Photo: Tessa Bury / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)
Last updated: November 2, 2026
John Ternus is the chief executive of Apple. He took over from Tim Cook on Sept. 1, 2026, and on Monday, Nov. 2, he hosts his first earnings call as CEO, at 5 p.m. ET. Wall Street will be listening for three things, according to Reuters: Apple’s holiday-quarter forecast, what he says about AI and the new Siri, and how Apple is handling a surge in memory-chip costs. Ternus is a mechanical engineer who has spent his entire 25-year Apple career in hardware. He was a varsity swimmer at Penn, and his first project at Apple was a computer monitor. In his first two months as CEO he has unveiled Apple’s first foldable iPhone, a smart-home hub and its first touchscreen Mac laptop. Until now, though, investors have barely heard him speak at length. On past calls he mostly deferred to Cook, CNBC reported.
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Quick facts
Full name: John Patrick Ternus
Born: 1975, in Orange County, California (age 51)
Title: Chief executive officer of Apple since Sept. 1, 2026, and a member of Apple’s board
Predecessor: Tim Cook, now Apple’s executive chairman
Years at Apple: 25. He joined the product design team in 2001.
Previous job at Apple: Senior vice president of hardware engineering (2021–2026)
Education: Bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, University of Pennsylvania (1997)
Before Apple: Mechanical engineer at Virtual Research Systems, a virtual reality headset company
Pay as CEO: $3 million salary, plus a fiscal 2027 stock award with a target value of $55 million
Known for: Hardware for iPad, AirPods, iPhone and Mac, the Mac’s move to Apple’s own chips, and now the iPhone Duo
Who is John Ternus?
Ternus was born in 1975 in Orange County, California, a year before Apple was founded about 400 miles to the north. When he was 8, his father bought an Apple II. “I started playing games on it and fell in love with Apple,” he told TIME. He later took the family’s Mac SE with him to the University of Pennsylvania.
At Penn he studied mechanical engineering and swam on the varsity team. Fortune reported that he is an “all-time letter winner” for the men’s team. For his senior project, he and three classmates built a feeding device that people with quadriplegia could control with head and neck movements, with no motors or electronics. A paper on it won a best student paper award at a 1997 robotics conference, according to Venkat Krovi, who worked on the project. Ternus also nearly wrecked the school’s only CNC milling machine. The man who ran the machine shop nicknamed him “Crash,” project teammate Travis Heinrichs told The Daily Pennsylvanian.
After graduating in 1997 he designed virtual reality headsets as a mechanical engineer at Virtual Research Systems. In 2001, at 26, he joined Apple’s product design team. His first project was the Apple Cinema Display, a large desktop monitor.
He spent the next two decades moving up through hardware. He became a vice president of hardware engineering in 2013, overseeing products including the Mac, iPad and AirPods. In 2020 he also took over iPhone hardware, and he oversaw the hardware side of the Mac’s switch from Intel processors to Apple’s own chips. In January 2021 he replaced Dan Riccio as senior vice president of hardware engineering and joined Apple’s executive team. In January 2026 he was also given oversight of Apple’s industrial design team.
On April 20, 2026, Apple announced that Ternus would succeed Cook on Sept. 1. The board approved it unanimously. Cook became executive chairman, and Arthur Levinson moved from chairman to lead independent director. “John Ternus has the mind of an engineer, the soul of an innovator, and the heart to lead with integrity and with honor,” Cook said.
TIME describes him as “a private, detail-oriented engineer” who was little known outside Apple until 2021, and says he spends multiple days a week in the design studio as CEO. Apple’s choice of a hardware executive, TIME wrote, “signals a return to the company’s roots” after years in which Apple’s message focused on services.
Career timeline
1975: Born in Orange County, California.
Around 1983: His father buys an Apple II.
1994: Wins the 50 freestyle and the 200 individual medley at a Penn swim meet, according to The Daily Pennsylvanian.
1997: Graduates from Penn with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. His senior project team wins a best student paper award at a robotics conference.
1997–2001: Works as a mechanical engineer at Virtual Research Systems, designing VR headsets.
2001: Joins Apple’s product design team. His first project is the Apple Cinema Display.
2011: Files a patent application for foldable electronic devices with five other Apple engineers, according to TIME.
2013: Becomes vice president of hardware engineering.
2020: Takes on iPhone hardware. Apple begins moving the Mac from Intel chips to its own.
January 2021: Becomes senior vice president of hardware engineering and joins the executive team.
January 2026: Gains oversight of Apple’s industrial design team, according to Bloomberg.
April 20, 2026: Apple names him Cook’s successor.
Sept. 1, 2026: Becomes CEO and joins Apple’s board.
September 2026: Unveils the iPhone Duo, Apple’s first foldable phone, nine days into the job.
Oct. 13, 2026: Apple announces HomeView, a smart-home hub.
October 2026: Appears on the cover of TIME’s Best Inventions issue. Launches the iPhone Duo in Austin, Texas, on Oct. 23. Unveils Apple’s first touchscreen MacBook.
Nov. 2, 2026: Hosts his first earnings call as CEO.
Notable products & projects
iPhone Duo: Apple’s first foldable phone, starting at $1,999. It went on sale on Oct. 23 and online orders sold out within minutes, according to Reuters. Ternus helped file a patent application for foldable devices in 2011. He told TIME that other early foldables “felt kind of cheap and crappy.”
Apple silicon Macs: He oversaw the hardware engineering for the Mac’s move from Intel processors to Apple-designed chips, which began in 2020.
iPad and AirPods: Apple credits him as instrumental in introducing both product lines.
MacBook Neo: Apple’s lower-cost laptop, launched in the spring of 2026. Apple cited it when it named him CEO.
