Start the music. Players walk clockwise in a circle. When the music stops, everyone sits in a chair. Big Tech is setting in motion its plans for the next gen of lead designers, engineers, AI chiefs, and even CEOs.

In Cupertino, Apple execs with familiar faces are retiring or reducing responsibilities. Who’s in and who’s out? Well, chief operating officer Jeff Williams retired in November, and the speculation is that CEO Tim Cook could follow in the near term. Lisa Jackson, who has led Apple’s sustainability efforts since 2013, is now set to retire in January too.

There’s also the squad of Apple staffers who have been lured away to work with OpenAI, notably Apple’s former chief design officer Jony Ive after his independent stint at LoveFrom. In 2024, Molly Anderson was named industrial design leader, heading up a team of mostly fresh faces. Others have gone to Meta, such as Apple’s VP of human interface design, Alan Dye, who just this week was poached to head up a new Reality Labs design studio. At Apple, he’s been replaced by long-time UI designer Stephen Lemay. Phew.

In this swirl of shifting talent, John Ternus, who has worked for Apple since 2001, and served as SVP of hardware engineering for the last four years, reporting directly to Tim Cook, is