John Apple, Apple Ternus?

I’m looking forward to the September 9 Apple event, but this year I don’t think I’ll be buying any more hardware beyond the AirPods Max 2 I picked up before the summer. The real reason I’ll be watching the keynote is to see John Ternus face his first public test as CEO. An argument can be made that Tim Cook did a solid job with Apple, cementing the model of Apple as a services company, a vision that started, however tentatively, with .Mac and iTunes. Hardware has increasingly ceased to be the bottleneck in recent years, and John Ternus has already proven what the Mac can do with Apple Silicon, prioritizing user experience over design for design’s sake. This keynote will primarily be a political test. I’m curious to see whether we’re witnessing the start of a new wave of product-led management.