Tim Cook will remain at Apple as executive chairman but is stepping down as CEO, handing the role to John Ternus, whom he describes as a “brilliant engineer and thinker”
The final “Good Morning!” in a series that has opened Apple events for the past 15 years was delivered in June. Cook chose to make his public farewell in front of the audience he has always been closest to: the developers who form the ecosystem he helped expand and strengthen.
But Tim Cook’s official farewell to Apple employees and the wider community of people who use the company’s products came on September 1. August 31 marked his final day as CEO of a company he helped transform into a global technology giant with a market capitalization exceeding $4 trillion.
In a letter to Apple users, Cook said that for the past 15 years, the first thing he does every morning is open his email and read messages from users around the world.
“They share little pieces of their lives with me and tell me things they want me to know about how Apple has touched them,” Cook wrote, recalling stories ranging from an Apple Watch helping save a mother’s life to a perfect photograph taken from the top of a difficult-to-climb mountain.
Like Steve Jobs before him, Cook has consistently focused less on the products themselves and more on what people can do with them. Jobs famously described a computer as “a bicycle for the mind.” Cook has sought to preserve that same philosophy as he prepares to step aside.
“In the coming months, I will move into a new role as executive chairman of Apple,” Cook wrote. “Someone new will take on what, in my heart, I know to be the best job in the world.”
That person is John Ternus, whom Cook described as a “brilliant engineer and thinker” who has spent the past 25 years building Apple products.
Cook will retain responsibility for Apple’s increasingly complex relationships with governments and institutions, including the White House and the European Union.
“This is not goodbye,” he said. “But at this moment of transition, I want to take the opportunity to thank you. Not on behalf of the company this time, but simply on behalf of me. Tim. A person who grew up in a rural town in another era and who, through these magical moments, had the opportunity to become CEO of the greatest company in the world.”
Cook struck a similar tone in a private letter to Apple employees, expressing pride in achievements that cannot be captured by annual financial reports.
“I am particularly proud of what an annual report could never capture,” he wrote, emphasizing Apple’s culture and its shared belief that the company has both the opportunity and responsibility to leave the world better than it found it.
He also expressed strong confidence in his successor, saying he would miss leading Apple but found it deeply reassuring to hand over the reins to someone as capable as Ternus.
From Steve Jobs to Tim Cook
Taking over from Steve Jobs seemed almost impossible in 2011. Just days before Jobs’ death, the relatively reserved Cook took the stage for the first time to present an Apple product: the iPhone 4s.
The “S” was almost certainly a reference to Siri, but it has also come to be seen as a fitting tribute to the man who conceived and created the iPhone.
The legacy Cook inherited was enormous. A numbers-driven executive suddenly had to become the public face of one of the world’s most closely watched companies.
Rather than imitate Jobs, Cook brought his own engineering mindset and focus on logistics and efficiency. Under his leadership, Apple grew into a technology powerhouse.
Apple’s share price has risen by more than 2,000 percent during his 15 years as CEO. Its workforce has grown from around 60,000 to 166,000 employees, while the company now operates 535 stores across 27 countries.
The iPhone remains the foundation of Apple’s profits, but Cook built a vast ecosystem of services around it, helping increase both revenue and user loyalty. Apple now has more than 2.5 billion active devices in its installed base, compared with only a few hundred million in 2011.
Where Jobs was known for his unpredictable creative flair, Cook brought a calm and reserved style. At the same time, he maintained what he considers core values at Apple, particularly diversity and inclusion.
Cook is not the only senior figure to have departed in recent years. Apple has also seen the exit of several key executives, including former finance chief Luca Maestri, AI chief John Giannandrea and Phil Schiller, who had overseen the App Store and Apple’s product events.
A new era for Apple
Cook leaves behind a stable and extraordinarily powerful company, but Apple faces significant challenges.
On the political front, tensions with the White House and the ongoing dispute with the European Union over privacy are likely to be among the most important issues on his desk as executive chairman.
The bigger challenge, however, may be technological.
The opening chapter of the John Ternus era will be dominated by artificial intelligence, an area where Apple has fallen behind some of its biggest rivals. The next major focus will be new devices.
The first of those could be smart glasses.
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