Apple said Monday afternoon that Tim Cook will step down as CEO, a role he has held since 2011, when he succeeded the late Steve Jobs. Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering John Ternus will take over on September 1 of this year. Cook will remain at the company as Executive Chairman, and Ternus will join Apple’s board of directors. Arthur Levinson, who has served as Apple’s non-executive chairman for the past fifteen years, will become lead independent director, also effective September 1.
The transition has been expected for some time and ends one of the longer and more impactful runs at any company. Cook took the reins at a moment of true uncertainty — Jobs died of pancreatic cancer just six after formally handing off the job — and inherited a company that many industry watchers and enthusiasts struggled to separate from its famed founder. What he leaves behind is a $4 trillion business whose annual revenue has more than quadrupled on his watch.
“It has been the greatest privilege of my life to be the CEO of Apple,” Cook said in a statement on Monday. “I love Apple with all of my being, and I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to work with a team of such ingenious, innovative, creative, and deeply caring people who have been unwavering in their dedication to enriching the lives of our customers.”
When Cook arrived in Cupertino in 1998, he wasn’t hired to be a visionary. Instead, Jobs, who’d recently returned to Apple after years away, needed someone to fix a supply chain that was, by most accounts, a disaster. Cook, a native of Mobile, Alabama, who spent 12 years at IBM before stints at Intelligent Electronics and Compaq, did exactly what was needed at the time. He quickly closed warehouses and consolidated suppliers, and he’s been widely credited with turning Apple’s manufacturing operation into a competitive advantage over time instead of a liability.
His promotion to CEO was never a foregone conclusion. For years, the assumption in and around Silicon Valley was that no one could follow Jobs. It was hard to imagine someone less like the flashy product visionary than Cook, a methodical supply chain and operations expert. But when Jobs’s health forced him to step back several times — in 2004, 2009, and again in 2011 — Cook ran the company smoothly enough that by the time Jobs formally handed him the title, he was the obvious candidate.
There were, famously, stumbles that followed. Among the highest profile: Apple Vision Pro, the mixed-reality headset that Cook championed as the company’s next great platform but that was largely ignored by consumers unwilling to pay several thousand dollars to strap a computer that weighs more than a pound to their face.
His tenure has been wildly successful by other measures, however. As the company noted in its own communication on Monday about the executive shake-up, Cook turned Apple Services into a business exceeding $100 billion annually. Apple also credits him with creating the flourishing wearables category at Apple. (Last year, the Apple Watch accounted for roughly 25% of global smartwatch sales.)
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Levinson, in a statement on behalf of the board, called Cook’s leadership “unprecedented and outstanding,” saying that Cook’s “integrity and values are infused into everything Apple does.” Levinson added that the board is “thrilled” Cook will continue as executive chairman.
Ternus, who at 51 is nearly the same age Cook was when he became CEO, has spent almost his entire career at Apple. A California kid, he studied mechanical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, competed on the varsity swim team, and graduated in 1997. After a brief stint designing virtual reality headsets at a small firm called Virtual Research Systems, he joined Apple’s product design team in 2001. By 2013 he was vice president of hardware engineering; by 2021, when his predecessor Dan Riccio stepped aside to oversee what would become the (ill-fated) Vision Pro, Ternus was promoted to senior vice president, making him the youngest member of Apple’s executive team.
Unsurprisingly, Ternus has been involved in much of what Apple has shipped over the past decade. According to Apple, he was a key contributor to the introduction of iPad and AirPods and has overseen numerous generations of the iPhone, Mac, and Apple Watch. His team’s work was made even more visible this past fall, with the introduction of a new iPhone lineup that included the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max, the iPhone Air — described by Apple as radically thin and durable — and the iPhone 17 itself.
On the Mac side, Ternus has helped strengthen the category, including via the recent introduction of the more affordable MacBook Neo. His team is also credited (by Apple) with pushing AirPods to the point where they now function not only as headphones but as an over-the-counter hearing health system.
Beyond the products themselves, Ternus has made durability and repairability a major focus point. Apple credits him with introducing new materials and manufacturing techniques that have reduced the carbon footprint of Apple’s products, including a new recycled aluminum compound used across multiple product lines, while also extending the lifespans of several Apple devices through advances in their fixability.
In his own statement on Monday, Ternus said that: “Having spent almost my entire career at Apple, I have been lucky to have worked under Steve Jobs and to have had Tim Cook as my mentor,” he said. “I am humbled to step into this role, and I promise to lead with the values and vision that have come to define this special place for half a century.”
Said Cook of Ternus in turn: “John Ternus has the mind of an engineer, the soul of an innovator, and the heart to lead with integrity and with honor,” he said. “He is without question the right person to lead Apple into the future.”
