GoKawiilis a reviewer covering laptops and the occasional gadget. He spent over 15 years in the photography industry before joining The Verge as a deals writer in 2021.
The Mac reached a series of low points in the Tim Cook era: the fiasco of the butterfly keyboard, the clunky transition to USB-C, the underutilized potential of the Touch Bar, and the occasionally lackluster Intel chip performance. For a while, it seemed like Apple had shifted all of its attention, innovation, and care toward the iPad. For Mac users, it was a rough stretch of time.
And then, with the transition to Apple Silicon in 2020, everything changed. The line was revitalized with hugely capable new chips, and Apple began prioritizing usability over thinness at all costs. The Mac is now in a new golden era, and yesterday’s changes at Apple bode really well for the future.
Apple’s executive shake-up has Tim Cook making way for John Ternus to step in as the new CEO in September. Ternus is a hardware guy. He’s been at Apple for 25 years, and in that time he’s worked on the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, AirPods, and multiple generations of the Mac. He was positioned front and center for the recent MacBook Neo launch: quoted in its press release announcement, giving interviews about it, and taking center stage to introduce it at Apple’s New York City launch event.
The MacBook Neo has shaken up the whole laptop world. Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Yesterday’s other key leadership change is Johny Srouji taking over Ternus’ old role, overseeing all of Apple’s hardware engineering. Srouji is best summed up as The Chip Guy. He worked on processor development and design for Intel and IBM, and joined Apple in 2008 to build its in-house chip team, starting with the A4 chip for the original iPad and the iPhone 4. He took his team from about 50 engineers to the thousands that it is today. He’s become one of the most celebrated chip designers on the planet and was rumored to at times be in the running for Intel’s CEO job. Srouji understood that with the right architecture, Apple chips could work within the constraints of a phone and then be scaled up to the iPad and eventually the Mac, and in doing so redefined the levels of performance we expect from a modern computer.
Srouji’s promotion here might be the biggest tell for predicting how Apple is thinking. It’s a safe bet that Apple will continue to prioritize the performance and efficiency of its Macs, as the company is elevating the person who set this trajectory in the first place.
If you’ve seen Srouji present during Apple’s scripted keynote presentations, you’ve likely witnessed him getting a little animated as he talks about Apple’s M-series chips and their specifications. Chip stuff can make the average person nod off, but Srouji made it sound compelling. Even in a world of carefully scripted, prerecorded Apple events (bring back the live keynotes, Ternus), Srouji’s portions have always stood out — unlabeled charts notwithstanding.
As nice as modern MacBooks have gotten — the screens, the trackpads, the speakers, etc. — the core of what makes them exceptional has been the performance and battery life stemming from the M-series chips coming from Srouji’s team. Even the iPhone chips are so capable these days that they can run inside a Mac.
The MacBook Pros have been all about speed since their change to M-series chips. The latest models got wildly fast storage read / write speeds. Photo: Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge
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