The Short Version
Tim Cook will become Executive Chairman on September 1, 2026, with hardware engineering chief John Ternus taking over as Apple CEO after a transition period through summer 2026.
Ternus spent four years in the 1990s building VR headsets at a startup that collapsed, which means Apple's next CEO watched this exact type of product fail from the inside. He reportedly warned against Vision Pro before it launched. Now he owns it, along with $157 million in total sales and no clear successor product in sight. Cook was famously reluctant to make hard calls. Ternus has already made one.
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