Tim Cook to Step Down After 15 Years as Apple CEO

Fifteen years ago, Apple’s last leadership transition was more somber. For years, off and on, Tim Cook had been stepping in to take on more of Apple’s day-to-day operations as the ailing then-CEO Steve Jobs went on successive medical leaves before finally stepping down on Aug. 24, 2011. Two months later, Jobs died, and Cook began a new, uncertain era in Apple’s history.

Jobs had been the public face of Apple when he stepped down — the co-founder who was pushed out in the ’80s and triumphantly returned in the ’90s, renewing the company’s reputation with the iMac in 1998 and redefining the mobile industry with the iPhone in 2007. 

Jobs’ brash behavior was notorious, but so was his success in shaping Apple into a pugnacious underdog competitor to conventional consumer tech in style and user-friendly software. He earned headlines with his combative quotes to the press as well as his slick presentations and Stevenotes at WWDC and Macworld Expo. His “reality distortion field” led him to push for abrupt and severe changes that would seem impossible if they came from another executive. 

In short, Jobs was Apple, and his absence led to a lot of uncertainty about who could fill his shoes. By comparison, Cook was quieter, friendlier and a far less known quantity when he took over.

Cook had already been serving as Apple’s chief operating officer for seven years when he officially became the company’s CEO, but earlier in his career had held similar operational roles at rival computing companies Compaq and IBM. A logistics specialist wasn’t who anyone expected to take over for the personality-driven Jobs, but his already proven ability to improve Apple’s supply chain and improve margins across its entire product lineup was promising for folks at the top looking at the company through spreadsheets. 

In retrospect, the appointment was sound. Cook has overseen a decade and a half of wild financial growth, making Apple one of the highest-value companies on the planet and securing its role as an arbiter of consumer technology. While he made far fewer headlines, Cook was a stable presence at Apple. Especially in the early 2010s, pundits criticized Cook for not living up to Jobs’ example as a gadget visionary, but his legacy includes successful forays into new product lines (Apple Watch, AirPods) and services. Now we look to see how Apple will change under incoming CEO John Ternus.

With John Ternus rising to the Apple CEO role to replace Tim Cook in September, the company has also elevated Johny Srouji to the new position of chief hardware officer, effective immediately.

Srouji was previously the senior vice president of hardware technologies. Ternus’s position through Sept. 1 is senior vice president of hardware engineering. Srouji is taking command of all hardware.

In December, amid a group of high-level Apple exit announcements that included the head of user interface design Alan Dye and the head of artificial intelligence John Giannandrea, a rumor indicated that Srouji had told Cook that he, too, was considering leaving. Apple general counsel Kate Adams and vice president for environment, policy and social initiatives Lisa Jackson also announced retirements around the same time.

The sudden flood of departures is likely why Srouji publicly refuted the rumor in a memo to staff, as Bloomberg reported back in December. “I know you’ve been reading all kind of rumors and speculations about my future at Apple, and I feel that you need to hear from me directly,” he wrote. “Together we enable the best products in the world. I love my team, and I love my job at Apple, and I don’t plan on leaving anytime soon.”

Tim Cook is stepping down as Apple CEO and moving into a new role at the tech company. But while the executive’s last name is indeed Cook, you’ll see plenty of social-media posts calling the 65-year-old “Tim Apple.” 

The nickname comes from a viral moment involving President Donald Trump and a White House meeting of the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board in 2019.

“You’ve really put a big investment in our country,” Trump said, as Cook nodded. “We appreciate it very much, Tim Apple.”

A year earlier, Trump had referred to then-Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson as “Marillyn Lockheed.” But it was the “Tim Apple” moment that really took off, and Cook even briefly changed his Twitter name to “Tim ,” using the company’s logo.

So when Apple announced on Monday that John Ternus would become its new CEO, the “John Apple” posts started to bloom.

“Out: Tim Apple. In: John Apple,” Sasha Talebi wrote on Bluesky.

And Greg Pak wrote, “Wait a minute if tim apple leaves apple do they still get to call it apple or does he take his name with him?”

Apple’s incoming CEO, John Ternus, joined the tech giant back in 2001 as part of the product design team, having previously worked as a mechanical engineer at Virtual Research Systems. He has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania.

Ternus has risen through the ranks at Apple over the past 25 years, becoming a VP of hardware engineering in 2013 and then SVP in 2021. During those years, Ternus worked across many flagship devices, including the iPad, AirPods, iPhone, Apple Watch and, most recently, the MacBook Neo.

“John Ternus has the mind of an engineer, the soul of an innovator and the heart to lead with integrity and with honor,” Tim Cook said Monday in Apple’s post announcing the news. “He is a visionary whose contributions to Apple over 25 years are already too numerous to count, and he is without question the right person to lead Apple into the future.”

According to Apple, Ternus is credited with improving the durability of Apple products, such as using 3D-printed titanium in the Apple Watch Ultra 3 and creating a recycled aluminum compound.

Ternus was last year tipped to be the frontrunner in the race to succeed Cook aApple Watch Ultra 3s CEO. He appeared during Apple’s September 2025 event to introduce the iPhone Air. At 51, he’s around the same age Cook was when he took over as Apple CEO.

“I am profoundly grateful for this opportunity to carry Apple’s mission forward,” Ternus said. “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.”