Meet incoming Apple CEO John Ternus: Everything to know

There's a new guy in charge at Apple.

As you may have heard, longtime Apple CEO Tim Cook is leaving his post this fall, opting to take on a more high-level role at the company. That means Apple has a new CEO, and his name is John Ternus. His face is certainly recognizable if you've watched an Apple product launch livestream in recent years, though perhaps less so than Craig Federighi, Apple Senior Vice President of Software Engineering.

Obviously, there's a lot more to Ternus than his presentational skills if Apple feels comfortable making him CEO, the position held by Steve Jobs from 1997 to 2011.

So, who is John Ternus? Here's what we know about Apple's little-known new boss.

New Apple CEO John Ternus: Everything you need to know

Ternus is a 50-year-old business executive and engineer, and he's the same age Cook was when he became CEO in 2011.

After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1997 and a brief stint as a mechanical engineer at Virtual Research Systems, Ternus joined Apple in 2001, and he's been there ever since.

Ternus started in the Apple product design team and worked his way up the ladder, becoming a VP of hardware engineering in 2013. He moved further up to senior VP in the same department in 2021. In other words, Ternus has been a longtime hardware guy at Apple, as opposed to Cook, who was more business-focused before replacing Steve Jobs as CEO.

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

“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...I am filled with optimism about what we can achieve in the years to come, and I am so happy to know that the most talented people on earth are here at Apple, determined to be part of something bigger than any one of us. I am humbled to step into this role, and I promise to lead with the values and vision that have come to define this special place for half a century.”

Finally, as a fun sidenote, Ternus was apparently a heck of a competitive swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania in the 90s, per Fortune. You can read all about that in the Daily Pennsylvanian. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal also reports he's fond of Porsche racing and has respectable lap times for an amateur driver.

Why did Apple pick Ternus for CEO?

While Apple's internal product development is a bit of a black box (unless you're Bloomberg's Mark Gurman), Apple's press release credited Ternus and his team for a lot of recent Apple hardware successes.

"Throughout his tenure at Apple, Ternus has overseen hardware engineering work on a variety of groundbreaking products across every category," Apple said. "He was instrumental in the introduction of multiple new product lines, including iPad and AirPods, as well as many generations of products across iPhone, Mac, and Apple Watch."

His most recent accomplishment?

Apple credited Ternus with the development of the popular and well-regarded MacBook Neo laptop. He was also involved with the iPhone 17 line, with Apple calling out the iPhone Air as an example of Ternus's hardware chops.

Generally speaking, during Ternus's time as a hardware higher-up (though, again, it would be irresponsible to credit him and him alone with these products), Apple's devices have become more popular and better reviewed than ever, with a couple of notable exceptions.

MacBooks, in particular, have become some of the most beloved laptops on the market, and that's thanks in large part to another of Ternus's big accomplishments at Apple — overseeing the transition to Apple silicon and the M series processors. CNBC and others have reported that Ternus played a pivotal role in the development of Apple's in-house chips.

If you want more tea on the Apple leadership shakeup, Gurman recently reported that Ternus was hesitant to support the Apple Vision Pro and Apple Car projects championed by Cook. The former has been a sales disaster, while the latter never even came out. Still, despite a few misses, Cook grew Apple's market cap by 20x during his tenure, making Apple into a $4 trillion company.

By any measure, Cook has been hugely successful, but Apple insiders say Ternus may have a more Jobs-like product vision and attitude.

Gurman also reported that Ternus has a reputation for a more decisive, quick-thinking approach to decision-making. He'll also be expected to help Apple catch up to the competition in the AI arms race. Apple has notably lagged behind everyone else in both feature quantity and quality, and Siri's AI redesign may be one of the first big tests after the announcement.

So, in summary, Ternus is a lifelong hardware developer who is going to try to build on Apple's recent successes in that regard, while also embracing AI to the extent that it can.

We'll surely get to know him better in the near future as Apple hosts WWDC 2026 in June and the iPhone 18 launch later this year.