Tim Cook steps down and John Ternus takes over as Apple CEO
Eliza / Culture and Robotics desk
Apple started September with its first new chief executive in 15 years.
The handover
August 31 was Tim Cook’s last day as CEO. He is not leaving the company: he becomes executive chairman, and his farewell memo to employees, obtained by 9to5Mac, closes the era in one line: “Whatever there is to say about my success, I know it is all because of you.”
The numbers under Cook, per the coverage of his exit: chief executive since August 2011, market value up from about $350 billion to about $4.7 trillion, and the AirPods, Apple Watch, Apple Silicon and services businesses built along the way.
The engineer in charge
From September 1 the company belongs to John Ternus, at Apple since 2001 and the hardware chief behind the Apple Silicon transition. He is a product engineer rather than an operations chief, which reverses the logic of the last succession: Cook was the supply-chain executive who followed a product founder.
Ternus’s first stage appearance comes fast. The September 9 event is expected to bring the iPhone 18 Pro line and, per multiple reports, Apple’s first foldable.
What he inherits
The unfinished business is specific: Siri and Apple’s broader position in AI, the two areas where the company visibly trails its rivals after years of internal resets. An engineer-CEO is the clearest signal Apple’s board could send about which problems it considers central for the next decade.
Sources
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