Tim Cook

In his first interview since handing Apple to John Ternus on 1 September, Tim Cook said he had timed the handover so Ternus would have momentum behind him, that he is not meddling in how Ternus runs the company, and that he had passed on the advice Steve Jobs gave him — make the job your own rather than copy your predecessor.

Eight days after taking over, John Ternus opened the 'Surprise and Shine' event at the Steve Jobs Theater with a Jobs-style argument that the iPhone is the ideal device for AI, then unveiled the iPhone 18 Pro at $1,199, AirPods 5, Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4, and finally the $1,999 foldable iPhone Duo. Tim Cook, now executive chairman, did not present.

John Ternus sent Apple employees a memo on his first day as chief executive. He thanked employees for their warm wishes.

On John Ternus's first day as CEO Apple filed an amended 8-K setting his salary at $3 million, a prorated $2.5 million RSU award for fiscal 2026 and a $55 million target equity award for fiscal 2027, 75 percent performance-based. Tim Cook, now executive chairman, gets a $2 million salary from September 26 and a $45 million target award, half performance-based, that vests on retirement after the first anniversary of the grant.

Tim Cook told Apple employees that he was excited for John Ternus's leadership. Cook said Ternus understood how to build products that change the world.

Invitations for a September 9, 2026 event at the Steve Jobs Theater went out a week before John Ternus succeeded Tim Cook as CEO. Analysts expected the iPhone 18 Pro, Apple's first folding iPhone and new Apple Watches, with the standard iPhone 18 reportedly held back to spring 2027 as Apple splits the launch cycle.

MacRumors reported that Luca Maestri stepped down from leading Apple’s Corporate Services organization in recent weeks. The report said he remained at Apple with no responsibilities other than hosting a class at Apple University.

Tim Cook said Apple's fiscal-third-quarter call would be his final earnings call. He said John Ternus would lead subsequent earnings calls.

On the day of the CEO announcement Apple named Johny Srouji, senior vice president of Hardware Technologies and leader of Apple silicon since the A4, as chief hardware officer with immediate effect, adding the Hardware Engineering organization Ternus had run to his hardware technologies remit.

Apple said Tim Cook would become executive chairman and John Ternus, senior vice president of Hardware Engineering, would become CEO effective September 1, 2026, after a unanimous board vote and what it called a long-term succession planning process. Cook would stay CEO through the summer and, as executive chairman, engage with policymakers; Arthur Levinson would move from non-executive chairman to lead independent director and Ternus would join the board.

According to the Form 8-K Apple filed on April 20, the board appointed Ternus, then 50, as chief executive officer and a member of the board on April 17, 2026, three days before the public announcement, with both appointments effective on the September 1 transition date. The filing noted that Ternus's compensation would be disclosed in a later amendment.

Apple said Jennifer Newstead, joining from Meta, would become general counsel on March 1, 2026 as Kate Adams moved toward retirement in late 2026, and that Lisa Jackson would retire in late January 2026. Government Affairs was folded under the general counsel, and Environment and Social Initiatives moved under COO Sabih Khan. Within a week Apple had also lost design chief Alan Dye to Meta.

MacRumors reported that Apple planned to replace Alan Dye with Stephen Lemay. Lemay had been an Apple designer for more than 25 years.

MacRumors reported that Tim Cook put John Ternus in charge of Apple's design teams in the final months of 2025. The assignment expanded Ternus's responsibilities.

Apple's last September launch under Tim Cook replaced the Plus with the 5.6mm-thin titanium iPhone Air on the A19 Pro, gave the base iPhone 17 a 120Hz ProMotion display and 256GB base storage, and rebuilt the 17 Pro around an aluminium unibody with a vapor chamber and three 48MP cameras. Ceramic Shield 2 and Apple's N1 wireless chip appeared across the line.

Apple said Jeff Williams, long viewed as a potential successor to Tim Cook, would pass the chief operating officer role to Sabih Khan later in July 2025 as part of a long-planned succession, keep design, Apple Watch and Health until his retirement late in the year, after which the design team would report directly to Cook.

Apple pitched the whole iPhone 16 line around its generative AI features, which shipped later in iOS 18.1 and 18.2 rather than at launch, and added a touch-sensitive Camera Control button plus the Action button to the base models. The 16 Pro grew to 6.3 and 6.9 inches on the A18 Pro.

Apple announced that Luca Maestri would step down as chief financial officer on January 1, 2025, staying on to lead Corporate Services, and that Kevan Parekh, vice president of Financial Planning and Analysis, would become CFO as part of a planned succession. It was the first of a series of executive-team handovers ahead of the CEO change.

Apple moved Dan Riccio to a new project reporting to Tim Cook and promoted John Ternus, a Product Design hire from 2001 and a vice president of Hardware Engineering since 2013, to lead Hardware Engineering on the executive team. Cook called him a bold and visionary leader of the hardware teams.

Delayed by pandemic supply disruptions, the first October launch since 2011 introduced four models: the 5.4-inch 12 mini, the 12, the 12 Pro and the 6.7-inch 12 Pro Max. All had 5G, the A14 Bionic, OLED displays, the flat-sided design and magnetic MagSafe accessories; Apple also stopped including chargers and EarPods in the box.

Apple split the range into the iPhone 11, a $699 successor to the XR with a second ultra-wide camera, and the iPhone 11 Pro and Pro Max with three cameras, Night mode, a brighter Super Retina XDR display and the A13 Bionic. All three went on sale September 20.

The first event in the Steve Jobs Theater introduced the all-screen iPhone X with the notch, Face ID via the TrueDepth camera, an OLED Super Retina display, wireless charging and the A11 Bionic with a Neural Engine, at a new $999 starting price, shipping November 3. The iPhone 8 and 8 Plus kept the home button and Touch ID in a glass-backed body and shipped first, on September 22.

Nine years after the first went on sale, Tim Cook told an employee meeting in Cupertino that Apple had sold the billionth iPhone the previous week. The milestone came in the first year iPhone unit sales fell, as the 6s cycle lagged the 6.

Apple's first large-screen iPhones, announced alongside the Apple Watch, answered years of Android phablets and set sales records, with more than 10 million sold in the opening weekend. They carried the NFC hardware for Apple Pay, which went live that October; reports of bent 6 Plus units became the year's 'Bendgate'.

The first taller iPhone moved to a 4-inch 16:9 display, the A6 chip and LTE, and introduced the Lightning connector that would last until 2023. It shipped with iOS 6 and Apple's own Maps app, whose problems prompted a public apology from Tim Cook within weeks.

Six weeks after Steve Jobs's death, Apple named Arthur D. Levinson non-executive chairman. Levinson had been a co-lead director since 2005 and on the board since 2000; Disney CEO Robert Iger joined the board the same day. Levinson would hold the chair for the next fifteen years.

Tim Cook's first launch as CEO kept the iPhone 4 design and added the dual-core A5, an 8-megapixel camera with 1080p video, and Siri, the voice assistant Apple had acquired in 2010, alongside iOS 5 and iCloud. Steve Jobs died the following day, October 5, 2011.

Apple's board announced that Steve Jobs had resigned as chief executive and named Tim Cook, then chief operating officer, as CEO with immediate effect. Jobs became chairman and Cook joined the board. Art Levinson, speaking for the board, said Jobs had recommended the board implement its succession plan.