John Ternus Is CEO
Apple’s former hardware engineering chief John Ternus officially became CEO of the company today, with the change now reflected on Apple’s leadership page.
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Tim Cook is now executive chairman of Apple’s board of directors, after a 15-year run as CEO.
John joined Apple’s product design team in 2001 and became a vice president of Hardware Engineering in 2013. He joined the executive team in 2021 as senior vice president of Hardware Engineering. Throughout his tenure at Apple, John has overseen hardware engineering work on a variety of groundbreaking products and 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.
John has led much of the company’s focus in areas like reliability and durability, introducing new techniques that have made Apple products remarkably resilient. He has also driven much of Apple’s innovation in materials and hardware design that have reduced the carbon footprint of its products, including the creation of a new recycled aluminum compound that has been introduced across multiple product lines, the use of 3D-printed titanium in Apple Watch Ultra, and advancements in reparability that have increased the life spans of several Apple products.
Prior to Apple, John worked as a mechanical engineer at Virtual Research Systems. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania.
This feels like Apple really trying to remind us of a previous product-focused CEO.
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I would not have predicted this [reliability and durability] angle being so prominent, so I can only assume it’s something that’s important to Ternus.
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One of the key tenets of the Cook era was Apple making a series of environmental pledges. I am very happy to see this called out as something Ternus is interested in.
There’s no mention of software.
Ternus sent his first memo as CEO to employees this morning, praising Cook and sharing his excitement for Apple’s future.
The 5 GB free iCloud tier lasted Tim Cook’s entire career as CEO, how will Ternus stack up?
Previously:
- App Store Moves From Phil Schiller to Eddy Cue
- John Ternus Replaces Tim Cook
- A Letter to John Ternus
- Apple Succession Planning
Update (2026-09-02): Juli Clover:
Apple has set new CEO John Ternus’ target compensation at $58 million, according to an updated SEC filing [PDF]. Tim Cook’s target compensation is $47 million in his new role as executive chairman.
Update (2026-09-07): Ryan Christoffel:
But a new profile published today at the Financial Times adds fresh details and insights to the story.
Regarding Ternus’s reputation inside Apple, it says he “is known within the company for being both highly competent and unshowy.”
It doesn’t seem like there was actually much insight, but I’m linking to this for completeness.
Previously:
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...and the first act under his leadership is to proactively comply with the "renaming" of Lake Ontario, despite there being no legal requirement for Apple to do so.
So that's the man's colours shown pretty clearly. That's who he is.
The 5GB iCloud tier will last until the heat death of the universe. If they haven't changed it by now, they are never going to change it.
At this rate, I expect it far more likely to see a price hike of the paid tiers with no increase in storage.
Don't worry about the free iCloud tier; I can fix that. Let me just get my monkey's paw. "I wish Apple would finally change the 5GB free iCloud tier!"
Cupertino, California — September 2, 2026 — Apple today announced that, due to increasing memory costs, the free iCloud tier will be reduced from 5GB to 3GB. This change will take effect on October 1, 2026, and will affect all new and existing iCloud accounts.
The decision to reduce the free iCloud tier is driven by the increasing costs of memory and storage. As technology advances and demand for storage grows, Apple is adjusting its offerings to ensure sustainable and high-quality service for all users. If you need more storage, consider upgrading to one of our iCloud+ plans, which offer 50GB, 200GB, or 2TB of storage.
We appreciate your understanding and support as we make this necessary adjustment. Our goal is to continue providing a seamless and secure iCloud experience for all users. For more information, please visit our iCloud Storage page.
I hope he’s better than Tim. Tim sucked. He sucked at developing new products, sucked at delegating software management, sucked at nurturing quality, sucked at public speaking and announcements. He brought Apple down in every area except money
Ternus’s hardware team was the one bright spot. I hope he can bring that to the company as a whole
@Manx, my thoughts exactly, ever since it was announced he'd be Tim's successor. I'll give him 2 - 3, maybe even 4 years, that should be more than enough to see if things are moving in the "right" direction. If not, slowly distancing myself from the platform, professionally and probably personally as well, while looking for alternatives (which currently aren't very appealing either :-( )
Did Cook even try to do any of the above things he sucked at? Apple quality went tits up precisely because he couldn't and didn't do any of the above, things that Jobs had a firm hand on. Cook did what he knew how to do, optimize and politics. The rest he "delegated", meaning had zero involvement. I have a feeling he didn't even use most of Apple's products. Wasn't there are story that he works mostly on his iPad? An iPad CEO.
@Plume yes this is exactly what I'm afraid of. At this point I don't want them to touch it.
@Léo that's what I've felt about most of these software company executives for years. At that level, they don't really need to use a computer themselves all that much. They have people to use the computers for them. All they really need to do is read and write.
I don't want a CEO who serves shareholders, neither do I want CEO who serves customers, it's all performative anyway. I want a short tempered CEO using as many company's products as possible on a daily basis.
