alt Hacker NewsJohn Ternus to become Apple CEO
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Wow. Hopefully, Ternus will bring what he brought to Apple's hardware to their software. The hardware is leaps and bounds ahead of anything else, but their software gets worse and worse every generation. I'm glad to hear this.
I think Tim Cook took Steve Job's vision and really took it to the moon. If you think about the last 15 years, Apple has really become the biggest possible version of itself without losing its values.
Tech in general has changed quite a bit though. I don't know how Steve Jobs would have reacted to AI, and I don't know where tech itself would be if Jobs were still around. But I do think the next evolution is due and yet to be seen. It's not clear that Tim Cook would be the one to effectively see that through. And so I think his timing is impeccable and probably aligned with what is best for Apple. I have a lot of respect here: time has shown that a lot of leaders don't let go until its too late.
His letter (at the top of Apple's web site) is moving:
https://www.apple.com/community-letter-from-tim/
As far as I can see, that's the only way to have a prayer of scaling without too much damage, which is the key issue humanity faces today.
For Apple nerds that pay close attention to company, this is no surprise. Third-party dev Marco Arment wrote a blog post speaking to Ternus earlier this month[0].
Marco has enough standing within our world that it's actually a clever idea to appeal to Ternus on these terms. He'll probably be aware that it was written and the appeal is somewhat generic in its call to reverse course on some Cook-era policies.
We're all very hopeful but there's not enough information available on the outside to predict with any certainty how he'll lead.
> Under Cook’s leadership Apple has grown from a market capitalization of approximately $350 billion to $4 trillion, representing a more than 1,000% increase, and yearly revenue has nearly quadrupled, from $108 billion in fiscal year 2011 to more than $416 billion in fiscal year 2025.
Quite successful.
I’m curious Ternus’ views on services and the heavy hand Cook has had with them. I’d like to see Apple chill out a bit. Have them, but stop pestering users with in-OS ads and notifications to sign up. It’s been very off putting and cheapens the platform.
Is the loyalty represented by the golden trophy transferrable? Or is it tied to each CEO, like Applecare+?
I've been critical of Cook at times because I feel his vision was a business vision more than the kind of futurism I felt from Jobs. Cook was the ultimate bean counter, hyper-optimizing Apple from a financial and operational perspective. I felt like he took less risks and was mostly squeezing every single advantage that Apple had to its limit.
But I cannot argue with the results the man achieved. Especially the transition to A-series and then M-series chips has been an incredible success. Perhaps the biggest flop was the Apple Vision Pro, but it is hard to really call him out on that since it wasn't that Apple lost a battle, it was that the product category just hasn't caught on (yet). Siri is another place where Apple has lagged but they could very easily catch up with the massive interest in local AI on the mac minis.
I think it will be difficult to look back on his legacy without giving him a large share of credit for Apple's continued success.
Apple silicon has been an unmitigated success so it makes sense they’d go with Ternus. On a related note Apple needs to add Ternus to their spell check dictionary
I commend Apple for hiring someone internally...someone who climbed up the ranks and understands the DNA of the company.
Also think it's cool that John Ternus has only a bachelor's degree with a very down to earth presence. I completely dig his LI page being really bare bones.
I suspect Apple is about to experience another Renaissance era...
So much of what Apple has lost over the last 10 years is a lower bar for what counts as good enough.
You see this most obviously in software and marketing - the kinds of decisions where only a few people sign off at the end, and where "good enough" is whatever those few people decide it is. You see it less in hardware and procurement where there's a powerful review cycle and scrutiny at every level of the stack. Work there is more immediately measurable: benchmarks for performance, dollars for cost.
The "vibe" of software, or of a PDF [^1], is much harder to catch that way. There's no benchmark that flags it and most conventional executives aren't drilling down in that level of detail to see it either.
You want distributed decision-making, of course. But that only works well if it's distributed to people who've cultivated their own taste and who will make good calls under pressure. I'm not sure how much of that gets fixed by leadership change at the top. Taste isn't really something a CEO can decree into a 60,000 person org. But I've only heard good things about Ternus, so I'm optimistic. Fingers crossed for a bright new chapter.
[^1]: https://www.apple.com/promo/pdf/US_FY26_Earth_Day_Promo_Tand...
Cook is known to be monk-like, so the relative quiet of this announcement is no surprise. Hopefully Ternus takes some risks and revisits some things from scratch (the OS layer)[0] rather than continuing down the path of more service add-ons that Cook seemed to be excitedly geared up for. Personally, it's worth noting that Ternus did -not- directly oversee the Vision Pro, which is encouraging.
[0] As Steve Jobs said in 2005: "OS X is the most advanced operating system on the planet and it has set Apple up for the next 20 years."
