The rumors were true: Tim Cook is stepping down as CEO of Apple and taking over will be vice president of hardware engineering John Ternus. Cook will remain at Apple as executive chairman of Apple’s board of directors, according to a press release. Ternus will assume the CEO role on Sept. 1.
Also as expected, in his role as executive chairman, he will engage “with policymakers around the world.” Basically, he’s taking it upon himself to bend the knee and maybe hand out more glass discs mounted on 24-karat gold bases to appease dictators presidents.
Cook officially took over as CEO of Apple in August 2011 after Steve Jobs named him to the position before passing away that fall. He was previously chief operating officer (COO) at Apple, tasked with overhauling the company’s supply chain to transform it into the global gadget behemoth that it is today. Under Cook’s stewardship, Apple went from tech underdog fighting for survival during the rough mid-90s to Goliath, now valued at $4 trillion.
Cook’s legacy has been nothing short of a rollercoaster since taking over almost 15 years ago. Besides having to fill the ginormous shoes that Jobs left, he’s had to navigate sh*t storm after sh*t storm under the previous and current Trump administrations.
Much has been said about Cook’s leadership. He’s not a product guy like Steve Jobs or former chief design officer Jony Ive. He never visited the design lab. To his credit, he’s never pretended to be anyone except himself. Cook has repeatedly echoed Jobs’ last advice to him, which was to never ask, “What would Steve Jobs do?”
Despite not being a product guy, Cook still managed to launch several major and innovative products while at the helm of one of the world’s most valuable companies. Those included iPhones with larger screens starting with the iPhone 6 Plus, the Apple Watch, and AirPods.
He didn’t bat a thousand, though. The Apple Vision Pro has not been the revolutionary “spatial computer” he touted it to be. Not yet, at least; not at $3,500. The long-worked-on Apple Car was canceled. And we’ve yet to see the fruits of augmented reality, a technology he previously called “profound,” take shape in any product like smart glasses.
For better or worse, he may be most remembered for expanding Apple into services. In a decade and a half, Cook launched several services that have contributed to ecosystem lock-in that’s hard to escape. Major services include the video streaming service, Apple TV; music streaming service, Apple Music; news service, Apple News; and fitness-focused service, Apple Fitness+.
Ternus isn’t the only Apple executive getting a promotion. The company also announced that senior vice president of hardware technologies Johny Srouji is now chief hardware officer. Srouji is best known for helping design Apple’s first custom system-on-chip, the A4, which powered the original iPad. In the 18 years that he’s been at the company, he’s helped push Apple’s custom silicon, resulting in breakthroughs such as the M1 chip, which transitioned the company away from reliance on Intel chips. Custom silicon has allowed Apple to release best-in-class products such as the MacBook Pro and MacBook Neo.
Taking Ternus’ current job as SVP of hardware engineering after he becomes CEO will be Tom Marieb, Apple’s current vice president of product integrity in hardware engineering, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. Marieb will report report to Srouji.
