He built a mechanical arm controlled by head movements to help people living with quadriplegia. He swam competitively at the University of Pennsylvania. And on 1st September 2026, John Ternus became the Chief Executive of Apple.

Ternus, 50, succeeds Tim Cook, who moves to the role of executive chairman after more than two decades leading the company. But where Cook came from Operations and Finance, Ternus is an engineer through and through – someone who spent his career obsessing over the physical things Apple makes.

He joined Apple in 2001 as a product designer, with early work that included the Apple Cinema Display. By 2013 he was vice president of Hardware Engineering, responsible for the Mac and iPad lines and later AirPods. iPhone hardware came under his remit in 2020, followed by Apple Watch in late 2022. In 2021 he was named Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering, succeeding Dan Riccio – the role that put him on the shortlist most people assumed would one day lead here.

Before Apple, he worked as a mechanical engineer at Virtual Research Systems. He graduated from Penn in 1997 with a degree in mechanical engineering and his final-year project – that feeding arm – says something about how he thinks: practical, precise and built for real human impact.

Inside Apple, he became a familiar face at product launches and WWDC keynotes, presenting successive generations of iPad Pro, iMac and MacBook Pro. He played a central role in the company’s move from Intel processors to Apple silicon – arguably the most consequential hardware shift in Apple’s recent history.

He is the youngest member of Apple’s current executive leadership team. Whether that youth translates into a bolder, more restless Apple remains the most interesting question of his tenure.