Apple's Incoming CEO John Ternus Built a $50K VR Headset in 1998

"From what I can tell, he was the lead mechanical engineer on the V8 I obtained when I was 16!" — Palmer Luckey

Apple's John Ternus is a 25-year veteran of the Cupertino tech giant. Best known as Apple's hardware boss, he has been instrumental in the development of category-defining products like the AirPods and the iPad. In September, he is set to succeed Tim Cook as Apple's new CEO. But one of his very first engineering gigs was at a lesser-known, tiny outfit building virtual reality headsets.

Defense startup founder and Oculus VR creator Palmer Luckey recently took to X (formerly Twitter) to reminisce about a product that Ternus had a heavy hand in during his early engineering days in the late 90s.

01. Unearthing the Virtual Research V8

Luckey posted a photo of a retro head-mounted display (HMD) from a company called Virtual Research. According to Luckey's findings, John Ternus was the lead mechanical engineer on the V8 model, which Luckey managed to acquire when he was just 16 years old.

02. From 1998 Prototypes to the Apple Vision Pro

A user guide for the V8 published online suggests the model was released in 1998. This aligns perfectly with Ternus's timeline; according to his LinkedIn profile, his only non-Apple job was a four-year stint as an engineer at Virtual Research from 1997 to 2001. A patent filed in 1995 and issued in 1998, during his tenure, describes a similar-looking "virtual display apparatus for use in a virtual reality system."

This historical nugget is fascinating given Apple's recent high-profile entry into the spatial computing market. In 2024, Apple debuted the Vision Pro. While the $3,500 mixed-reality headset received a lukewarm response due to its price and lack of killer apps, executives like Cook and Ternus have remained relentlessly optimistic about the future of VR.

"Vision Pro is an extraordinary product. It's like we reached into the future and pulled it into the present."
— John Ternus (Tom's Guide Interview)

A Return to Product-Minded Leadership

Tim Cook's background has heavily leaned into operations and supply chain management. John Ternus's appointment marks a return to a "product-minded" chief executive—a dynamic not seen since Steve Jobs. Knowing that the incoming CEO of Apple spent his formative engineering years physically building $50,000 VR headsets gives us a clear lens into where Apple's hardware roadmap might be heading next.