How incredibly prophetic that 21 years later, MacOS is suddenly showing its age.
Is this a reward for a job well-done? Because apple hardware for the last 5-years has been amazing. The software though has sucked - will it be more years of amazing hardware and shit software? In other words focusing on developers, especially of llm software? I'm fine with that. Maybe we'll get rack-mountable apple ai servers (joking - apple servers were great and lasted a decade+ but went nowhere)
Yeah, what's going on? I'm confused by this choice - I would have expected a marketer. Maybe they really are doubling down on hardware for the ai age?
Off topic, but it’s amusing to see that 3/8 Apple CEOs were Mike, 2/8 were John, and the rest are Steve, Tim, and Gil.
Sounds like a good choice. Glad to have an engineer in charge. Tim Cook is no spring chicken. I do hope Ternus maintains the focus on privacy.
That focus on privacy pisses off a lot of devs (Yours Truly, included), but I sincerely believe in it. I write apps that Serve a demographic that values privacy.
I hope Ternus can turn this ship. Apple wasted the last 5 years without any significant innovation/revolution or even without significant evolution. No groundbreaking change from iphone 12 pro in current iphone 17 pro.
Before we had many groundbreaking features that redefined how you use smarphone:
- gps
- flashlight (yes everybody with flashlight in the pocket!)
- front selfie camera + video calls
- compass + accelerometer + gyroscope
- good wide and ultrawide (video) camera
- nfc + apple pay
- fingerprint / faceid
- esim
- magsafe
Now you can have iphone 12 pro and don't miss much from iphone 17 pro.
What if, right after Tim is gone, all the leaks of iPhone designs and colors stopped?
I'm just askin' questions.
John Ternus really did turn the Mac around. The last 5 or so years of the Intel era were a disaster. Hopefully he will be able to turn things around with software too.
While I don't agree with many things Cook has done during his tenure, like the Touch Bar and removing the SD card slot from MacBooks, I have to admit the man knows how to make money.
15 years of supply chain excellence and the software running on that hardware quietly got worse every cycle. the m1 transition was so clean it made everyone else look like they were guessing. ternus thinks in tolerances and thermal envelopes - giving the keys to someone who's already pulled off the hardest platform migration in apple's recent history seems right.
I think it's interesting that the handoff will be complete on Sept 1. That would mean Ternus will helm his first iPhone launch that month. Auspicious timing. Curious the math they calculated when landing on this date. Certainly tees him up for an early win if the products are well-received.
Thank you Tim Cook, as I am writing this on an iPhone.
Is this a golden opportunity to take on the software side of Apple, native apps like photos and messages, notes app? So much good data we give to Apple apps sit their idling, there is a play here to turn them into an independent playable artifacts and shared digital human network company. My friend emma has her snack Game on! I would like to get a snack list derived from her snack data. Yes, texting works but there is no programmatic way of accessing each other’s data. I believe this data needs be freed from Apple.
Apple’s privacy approach is stellar, that quest though is a prison where our data goes and does a slow death.
There’s a lot of commentary to the effect that the Mac hardware is good, but the software is somehow terrible. Speaking as someone who first used a Mac Plus, graduated to an SE/30, and is now on a Mac mini m4 pro… I can remember when Macintosh was widely held to be an acronym for Most Applications Crash, If Not, The Operating System Hangs. The software has always been terrible, until you try the other guys’ stuff. The hardware has often been good, and is in a purple period right now. Enjoy it while it lasts! (It won’t).
Very glad to see this finally happen. It's been in the rumors for a while now that Ternus would be the next CEO but the timeline was uncertain.
I'm interested to see what Ternus' first few moves are and how much he will avoid (or hopefully embrace) reversing some of the things Cook is responsible for.
He has a long row to hoe when it comes to things like developer relations but from what I've heard, he is one of the best options we had for the next CEO.
Prediction: Sundar will step aside and Demis will replace him.
(actually I doubt this- Demis does not want to run a big company whose main business is Ads)
They need to move all of the iOS boatware apps bundled with macOS to the app store so people can choose to uninstall then reinstall them later.
Nothing but respect for Tim Cook. I feel fortunate that a company as principled as Apple on privacy and human values holds a dominant position in computing and makes quality products. I once encountered him dining alone in Palo Alto, years ago. He struck me as a humble man, someone who happens to be gifted and has put that gift to good use. A beacon of light from Alabama. I’m grateful for his efforts, and hopeful that Ternus can carry the Apple legacy forward as the baton passes to the next generation.
I appreciate what Cook did for the hardware, but he really failed on the software side. Too many little and annoying bugs. I look forward to Ternus improving that side while maintaining the same hardware quality.
