Forgotten 2012 Apple Video Shows John Ternus Obsessing Over iPad 2 Magnets

Apple CEO John Ternus has a big week ahead. On October 28, Apple will host its "Pro and tell" event in Los Angeles, the first major Mac launch since he took over from Tim Cook on September 1. The star of the show is expected to be Apple's first touchscreen MacBook Pro, with an OLED iPad mini alongside it.

To understand how Ternus thinks about hardware, it helps to go back 14 years to a little-known Apple recruiting video from 2012. In it, a younger Ternus, a year away from becoming a vice president, talks about one small piece of the iPad 2: the Smart Cover.

Forgotten 2012 Apple Video Shows John Ternus Obsessing Over iPad 2

Photo Credit: 9to5vids/YT

The clip Apple made for job seekers

Apple's HR team made the video for people considering a job at the company. It sat on Apple's jobs website before 9to5Mac's Mark Gurman posted it on YouTube in July 2012. Around the 2:09 mark, Ternus appears to talk about the Smart Cover.

"The difference between a good product and a great product is that attention to detail," he says. He explains that the team knew from the start the cover would be a big part of the iPad 2 story. The hard part was working out how to attach it.

The answer was magnets. Ternus says one engineer on the team became an expert in computer simulations of magnetic fields just to solve the problem. He adds that many others picked up deep expertise in areas that were new to them.

31 magnets in a cover and a tablet

The Smart Cover snapped into place, woke the iPad when opened and put it to sleep when closed. When iFixit took one apart in 2011, it found 31 magnets, 10 in the iPad 2 and 21 in the cover. They were arranged with alternating polarity so the cover could only sit one way. Ternus is one of the named inventors on Apple's patent for it, along with Jony Ive.

MagSafe on the MacBook was already using magnets for charging in 2006. But the Smart Cover is where magnets became Apple's way of attaching accessories. The Apple Pencil, the Magic Keyboard for iPad and MagSafe on iPhones all follow that idea.

Why it matters on October 28

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports that Apple will show 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with OLED touchscreens, a Dynamic Island and M5 Pro and M5 Max chips. An entry-level MacBook Pro and an iMac with the M6 chip are also expected. Apple has not confirmed any of this.

A touchscreen Mac is where the details Ternus talked about in 2012 will matter most. If the hinge wobbles every time you tap the screen, that would undo a lot of good work. The event begins at 10:30 pm IST on Wednesday.