John Ternus’s next big thing might be the iPhone

Hello again and welcome back to Fast Company’s Plugged In. By almost any imaginable measure, Tim Cook’s tenure as Apple’s CEO was mind-bogglingly successful. Even so, nobody can run a gigantic company for 15 years without their share of stumbles. Some of Cook’s most epic ones came when Apple tried its hardest to invent the next revolutionary product beyond the smartphone. For example, more than three years after the Apple Vision Pro’s announcement, it remains an intriguing experiment stuck in a high-priced niche. At least it still has a shot at leading somewhere more mainstream. By contrast, the company’s car project lasted a decade, cost billions, and never came close to shipping anything. When Cook took over from Steve Jobs in 2011, countless pundits were confident that he would be judged by his ability to pop out epoch-shifting blockbusters on a reliable schedule. He didn’t, yet Apple thrived. And so, as John Ternus succeeds Cook as CEO, I am reluctant to argue that Ternus must boldly go where no tech CEO has gone before. I’m even more reluctant to predict the opportunities and obstacles ahead. (If he is fortunate enough to serve for as long as Cook did, he’ll lead the company …