Apple’s leadership changed hands this morning. John Ternus is Apple’s CEO as of today, September 1, 2026, and Tim Cook has moved to executive chairman of the board. Cook’s last day in the job was yesterday.
The handover was announced back in April, not today
Apple made the succession public on April 20 and set the date five months out. The board approved it unanimously and framed it as the end of a long planning process, which fits: the Financial Times had reported the preparations months earlier, with Ternus already the name everyone expected. Cook is not leaving the company, and Ternus has joined the board as a director. Arthur Levinson, non-executive chairman for the past 15 years, becomes lead independent director today as well.
Cook ran Apple for 15 years and grew revenue roughly four times over
He joined in 1998 and took the CEO job in August 2011, weeks before Steve Jobs died. Annual revenue went from about $108 billion in 2011 to close to $400 billion, and Apple is now a $4 trillion company. Apple Pay, the Watch, AirPods, the services business and the shift into wearables all happened on his watch. Whatever anyone thinks of the products, the numbers are not arguable.
Ternus is an engineer, which says something about where Apple is heading
He joined in 2001 and was promoted to senior vice president of hardware engineering in 2021. His teams built the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, AirPods and Vision Pro, and he was the one on stage introducing the iPhone Air. At 50, he’s roughly the age Cook was when he took over. Apple picking a hardware lead rather than an operations or services executive is a signal, especially with the pressure the company is under to sort out its AI strategy and ship something genuinely new.
Cook’s goodbye note was short and sentimental
He posted it before leaving the office, telling the Apple community his title was changing but his feelings for them weren’t, thanking them for the inspiration and saying his gratitude is endless. He also called Ternus “brilliant and wonderful and capable” in a memo to staff.
