QuickTake: Apple's CEO is being replaced - the world shrugs, the community is mostly shocked

On April 20, or 420 to some, Apple announced that its CEO of 15 years, Tim Cook, was stepping down. From September 1, he's becoming the executive chairman of Apple’s board of directors, and the senior vice president of Hardware Engineering, John Ternus, will become CEO.

Many I saw in the Apple community were shocked; others were half-expecting it due to some reporting from earlier this year that alluded to this change, while others looked on, thinking about more important matters.

I fell in the middle, albeit with the added feeling of being slightly puzzled. You see, certain reporters are privy to strong rumours of products that Apple may or may not be working on. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, a name I've repeatedly cited in my past life at Future, is one of them. In January, he wrote that there were 'few signs internally' that Cook was going to be stepping down anytime soon. Gurman went further, saying he'd be 'shocked' if Cook stepped down between January and late June this year.

Now, that's partly true; Cook is still CEO until September. But the announcement is here, and ultimately, the November 2025 article from The Financial Times has turned out to be completely correct.

So for me, it seems like this announcement was always going to happen on April 20.

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A Run that felt Cooked towards the end

15 years is a good run for anyone in charge of a multi-trillion-dollar company. Cook deserves a lot of credit. He was mostly responsible for expanding multiple product lines, introducing new products, and transforming Apple into a media company. But in the last few years, his 'north star', as he would frequently cite in interviews, has wandered.

Two years on from its reveal at WWDC, Apple Intelligence has been a failure. I've never had it enabled on my iPhone and Mac - I refuse to. The fact that it's called 'Apple Intelligence' just so the 'AI' can still be used is wild to me. But going further, AI has been a mess in almost every category and situation. It's ruined the reputations of respected companies and individuals, along with others freely scraping authentic work and spinning it as 'generative' in their AI apps.

Apple missed the mark majorly here, but it seems to be working on a new Siri for later this year that works off Google's Gemini model.

So it's apt that the new product that Tim Cook first introduced as CEO in October 2011, as part of the iPhone 4S event, was Siri, and John Ternus will seemingly introduce a new and improved version at the iPhone 18 event later this year.

A Ternus Point

In the interviews I've seen of Ternus, he seems to be more focused on the products themselves instead of how they can end up in a customer's hands on a certain date. Cook was always a logistics guy - it's what he did before becoming CEO. But I can't help but think this type of leadership is why I don't find Apple exciting or as focused compared to a decade ago.

The company needs that back - it needs to be much looser in how it offers its products and services to others. This also applies to the events and interviews - bring back the in-person events for WWDC and others. For example, watching the Vision Pro segment at WWDC 2023 felt so over-manufactured that I switched off for a while. Apple had a way of selling something you didn't know you needed in 10 minutes. Instead, this segment drained away any interest I had in the headset.

I want to see the return of Apple's fun side at events. If Ternus and the rest of the team really do enjoy what they do, why aren't we seeing much of that at public events? There's too much of a 'hold back' in the air in some interviews - let's see Ternus and others be more casual in their answers.

Nevertheless, I'm curious as to what the next era for Apple will entail. I hope it rediscovers what made the company exciting to follow in the first place.