it tries to make artificial intelligence feel built in rather than bolted on. (9to5mac.com) (bloomberg.com) The test now is whether Apple can turn that internal message into consumer features that ship on time across iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Vision Pro. Ternus told employees the company has “the strongest product pipeline” in its history; the next product cycle will show how much of that pipeline is really software. (9to5mac.com)