John Ternus takes over as Apple’s new CEO

As he steps down from his post as Apple CEO today, Tim Cook leaves behind a mostly positive environmental record. As far as billionaire tech moguls and the environment go, Cook will likely be remembered as one of the better ones — certainly far from the worst. But it will become harder for the company to meet the climate goals Cook set in place as Apple tries to catch up in the AI race.

Under his watch, Apple set industry-leading goals for reducing the amount of pollution created by its products and suppliers. It has managed to keep its carbon footprint from growing while other tech giants see their emissions rise with the energy needs of AI.

New Apple CEO John Ternus sent out his first staff memo, thanking his predecessor Tim Cook, and quickly turning to what the company will do next, reports Bloomberg.

“We have a huge launch next week that’s going to be phenomenal. Thanks for everything you’ve all done to make it possible,” writes Ternus, referring to the September 9th event where Apple’s expected to unveil new iPhones including the rumored foldable iPhone Ultra and iPhone 18 Pro models. Ternus also hints at “incredible products already in the works and the ones we haven’t even imagined yet,” presumably moving beyond camera-equipped AirPods, home robots, and even more OLED displays.

As much as any Apple product released during his time as CEO, Tim Cook’s tenure will be remembered for its ruthlessly efficient tight-rope walk between an autocrat in China and a would-be autocrat in the US.

During his 15 years as CEO, Cook steered Apple through relations with both Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump, including escalating conflicts between the two. As Apple’s enmeshment in China raised serious questions about reports of forced labor and censorship, Cook managed to appease Xi while maneuvering around political blowback in the US. And when Trump launched a trade war against China, Cook managed to soften the blow through his White House diplomacy. Cook’s ability to thread the needle between two superpowers helped expand Apple into a multi-trillion-dollar company, while downplaying concerns about civil rights, working conditions, and other serious issues.

Executive Summary, Day One

📁 Inbox 5:05AM

To: Ternus, John <jternus@apple.com>

Reply-to: CEO-transition-team@apple.com

Welcome to your first day as CEO! Hopefully you’re finding your new office spacious and comfortable. If you have trouble with any of the doors just ping us — being a Jony Ive design, you won’t find anything as unsightly as a door handle here!

Expectations for Tim Cook were almost impossibly high when he stepped in to replace Apple’s visionary cofounder in 2011. He inherited a company on a blockbuster run, after Steve Jobs returned and revitalized the Mac, launched the iPod, and oversaw the launch of the iPhone.

Now, after 15 years in the CEO role, Tim Cook is stepping down. He’s replaced today by hardware leader John Ternus. Over the course of Cook’s tenure, Apple accomplished a lot, with the launch of plenty of new products, features, and services that the company just wouldn’t be the same without. There were plenty of ups and downs, but Cook helped cement the company as one of the most profitable tech companies on the planet.

For the first time since 2011, one of the world’s most valuable companies has a new leader, as today marks John Ternus’ first day as Apple’s CEO. He’s replacing Tim Cook, who will continue on as the executive chairman on Apple’s board and departed with a letter to employees that remarked, “This place is proof that culture triumphs over everything. We share a belief that what we build matters, and that we have both the opportunity and the responsibility to leave the world better than we found it.”

Ternus is taking over a company dealing with the rise of AI, shortages of RAM and other components due to that growth in AI, and a political and economic situation that is only getting more complicated as time passes. He will also do it without many of the executives who worked with Cook and Steve Jobs, like Phil Schiller, who Bloomberg reported will step down from his role leading the App Store.

Longtime Apple executive Phil Schiller is stepping down from his role as the head of the App Store and Apple events, according to a report from Bloomberg. Following the change, Schiller will keep his Apple Fellow title and continue “working on unspecified initiatives,” Bloomberg reports.

Schiller initially joined Apple in 1987 and became the company’s head of marketing in 1997. He helped launch the App Store alongside Steve Jobs in 2008, but only started heading up the store in 2015. Over the years, Schiller has played a role in the development of many of Apple’s products, including the iPhone, iPad, iPod, and Macs, and has presented several of them at the company’s launch events. In recent years, Schiller has started stepping away from some of these responsibilities, as he relinquished his role as senior vice president of marketing to Greg Joswiak in 2020.

Steve Jobs’ successor carried the torch of the iPhone and built Apple into a global powerhouse with few rivals. Since becoming CEO in 2011, Tim Cook has led the company to become one of the most dominant forces in the daily lives of billions of people. Today is his last day as CEO.

We’ll have a lot to say about new Apple CEO John Ternus as the change happens. For now, you can read Cook’s final letter to Apple staff below, as reported by Bloomberg and 9to5Mac:

Apple is about to become a very different company. This September, Apple CEO Tim Cook is stepping down and will be replaced by John Ternus, the current head of hardware. But the shift is bigger than just a CEO transition — it’s the most significant move yet into a world where Apple’s executive team isn’t handpicked by Steve Jobs.

