Apple has a new CEO in charge for the first time in 15 years. John Ternus, who was the Apple's former senior vice president of hardware engineering, took over as CEO on September 1, 2026, as Tim Cook stepped down from the top position.
Ternus is currently not a household name like Tim Cook or Steve Jobs and that is mostly because he has worked building products behind the scenes. With his first keynote on September 9, here is everything about John Ternus, what he has built so far and why his background makes him a different kind of CEO.
Who Is John Ternus?
John Patrick Ternus is the CEO of Apple. He is 51 years old and has spent almost his entire working life at Apple. He joined the product design team in 2001 and it was the second role of his career. Earlier, Ternus had a short stint as a mechanical engineer at a virtual reality company called Virtual Research Systems.
He holds a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. His senior project was an assistive robotic arm that let people with quadriplegia feed themselves. It operated entirely through movements of the head.
At Apple, Ternus moved ahead through the hardware vertical. He became a vice president of hardware engineering in 2013 and joined the executive team as senior vice president in 2021. Since then, Ternus reported straight to Tim Cook, whom he called a mentor. By the time he was named Apple's CEO, he had been with the company for 25 years and was running all of its hardware engineering.
Apple announced the succession in April 2026 and the board approved it unanimously as the result of a long-term planning process. It's important to note that Ternus is 15 years younger than Cook, which means Apple wanted someone who could lead the company for a long stretch rather than take care of the company temporarily.
Related Articles
What John Ternus Built at Apple
For most of the past two decades, if you used an Apple product, you were holding something Ternus had contributed to. He oversaw hardware engineering across nearly every category and Apple credits him with helping bring several new products to the market.
It includes the iPad and the original AirPods, including a long list of iPhone, Mac and Apple Watch models over the years. He also led the hardware work behind the Vision Pro, Apple's mixed reality headset and the rugged Apple Watch Ultra.
One of his most notable projects was moving the Mac away from Intel processors and onto Apple's own silicon. It was a huge shift and it gave Apple control over the most important part of its devices while delivering generational leap in performance and battery life. This improvement was also shared with A-series chips for the iPhone such as the A19 Pro and A18 Pro.
More recently, Ternus worked on the MacBook Neo, which is Apple's most affordable laptop yet and it's selling like hot cakes. To bring down the price, his team made careful trade-offs, including running the laptop on an iPhone chip rather than a Mac processor.
Apart from that, he pushed Apple towards tougher, more repairable and more sustainable hardware. Under his hardware leadership, we saw a new recycled aluminium material used across several Apple products and 3D-printed titanium in the Apple Watch Ultra 3. His team also turned AirPods into a hearing health device that can work as hearing aids.
Related Articles
How He Is Different from Tim Cook and Steve Jobs
Let us try to understand John Ternus by comparing him with former Apple CEOs. First off, Tim Cook came from operations and supply chain management and he joined Apple in 1998 to fix its manufacturing and logistics.
Cook's genius was in running the big Apple corporation and on his watch, Apple's value jumped from about $350 billion to more than $4 trillion. If you want to understand his achievements, we recently explained Tim Cook's defining moments at the company.
Ternus comes from the opposite side of the business. He is an engineer first who spent his career designing and building the actual products. In one way, it puts him closer to Steve Jobs who cared intensely about how things looked and felt.
In fact, Ternus tells a story that Steve Jobs once moved a drawer cabinet away from the wall simply to appreciate the care a carpenter had put into the hidden rear panel. For Ternus, the attention to unseen detail is the point of the work.
By the way, when Cook announced the handover, he said Ternus has "the mind of an engineer, the soul of an innovator". Perhaps, that is the reason the board picked him to lead Apple. After a decade and a half, Apple is finally giving the top position back to a product person, which was also mentioned by Tim Cook in his farewell memo to employees on his final day.
Related Articles
Ternus's Strengths and the Challenges Waiting for Him
Ternus has obvious strengths as the Apple CEO. He knows Apple's products in and out and has shipped hardware at enormous scale. Best of all, he has the trust of both the board and the engineering teams. Apple itself acknowledges his focus on craftsmanship, reliability and getting the small things right.
Not to mention, he appears more humble than many technology chief executives of big companies. In a 2024 commencement speech at his old university, he told graduates to stay confident but to keep the humility to ask questions and to assume that there are still things to learn. He only recently joined X (@johnternus) and has spent years away from the spotlight.
Meanwhile, in his spare time, Ternus races cars. Corning CEO Wendell Weeks says it's a window into how he works. Weeks has known him since the early days of the iPad and in a recent Financial Times profile, he noted that racing takes real passion, but also being "wicked calm and really dedicated to excellence" to do it well. According to Weeks, Ternus is good at it.
Inside Apple, he is seen as pretty capable without any need to show off and he keeps his private life out of public view. What we know is that he grew up in California and has a wife and children.
All that said, the biggest challenge is the ongoing integration of AI into Apple's devices and products. The company has rebuilt a new Siri AI and Ternus, a hardware specialist, will have to prove that he can manage Apple's software and AI ambitions as capably as he steered its hardware division.
Not to forget, he also has to answer questions about the Vision Pro, which has not become a hit product many hoped for. Along with that, there are supply chain and trade pressures that come with building most of Apple's hardware in Asia. Tim Cook, who will be overseeing as executive chairman, is expected to manage relationships with policymakers and that will free Ternus to concentrate on products.
Related Articles
The First Big Test: The September 9 Keynote
On September 9, John Ternus will host his first keynote as CEO at Apple's "Surprise and Shine" event and it's going to be a major event.
As expected, we will see the launch of iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max. Both models are tipped to pack Apple's new A20 Pro chip, which is built on TSMC's 2nm node. Reports also suggest that Apple is skipping the standard iPhone 18 this year and saving it for spring 2027.
What is more interesting is that Apple might showcase its first foldable iPhone Ultra. It would be a book-style folding phone that would put Apple head to head with Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 8. Apple is also expected to show off new Apple Watch models and AirPods at the same event. Now, for a leader who built his reputation on hardware, it's going to be a fitting debut for John Ternus.
Related Articles
