Apple has a new CEO, and Tim Cook signed off quoting Steve Jobs

John Ternus became chief executive of Apple on Tuesday. He is the eighth person to hold the job in the company’s 50 years, and the first engineer in the seat since Steve Jobs.

Tim Cook spent his last day writing to staff. Chance Miller obtained the memo for 9to5Mac on Monday, and Mark Gurman reported it for Bloomberg the same morning.

“Today is my last day as CEO of Apple,” it opens. “This is a moment I always knew would come one day, and yet it is still hard to believe it has arrived.”

What Cook actually wrote

The memo says almost nothing about products, AI, China or regulation. It is about culture.

“I am most proud of what an annual report could never capture,” Cook wrote. “This place is proof that culture triumphs over everything.”

He reaches once for a piece of company scripture. Apple has managed to leave its “dent in the universe”, he writes, quoting Jobs, “because of who we are and what we believe”.

On his successor, Cook is unambiguous. He takes “enormous comfort in handing the helm to someone as brilliant and wonderful and capable as John”, and adds that few people understand what it takes to build world-changing products the way Ternus does.

He also makes a point of saying he is not going anywhere. He is stepping away from a role, not the company, and he signs off looking forward to seeing everyone at Apple Park in his new one.

Then he posted on X. “My title changes tomorrow, but the love I have for the Apple community never will,” he wrote. The post has 24.2 million views. Elon Musk replied to congratulate him.

The numbers he leaves behind

Cook took over after trading closed on 24 August 2011. Apple was worth under $350bn. It is now worth about $4.6tn.

Revenue went from $157bn in his first full financial year to an expected $477bn when this one closes in September. Services, which barely existed as a category, brought in more than $109bn in fiscal 2025, over a quarter of the company.

Ryan Vlastelica put the share gain at 2,258% for Bloomberg, or 2,716% counting dividends. Published figures vary between roughly 2,250% and 2,750% depending on the basis used, and Bloomberg corrected its own during the day.

Bank of America worked it out another way. Apple added market value at roughly $32m an hour, every hour, for nearly 15 years.

Who Ternus is

Ternus is 51. He joined Apple in 2001 as an engineer, aged 26, in his second job out of university. He had a mechanical engineering degree from Pennsylvania and four years at a small firm behind him.

His first project was the Cinema Display, a plastic desktop monitor. He worked on the G5-era iMacs, became vice president of hardware engineering in 2013, and has since had a hand in every generation of iPad, the first AirPods, and hardware across the iPhone, Mac and Watch. The thin iPhone Air and the cheaper MacBook Neo are recent ones.

He is not a natural showman, but he is not new to a stage either. He has fronted product launches for years, and TNW reported in July that he wants to build on Apple’s film and TV run, one of the few areas where he had spoken about strategy before taking the job.

He told a room of graduates what he thinks

Ternus gave the engineering commencement address at his old university in 2024. Emma Burleigh pulled the speech for Fortune on Tuesday.

“Always assume you’re as smart as anyone else in the room, but never assume that you know as much as they do,” he told them. He described arriving at Apple at 26 and not being sure he belonged, surrounded by people who knew far more than he did.

He closed the speech by telling the graduates to go and make a dent in the universe.

Two years later his predecessor reached for the same phrase on his way out.

What he inherits

Kalley Huang reported for the New York Times that Ternus takes over amid unusual churn in the executive ranks, and has spent four months installing his own people.

Laura Legros, a hardware engineering vice president who retired in 2022, has rejoined and reports to him, three people familiar with the hiring told the Times. Nate Gatten arrived from American Airlines to run government affairs. Kate Adams and Apple Pay head Jennifer Bailey are both retiring this year. Nearly half the executive team is near retirement age.

Talent has gone the other way too. More than 400 former Apple employees now work at OpenAI, according to Apple’s own lawsuit against the company. Apple’s smart home and mixed reality hardware leads left this year, for Oura and OpenAI respectively.

TNW reported in June that Apple’s design studio had lost nearly every Jony Ive-era designer, and that Ternus intended to rebuild it. In August it cut more than 200 jobs across Siri and Vision Pro. On Monday Phil Schiller handed the App Store to Eddy Cue.

The AI problem is the loudest one. Apple delayed its Siri overhaul, then leaned on Google’s Gemini for part of the next version. Whether that reads as thrift or as weakness depends on where the value in AI settles.

Cook is still in the building

Cook stays as executive chair, handling policymakers, which in practice means Donald Trump and Beijing.

David Yoffie of Harvard Business School told the Times the arrangement gets tested the moment the two men disagree. Ternus could invest harder in AI, revive the car, or end the Vision Pro. “Is Tim going to be comfortable with those changes?” Yoffie asked. Would John feel comfortable making them with Tim there?

So far there is no sign of daylight. TNW covered the farewell party Apple threw Cook a week early, and Cook has said the pair set out to make this the best handover ever.

Ternus gets eight days before the test. Apple holds its iPhone event on 9 September, where a foldable is expected.