Surprise and Shine: John Ternus Gets His First Big Apple Moment

There’s something slightly surreal about the next Apple event.

For years, September has meant one thing: a new iPhone, a familiar stage, a familiar voice, and usually a very familiar face standing in front of the giant Apple logo.

This time, however, there’s a new name at the top of the company.

John Ternus.

Apple has officially announced its next special event for Wednesday, September 9, with the rather intriguing tagline “Surprise and Shine.”

The event will take place at Apple Park and begin at 10am Pacific Time — 6pm here in the UK. (Apple⁠)

And while the products themselves are obviously the main attraction, there’s another story playing out on that stage.

This will be John Ternus’s first major Apple event as CEO.

And I’m genuinely curious to see how he handles it.

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The rumours are already getting interesting

The headline act is expected to be the next generation of iPhone, with the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max widely expected to feature.

But the really interesting possibility is something Apple hasn’t done before: a foldable iPhone.

Rumours have pointed towards a premium foldable device, potentially carrying the iPhone Ultra name. The Pro models are also expected to bring camera and performance improvements, while Apple Watch and AirPods updates are possible too. (TechCrunch⁠)

Of course, this is Apple we’re talking about.

The fun is in not knowing exactly how much of the rumour mill is going to survive the keynote.

The “Surprise and shine” tagline certainly leaves plenty of room for interpretation.

And that’s perhaps what makes this particular September event feel different.

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The elephant in the room: John Ternus

For anyone who remembers Apple during the Steve Jobs years, there’s always going to be an unavoidable comparison whenever a new CEO takes the stage.

Jobs didn’t simply present products.

He knew how to command an audience.

The pauses. The deliberately simple slides. The “one more thing”. The way he’d let a product hang in the air for a moment before revealing it.

It became part of the Apple experience.

Tim Cook, understandably, developed a very different style. His keynotes were polished, measured and increasingly became a carefully produced collection of presenters rather than a one-man show.

Ternus sits somewhere rather intriguingly between the two.

He’s not Steve Jobs — and I don’t think he should try to be.

But he has something Jobs understood exceptionally well: he knows the products.

Before becoming CEO, Ternus spent years running Apple’s hardware engineering organisation. He’s been involved in the development of Apple’s products and has already appeared on stage during Apple presentations.

That gives him something incredibly valuable when standing in front of an audience: credibility.

He isn’t simply the person who has inherited the job of CEO.

He’s someone who has actually been down in the engine room.

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Can he command the stage?

That’s the question I’m most interested in.

Can John Ternus walk into the Steve Jobs Theater and make millions of people stop what they’re doing and pay attention?

Not because he’s the CEO.

Because he’s interesting to listen to.

There’s a difference.

Jobs had an almost theatrical ability to make technology feel important. He could take something as mundane as a phone, an MP3 player or a laptop and turn the unveiling into a cultural moment.

Ternus doesn’t have to recreate that.

In fact, attempting to imitate Jobs would probably be the quickest way to look uncomfortable.

What Ternus can do is develop his own version of that confidence.

He’s naturally more understated. More engineer than showman. And, personally, I think that could work incredibly well for Apple.

Imagine a CEO who can explain why a product exists rather than simply telling us that it’s “amazing”.

Someone who can talk about the engineering decisions, the compromises and the ridiculous amount of work that goes into making something look effortless.

That could be very Apple.

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And then there’s the timing…

Ternus couldn’t have asked for a more interesting first act.

If the rumours are correct, he could be standing on stage to introduce Apple’s first foldable iPhone.

That’s not a small product refresh.

That’s potentially the beginning of an entirely new chapter for the iPhone.

It’s almost poetic.

Steve Jobs introduced the original iPhone in 2007.

Nearly two decades later, John Ternus could be the person introducing the next major evolution of the device.

That’s an enormous amount of history to walk into.

And perhaps that’s why I’m more interested in Ternus himself than I normally would be.

The first few minutes of this keynote are going to tell us a lot.

Will he open the event himself?

Will he immediately introduce the new iPhone?

Will he talk about Apple entering a new era?

Will there be a nod to Tim Cook?

Or will Apple simply get on with the show and let the products do the talking?

My money is on the latter.

Apple doesn’t need to announce that the Ternus era has begun.

It’ll be obvious.

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A new era, but hopefully still the same Apple

There’s something reassuring about the fact that Ternus’s first big event isn’t some completely separate “new Apple” showcase.

It’s an iPhone event.

It’s Apple doing what Apple has done for years.

But underneath that familiar formula, the person ultimately responsible has changed.

And that’s fascinating.

We’ve spent the last few years watching Apple become increasingly polished, predictable and enormous.

Ternus now has the opportunity to inject a little bit of personality back into the company without throwing away everything that came before him.

That’s probably the sweet spot.

Not Steve Jobs 2.0.

Not Tim Cook 2.0.

John Ternus 1.0.

And if he can walk onto that stage, relax, tell a good story, make the audience laugh once or twice and then deliver a genuinely exciting product reveal, I’ll consider that a pretty successful first outing.

He doesn’t need to fill Steve Jobs’s shoes.

He just needs to make us forget about the shoes for a couple of hours.

And if that mysterious “Surprise and shine” invitation really does mean we’re about to see a foldable iPhone, Ternus may have been handed one hell of an opening night.

September 9 can’t come soon enough …