In retrospect, it seems Apple telegraphed Ternus well in advance - the NYT had an article well in January that clearly wasn't a source of friction with Apple Marketing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/technology/apple-ceo-tim-...
When Cook took over, people expected him to fail.
I don't think even Steve Jobs would've been able to imagine that Apple can get this big.
Whoa, didn't expect the announcement to come so soon. Of course, the sound bytes were everywhere, but even then, this was a surprise announcement.
So, the Tim Cook era lasted 15 years (2011 - 2026). He's 65yo, and he could have easily hung in there for a few more years. But I believe he's leaving at the peak -- both Apple's and his own -- and this might be the best time to leave, rather than being forced out (as many too-long-in-the-tooth CEOs have been) when the company inevitably grows slower, or has a crisis.
Ternus is 50-51 yo, roughly the age when Cook himself took over Apple. There the similarities disappear. Ternus is a HW guy through-and-through. I hope he has solid SW and Design team with him. He's gonna need it, given all the big/small design snafus in the recent past. [Not including Mac Neo in there, which looks stellar by any means]
Wishing him luck; he's gonna need it. (and me too, my $$$ are invested in AAPL, and I ain't selling anytime soon, so well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )
Some people might say Tim is leaving but he got himself promoted, just like Bezos. So, being an “Executive” chairman he’s going to be actively involved and be responsible, but not on daily basis and deep into each of verticals.
Also, going over his past statements as recent as during this year, it seems like he didn’t want to leave his CEO position, so he got forced out?
This would not be on The Successor
Cook will handle the politics and optics, he will remain like a king representing Apple without any true power.
Ternus will be the soldier in the trenches.
I feel excitement for the future of Apple.
I don’t closely follow the news about Apple and now I’m wondering why they decided to go forward with this change at this moment.
As the world undergoes increasing supply chain issues, wouldn’t it be in Apple’s best interest to keep Tim Cook as CEO for a while? Or is he the one who’s looking to transition to a less demanding position?
I just hope they can bring back the live events for the product releases.
For a long time I was hoping it would be Jeff Williams. For the brief moments these heads at Apple get the spotlight, I always felt he gave off a sense of humanity and sincerity.
Like Sam Altman, Tim Cook makes me think that what we fear in AI is already here. These two guys are corporate robots that act only in the service of the bottom line.
Please, do not make the products any thicker!
I'm quite curious what Tim Cook's legacy will end up being.
There is no question many of Apple's business experienced significant, impressive growth during his tenure. Amazing capital efficiency.
There is also no question Apple lost product velocity. Few new products were launched, and those that were had mixed success.
Tim was, at the end of the day, an elite financial operator. Apple shareholders were lucky to have him. Customers like myself probably have mixed opinions, and it remains to be seen how he set the company up for the future.
Tim has done an amazing job in the post-Jobs era with his logistics. Brought Apple from $350B to $4T. This move makes perfect sense as Apple needs to start their next chapter with how rapid the world is changing at the moment. I do hope Apple's values don't change going into this new era.
they replacing person doing horizontal scalability with vertical.
do they predict problems of some sort - like lost of ability to small down transistors for a while or supply chain disruption(increased prices of components sourcing)?
I get that this year's iPhone will be marketed as the first under Ternus's overall leadership, but truthfully, we can expect next year's to have more of his mark, since I imagine most of the details for the iPhone 18 have long been done, dusted and set into motion.
Any chance of a future where hardware can be customized at the design stage, like 3D printing but taken to an even higher level, even for 1-off builds? So prompt-driven manufacturing? For example, a watch with a USB-C port?
One day that watch could be your only PC. And then some type of eyeglass for a screen. Can also do "terrain overlays" Terminator style. I suppose battery power is the bottleneck so maybe long-distance wireless power delivery is the key (as what Tesla originally created.) So no battery at all.
So John gets to announce the Fold comes september
And John Ternus will be CEO
Wonder to what extent Craig Federighi was considered and what the decision-making factors were there.
I'm really hopeful about John Ternus stepping into the CEO role. Pretty much everything he's done leading Apple's hardware engineering has been an enormous unqualified success, and for a company like Apple, having hardware lead the company seems like the right step.
situations like this should allow for relaxing the title rules to "unbury" the lede.
Tim Cook’s experience in logistics built Apple into the global hegemon it is today. I hope John Ternus’s experience with hardware can kick off a renaissance in both Apple hardware and software design. Mind you, Apple hardware is already amazing, but hopefully it can be even better with Ternus at the helm. Apple software is terrible, and hopefully Ternus can turn that around. I’m also hoping, without any evidence, that maybe a change in leadership will change how Apple participates in US politics.
EDIT: I also want to say I really appreciate Tim Cook’s emphasis on user privacy and I hope John Ternus can continue this trend.