CEO of Apple
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CEO of Apple
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| Current | Tim Cook (since August 2011) |
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| Incoming | John Ternus — effective September 1, 2026 |
| Count | Seven CEOs in fifty years; Ternus the eighth |
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Apple's chief executives map the company's whole arc — and the office is changing hands for the first time in fifteen years: in April 2026 Apple announced that Tim Cook will become executive chairman and hardware chief John Ternus becomes CEO on September 1, 2026, the conclusion of the industry's most-watched succession.
1 Succession✎
| CEO | Tenure | Era |
|---|---|---|
| Michael Scott | 1977–1981 | Apple II commercialization |
| Mike Markkula | 1981–1983 | The investor at the helm |
| John Sculley | 1983–1993 | Mac growth — and Jobs's 1985 ouster |
| Michael Spindler | 1993–1996 | The decline |
| Gil Amelio | 1996–1997 | Bought NeXT, brought Jobs back |
| Steve Jobs | 1997–2011 | iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad — the restoration |
| Tim Cook | 2011–2026 | Apple Watch, services, Apple silicon, $3 trillion |
| John Ternus | from September 2026 | The Apple silicon generation takes the chair |
2 Position✎
Cook's tenure turned Jobs's product house into the world's most valuable company — operations, services, and silicon as strategy. Ternus, the engineer behind the Apple silicon Macs and the modern iPhone, inherits the Apple Intelligence era with Cook remaining as executive chairman upstairs.