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The week started with major news of apple Chief Tim Cook will step down this year, with senior vice president of hardware engineering John Ternes taking over as CEO in September.
Q Tech and political leaders are praising the outgoing Cook, who presided over a more than 20-fold rise in market cap at the tech giant since taking over from the late Steve Jobs in 2011.
But what does the change in leadership say about where Apple is headed in the coming years?
I spoke to CNBC’s Forte to find out what this could mean for the company’s future.
John Ternes, senior vice president of hardware engineering at Apple Inc., during an Apple event in New York, US, on Wednesday, March 4, 2026.
Adam Gray | Bloomberg | getty images
How significant is it that Apple’s release mentions Cook’s new role will include “engaging with policymakers around the world”?
This is very important.
In a way, Tim Cook’s superpower was always innovating in Cupertino and orchestrating outside forces to bring it to life by improving the supply chain and designing supplier relationships as chief operating officer and ultimately practicing international diplomacy as CEO.
It appears he will retain part of this role as acting chairman. This could prove extremely valuable, giving John Turnus time to focus on Apple’s innovation processes without all the political distractions.
Will Ternus’ appointment change Apple’s international strategy?
I would be surprised if Turnus comes and changes the international strategy, because the supply chain is one of Apple’s core strengths and one of the hardest things for the company to change its mind.
Think about how much time it takes to negotiate terms with governments and partners, coordinate with supply chain partners, build factories, train workers – that’s a commitment measured in decades.
That said, given the way geopolitical norms are changing, Apple is likely to adjust things – I’m not sure Turnus taking the CEO seat is to blame for this.
How will Turnus affect Apple’s thesis around AI?
The Turnus appointment shows that Apple is not having an AI-induced identity crisis.
While the company clearly hasn’t done a whole lot on AI, Apple has announced features like Siri with Intelligence but hasn’t been able to ship it, the company hasn’t been able to reach out to CEOs outside of its home turf. Apple has not moved the software to a new location in its structure.
Instead the company has chosen an insider and doubled down on its functional management structure and integrated product strategy.
What else does this mean for Apple’s trajectory?
There’s an interesting change here in how Apple is approaching hardware.
The company has started focusing on external changes in size and color to internal changes in capacity and efficiency.
During the Steve Jobs era, the partnership between Jobs and industrial design chief Jony Ive was an important driver of hardware innovation and “taste”. A big part of that expression was how the machines looked on the outside, which of course was heavily influenced by how they were engineered inside and out.
Over the past 20 years, the way Apple has expressed hardware innovation has changed.
The iMac G5 and Mac Mini in 2004 and the MacBook Air in 2008 became blueprints for future hardware manifestations. The exterior of these designs has barely changed, while the interior has undergone profound changes.
With Johnny Sruzzi now in charge of all the hardware, I think this direction will be solid. Sruzzi has made huge contributions to Apple’s silicon capabilities over the past 18 years. He now leads the development of the hardware overall.
latest updates
Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek on Friday released a preview version of its long-awaited V4 large language model. Allowing users to test it New capabilities and features.
Microsoft looked at possible deals for cursors Ahead of SpaceX’s announcement this week that it has acquired the right to acquire the AI ​​coding startup for $60 billion, two people familiar with the matter told CNBC.
Anthropic steps up efforts to secure European data center deals To empower its AI models, as it seeks to play a role in negotiating compute capacity in the region.
GoogleLinkedIn and Wikipedia are among hundreds of websites and apps where meta Scheme to capture employee keystrokes And mouse clicks as part of a project to train its artificial intelligence models, according to internal messages seen by CNBC.
Microsoft on Thursday announced an $18 billion investment in Australia’s digital infrastructure In which the technology giant will partner with Canberra on initiatives like cyber security, workforce upskilling and artificial intelligence development.
stock of the week
Tesla stock has declined since its earnings report on Wednesday.
Tesla Shares fell Wednesday after reporting first-quarter earnings, in which revenue came in below expectations despite beating analysts’ estimates.
The past few months have seen Tesla’s stock underperform compared to its megacap peers, with its core automotive business struggling against competitors around the world like China’s BYD and Xiaomi.
