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Tim Cook’s colleagues gathered at Apple Park on August 23 for a farewell dinner. They offered hours of tributes, and OneRepublic played for the outgoing chief executive.
Cook was not actually leaving.
John Ternus takes over as chief executive on Tuesday. He inherits a senior leadership bench where roughly half the team could leave within a few years, while the company rebuilds Siri and tries to keep engineers from leaving for OpenAI.
What Changed
- John Ternus becomes Apple's chief executive on Tuesday, September 1, with Tim Cook moving to executive chairman after running the company since 2011.
- Ternus will likely need to replace the senior executives running hardware, marketing, retail and human resources. Johny Srouji is 61, Greg Joswiak and Luca Maestri are 62, and Deirdre O'Brien is 60 with nearly four decades at the company.
- The turnover arrives at a company under no financial pressure. Revenue in the quarter ended June 27 reached $109.4 billion, up 16 percent from $94.0 billion a year earlier.
- Apple is paying Google to use Gemini as the basis for the rebuilt Siri, due for full deployment in September, and cut 147 Bay Area jobs in August across Siri, Vision Pro, immersive video and gaming teams.
AI-generated summary, reviewed by an editor. More on our AI guidelines.
The handover
Cook, 65, becomes executive chairman after running Apple since 2011. He will continue managing the company’s relationships with President Donald Trump and the Chinese government, Cook has told Ternus. To employees, Cook has said Apple will remain his top priority because he “can’t imagine it any other way.”
That leaves Ternus, 51, with a predecessor close at hand and an organization already moving into his control. Ternus joined Apple in 2001, four years after earning a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He led the Mac’s switch from Intel processors to Apple-designed chips and is expected to use Cook’s office at Apple Park. Cook never moved into Steve Jobs’s office, which remains locked and unlit at the old Infinite Loop campus.
The arrangement has a precedent at Amazon, where Jeff Bezos stayed executive chairman while Andy Jassy ran daily operations. The cautionary case is Disney, where Bob Iger remained as an adviser, clashed with Bob Chapek and later returned as chief executive. Cook said he would be available as a sounding board, then added, “there can only be one CEO at a time.”
The bench
The likely turnover spans hardware, marketing, retail and human resources. Deirdre O’Brien, 60, has worked at Apple for nearly four decades. She is back in charge of both retail and human resources despite not wanting the dual assignment after Apple dismissed its people chief in 2024. Vanessa Trigub, named vice president of all store operations last year, is being prepared for the retail job.
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Greg Joswiak, 62, has spent 40 years at the company and is one of Ternus’s closest friends. He can stay as long as he wants, but Lilian Rincon, the new head of AI marketing, and longtime iPhone marketing chief Kaiann Drance are possible successors. Bob Borchers, Joswiak’s deputy, is viewed only as an emergency replacement.
Luca Maestri, 62, is vice president of corporate services. He stepped down as chief financial officer around the end of 2024 and handed the job to Kevan Parekh. Still on Apple’s payroll overseeing real estate and information systems, he rarely comes to the office more than once a week, employees say.
The bench map and the exit timelines come from people close to Apple who spoke anonymously. The departures are prospective, and their timing is estimated rather than set.
What Srouji finished
Last year, Johny Srouji told Cook that he was considering leaving. The 61-year-old stayed after receiving the larger chief hardware officer role and a request to help with the CEO handover. People close to him still expect he may go in a year or two.
Two assignments that kept Srouji at Apple are finished or close to it. The Mac no longer depends on Intel processors, and the effort to replace Qualcomm modems with Apple’s own parts is nearing completion. Apple-designed silicon means the company makes the central processors for its computers rather than buying them from Intel.
No single lieutenant is expected to inherit Srouji’s combined portfolio. The hardware organization would probably split again, with Tom Marieb leading engineering and either Sri Santhanam or Zongjian Chen overseeing the technologies group that includes chips.
The AI deadline
Ternus has already used money and personal intervention to counter the talent drain. He directed Richard Dinh, the head of iPhone design, to meet an engineer in Singapore face to face and offer a promotion and more money. The engineer joined OpenAI anyway.
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Hundreds of former Apple employees now work in OpenAI’s hardware division. Ternus helped approve Apple’s July trade-secret lawsuit after the poaching disrupted several hardware teams. In August, Apple also cut 147 Bay Area jobs across Siri, Vision Pro, immersive video and gaming teams.
Apple’s Siri rebuild has also cost it AI personnel. The company is paying Google to use Gemini as the basis for the rebuilt assistant. The decision frustrated members of Apple’s model team, and some left for higher-paying jobs. Full deployment of the new Siri is due in September.
The pressure does not come from a weak business. In the quarter ended June 27, revenue reached $109.4 billion, up 16 percent from $94.0 billion a year earlier. iPhone sales supplied $54.25 billion of that total, up 21.7 percent from the same quarter in 2025.
Dipanjan Chatterjee, a principal analyst at Forrester, said Apple “remains structurally dependent on the phone” as it “searches for its next growth engine.” Ternus, he said, “must resist the temptation of incrementalism that has plagued Apple of late and escape the iPhone’s gravitational pull.”
Timothy Hubbard, a professor at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, said Cook’s Apple became a company that was “the best at refining, scaling and defending an extraordinarily powerful system.” He asked whether that same organization can pivot toward exploration, “where success depends on speed, uncertainty and a greater willingness to experiment,” and said Apple’s discipline and control could become constraints “if the next era rewards openness and faster iteration.”
Ternus will host Apple’s September 9 product event, the first such launch in 15 years without Cook featured. At an all-hands, Ternus said, “I’m especially excited to be stepping into this role at this moment, because I am telling you that we’re about to change the world once again. We have an incredible road map ahead.”
Frequently Asked Questions
When does John Ternus become Apple's CEO?
Tuesday, September 1, 2026. Tim Cook, who has run Apple since 2011, becomes executive chairman on the same day.
Which Apple executives are expected to leave?
The likely turnover spans hardware, marketing, retail and human resources. Chief hardware officer Johny Srouji is 61 and told Cook last year he was considering leaving. Retail and people chief Deirdre O'Brien is 60. Marketing chief Greg Joswiak is 62. Luca Maestri, 62, stepped down as CFO around the end of 2024 and remains vice president of corporate services.
What role does Tim Cook keep?
Executive chairman. He will continue managing Apple's relationships with President Donald Trump and the Chinese government, and has said Apple will remain his top priority because he cannot imagine it any other way.
Who would replace Johny Srouji?
No single lieutenant is expected to inherit his combined portfolio. The hardware organization would probably split again, with Tom Marieb leading engineering and either Sri Santhanam or Zongjian Chen overseeing the technologies group that includes chips.
How is Apple's business performing going into the handover?
Revenue in the quarter ended June 27 reached $109.4 billion, up 16 percent from $94.0 billion a year earlier. iPhone sales supplied $54.25 billion of that total, up 21.7 percent from the same quarter in 2025.
AI-generated summary, reviewed by an editor. More on our AI guidelines.
Marcus Schuler
Editor-in-Chief and founder of Implicator.ai. Former ARD correspondent and senior broadcast journalist with 10+ years covering tech. Writes daily briefings on policy and market developments. Based in San Francisco. E-mail: editor@implicator.ai