Durability and materials: Apple says he led its push on reliability and repairability, a new recycled aluminum compound and 3D-printed titanium in the Apple Watch Ultra 3.
New categories as CEO: The HomeView smart-home hub and Apple’s first touchscreen laptops. Reuters reported that all of the new products began shipping in Apple’s current quarter.
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What he’s known for
Being a product person: He joined Apple as an engineer and has spent half his life there, all of it in hardware. Other Apple executives describe him as “pragmatic, meticulous, and unifying,” TIME reported.
A different style from Jobs and Cook: TIME contrasted Jobs, “a rock-star visionary,” and Cook, a global “power broker,” with Ternus, who “presents as a guy trying to blend in.”
Being everywhere since September: In his first weeks he walked the red carpet at the Emmys, opened Apple’s Fifth Avenue store for the iPhone 18 Pro launch and kicked off iPhone Duo sales in Austin, CNBC reported.
Trusting his teams: When Apple’s vice president of product design, Richard Dinh, asked whether to settle for a Duo screen material that was “good enough,” Ternus told him, “Look, Rich, you’ll know when it’s the right thing,” Dinh told TIME.
Racing: Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal have reported that he is a cycling and car-racing fan who has raced his Porsche at Laguna Seca in California.
In the news
Nov. 2, 2026: Ternus hosts Apple’s fiscal fourth-quarter earnings call at 5 p.m. ET with CFO Kevan Parekh. Analysts expect revenue of about $113.39 billion, up about 11% from $102.5 billion a year ago, according to LSEG data cited by Reuters and CNBC, and earnings of $1.99 a share, according to CNBC. Reuters said rising memory costs are expected to drag profit growth to its weakest in six quarters. Apple shares are up about 27% this year.
October 2026: Some iPhone Duo buyers reported cracks and lines along the inner screen’s fold, and Apple is offering replacements, Reuters reported. Bank of America estimates the average wait for a Duo is 79 days.
October 2026: In his TIME cover interview, Ternus called the memory-chip shortage “absolutely a crisis” and said “all options should be on the table.” In July, the Financial Times reported that Apple had tested memory chips made by a Chinese company, which drew a letter of objection from a bipartisan group of senators.
2026: Apple’s new Siri, which launched in the U.S. in September, runs on an Apple AI model that uses Google’s Gemini technology, TIME reported. Apple is also suing OpenAI over alleged theft of hardware trade secrets. OpenAI calls the lawsuit “baseless.”
Quotes
“I am profoundly grateful for this opportunity to carry Apple’s mission forward. Having spent almost my entire career at Apple, I have been lucky to have worked under Steve Jobs and to have had Tim Cook as my mentor.” — Apple press release, April 20, 2026
“I started playing games on it and fell in love with Apple.” — TIME, October 2026, on his father’s Apple II
“People want physical things… So I don’t see a scenario where all of a sudden, our devices disappear and we don’t have a need for an iPhone.” — TIME, October 2026
“There’s not really a goal that we have to make every single thing in a product. We make the things where we can really bring differentiation.” — TIME, October 2026, on using Google’s Gemini technology in Siri
“You can’t do everything. So we kind of try to constrain ourselves to the stuff that matters most—and then put all of our effort into those things.” — TIME, October 2026
Controversies / criticism
AI: Critics say Apple is behind in AI. TIME wrote that Apple “is nowhere near the technology’s frontier” and now relies on a rival, Google, for a key part of Siri.
The Duo’s screen: Early buyers reported cracks and lines along the fold, and Apple is replacing affected phones, according to Reuters.
Chinese memory chips: A bipartisan group of senators objected after reports that Apple tested memory from a Chinese supplier. Ternus told TIME that “all options should be on the table.”
Price: Apple raised iPhone prices by $100, which CNBC said may have hurt demand in the quarter, and the Duo starts at $1,999.
Net worth & money
Apple has not disclosed Ternus’s net worth, and there is no reliable published estimate. His pay as a senior vice president was never made public, according to MacRumors. His pay as CEO is public. Apple’s Sept. 1 SEC filing set his salary at $3 million, granted him a prorated stock award with a target value of $2.5 million for his first weeks as CEO in fiscal 2026 and approved a stock award with a target value of $55 million for fiscal 2027. Three-quarters of that award depends on how Apple’s stock performs against other S&P 500 companies.
FAQ
Who is John Ternus?
John Ternus is the CEO of Apple. He succeeded Tim Cook on Sept. 1, 2026, after 25 years at Apple, most recently as senior vice president of hardware engineering.
When did John Ternus become Apple CEO?
Sept. 1, 2026. Apple announced the change on April 20, 2026.
When is John Ternus’s first earnings call as CEO?
Monday, Nov. 2, 2026, at 5 p.m. ET (2 p.m. PT), for Apple’s fiscal fourth quarter.
How old is John Ternus?
He was born in 1975, so he is 51.
Where did John Ternus go to college?
The University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in 1997 and swam on the varsity team.
How much is John Ternus paid?
A $3 million salary plus a fiscal 2027 stock award with a target value of $55 million, according to Apple’s SEC filing.
Is Tim Cook still at Apple?
Yes. Cook is Apple’s executive chairman.
Further reading
Apple’s new CEO Ternus to face first earnings test as memory costs surge — Reuters
Apple Q4 2026 earnings live updates: Ternus’ first call — CNBC
Tim Cook to become Apple Executive Chairman; John Ternus to become Apple CEO — Apple
Meet John Ternus, the 51-year-old former swimming champ who will succeed Tim Cook as Apple CEO — Fortune
Penn knew Apple’s next CEO long before the world did — The Daily Pennsylvanian
Who Is Tim Cook? — The Profile
The Profile: Apple’s new CEO & The financier who wants to save America — The Profile
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