Bengaluru/san francisco, April 22 -- To understand how Apple's new CEO John Ternus will run the company, pay attention to what he refuses to sell. While software rivals at Microsoft and Google are spending hundreds of billions to push artificial intelligence into every corner of their businesses, the man set to lead one of the world's most iconic companies appears to treat AI with a deliberate, almost stubborn pragmatism. "We never think about shipping a technology," Ternus, 50, said in a recent interview about AI with tech review site Tom's Guide. "We always think about how can we leverage technology to ship amazing products." When he succeeds Tim Cook on September 1, that distinction will matter enormously. Ternus' focus on the product makes him a steward of Apple tradition at a time when the Cupertino-based tech giant has lost its perch as the world's most valuable company to Nvidia. Apple's delayed roll-out of its revamped Siri assistant, and a reliance on Google for the AI to power it, have led some analysts to question its strategy for the new technology. That has yet to affect iPhone sales. But technology experts say advances in AI could usher in a once-in-a-generation change that threatens the smartphone's central role in people's lives. Rivals including Samsung and OpenAI are betting that Apple's stumble is an opening. Meta has also found an early success with its Ray-Ban smartglasses that come with AI features. "The question is whether he has the appetite for the kind of bold, occasionally uncomfortable decisions that defining a new platform requires," said Francisco Jeronimo, vice president of client devices at research firm IDC. "Building great hardware is a well-defined problem. Building an AI platform that developers and enterprises genuinely adopt is a different challenge entirely." Ternus, a 25-year Apple veteran who started out designing external displays, arrives in the top job with decades of experience as a hardware engineer who has spent his career building the case that the best defense is a better device. In a 2023 interview with Reuters about new Apple products made with recycled materials, Ternus came across as thoughtful and measured, with a detailed grasp of not only how Apple's new products were built but how their supply chains could be ramped up to include more recycled materials across Apple's lineup. That style has shown up offstage too. While returning to his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, as the engineering school's undergraduate commencement speaker in 2024, he urged graduates to "always assume you're as smart as anyone else in the room, but never assume that you know as much as they do," mixing self-assurance with a dose of humility. He also described his own perfectionism to them, recounting how late one night early in his career, he found himself arguing with a supplier over the grooves on a screw that goes on the back of a monitor. The screw would rarely be seen by customers but Ternus had noticed it had 35 grooves instead of the 25 Apple specified....