With the departure of Cook, who became CEO in 2011, the list of leaders who were in Jobs’ inner circle is dwindling. There’s still Apple’s senior vice president of services, Eddy Cue, who joined in 1989, and has said that Jobs was like a “family member” to him. There’s also longtime marketing exec Phil Schiller, who worked with Jobs to launch key products, including the Mac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad, and often appeared with Jobs during keynotes. Schiller stepped into a smaller role in 2020, though he still oversees one major business, the App Store.

It took Tim Cook years to launch Apple into major new hardware categories, such as the smartwatch. But John Ternus could start his tenure right away with an ambitious new project: smart home hardware.

All signs point to a strong lineup of new smart home devices coming potentially this fall, putting Apple back in the game in a category where it has been painfully slow to ship new devices.

Under Steve Jobs, Apple released the groundbreaking products that defined the company. But the company wouldn’t be what it is today without Tim Cook’s reign of ruthless efficiency.

Jobs’ legacy has long been written at this point. He was stubborn, unpleasant, and a generational visionary. He pushed the limits of industrial design and brought technologies together in ways that others laughed off at the time. It’s an iconic tenure that’s basically unequaled anywhere else in tech. But the radical thinker passed the torch to a very different kind of CEO in Tim Cook in August of 2011.

Apple Silicon chips. The iPhone’s dominance. Apple Vision Pro. During Tim Cook’s 15-year tenure as Apple CEO there were highs — and in the case of the Vision Pro, maybe a low — that helped define Apple as one of the most dominant forces in tech even without Steve Jobs. But one product doesn’t get the recognition it deserves, as evidenced by The Verge’s Apple Top 50 products, where the original AirPods don’t even crack the top 10.

Before AirPods, almost all earbuds were still wired back to your phone or iPod. Apple’s ads leaned into the aesthetic with vibrant neon backdrops to frame dark, dancing silhouettes connected by the iconic, stark white earbud wires. But in 2016 that all changed. Suddenly there was Lil Buck, filmed in black and white, pulling a white case out of his pocket, flipping open the lid, putting earbuds without wires into his ears, and dancing down the streets and across the walls of Mexico City. It was a moment that reshaped an industry and turned Apple into the most important audio company of the past 25 years.

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.

An apple a day keeps the doctor away. Granted, 19th-century proverb writers were talking about the fruit, but Tim Cook helped give new meaning to the adage with the release of the very first Apple Watch. In fact, I’d argue that when he hands the reins to John Ternus in September, it won’t be iPhones, Macs, AirPods, or the Vision Pro that defines Cook’s legacy. It’ll be how the Apple Watch set the course for modern health tech.

You don’t have to take my word for it. In 2019, Cook himself told told Mad Money host Jim Cramer, “...If you zoom out into the future, and you look back, and you ask the question, ‘What was Apple’s greatest contribution to mankind?’, it will be about health.”

Less than a year ago, Apple made headlines for a lack of AI announcements at its annual WWDC event. Ten months later, the company has announced that hardware executive John Ternus will succeed longtime CEO Tim Cook as chief executive — and the official release doesn’t mention AI once.

Ternus, currently Apple’s SVP of hardware engineering, will take over as CEO on September 1st, after Cook’s decade and a half in the role. Ternus is a 25-year veteran of the company and the first Apple CEO in about 30 years to come from the hardware sector. According to Apple, he’s led hardware engineering work for every model of iPad, as well as the most recent iPhone family and AirPods. Yesterday’s announcement highlighted Ternus’ work adding better noise cancellation and hearing health upgrades for AirPods, overseeing the MacBook Neo’s debut, and upping Apple products’ durability and repairability. Not once did the company mention his plans or relevant experience for advancing AI.

John Ternus is going to be Apple’s next CEO. And while outgoing CEO Tim Cook was lauded for his approach to logistics, Ternus’ history is that of a product person.

Ternus, Apple’s SVP of hardware engineering before being officially tapped to take over the top job, has been increasingly in the public eye to help Apple announce its latest products. Ternus helped introduce the iPhone Air last September, its flashiest new iPhone of the 2025 lineup. He’s also been the face of announcing new Macs for years, including Apple’s first Macs with Apple Silicon in 2020 that profoundly transformed Apple’s computer lineup, continuing through the 15-inch MacBook Air in 2023 and a suite of M4 Macs last year. Now, Ternus, who is 50 years old and has had a 25-year tenure at Apple, is going to be the one in charge of everything.

Though Tim Cook is shedding his CEO title for the role of Apple’s executive chairman, it appears he’ll keep one of his most important duties: that of the company’s Trump whisperer.

“As executive chairman, Cook will assist with certain aspects of the company, including engaging with policymakers around the world,” Apple writes in a press release. Translation: he’s sticking around to deal with thorny political relationships — in particular the one with President Donald Trump.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has written a letter to the community as he prepares to step down from his role in September. “This is not goodbye. But at this moment of transition, I wanted to take the opportunity to say thank you,” Cook writes.

As part of the shift, John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, will take over for Cook, who will become executive chairman. Meanwhile, Johny Srouji is taking over for Ternus and has now been appointed chief hardware officer.