Tim Cook’s departure is the start of a new era at Apple

Apple is about to become a very different company. This September, Apple CEO Tim Cook is stepping down and will be replaced by John Ternus, the current head of hardware. But the shift is bigger than just a CEO transition — it’s the most significant move yet into a world where Apple’s executive team isn’t handpicked by Steve Jobs.

With the departure of Cook, who became CEO in 2011, the list of leaders who were in Jobs’ inner circle is dwindling. There’s still Apple’s senior vice president of services, Eddy Cue, who joined in 1989, and has said that Jobs was like a “family member” to him. There’s also longtime marketing exec Phil Schiller, who worked with Jobs to launch key products, including the Mac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad, and often appeared with Jobs during keynotes. Schiller stepped into a smaller role in 2020, though he still oversees one major business, the App Store.

Other top holdovers include Greg Joswiak and Craig Federighi. Joswiak started at Apple in 1986 and worked under Jobs for years, playing a role in launching the original iPod and iPhone. He later took Schiller’s spot as the head of marketing in 2020. Federighi, Apple’s software head, also had close ties to Jobs. He worked at Jobs’ technology company NeXT before it was acquired by Apple in 1996. Though Federighi left shortly after the acquisition, he rejoined Apple in 2009.

But many key Jobs-era figures at Apple are gone. iOS leader Scott Forstall, who was once seen as a potential successor to Jobs, was pushed out a year into Cook’s tenure over the botched launch of Apple Maps.

Bob Mansfield, a key part of Jobs’ executive team, finally stepped away after years of Cook pulling him back. He joined Apple through an acquisition in 1999 and later headed up the Mac’s transition to Intel processors. Mansfield nearly retired in 2012 but decided to stick around to work on the Apple Watch and later the (since abandoned) Apple Car project. Mansfield finally retired in 2020.

Cook had a similar experience with Doug Field, who Jobs hired from Segway to head up Mac product design (even though Jobs thought the Segway’s design was bad). Field left Apple for Tesla in 2013, rejoined Apple in 2018, and then went to Ford in 2021 (a role he left last week).

Vision Pro leader Dan Riccio, who Bloomberg described as a “key player” under Jobs for his work on hardware engineering, retired in 2024. Last year, Apple lost another old guard executive, former chief operating officer Jeff Williams, who helped bring to life Jobs’ idea of putting a glass screen on the original iPhone.

Perhaps the most notable departure in recent years was that of Jony Ive, the legendary Apple designer who called Jobs his “closest” and “most loyal friend.” He left Apple in 2019 after having stepped back for periods of time in the preceding years.

That’s not to say there’s no connection to the Jobs era in this new leadership team.

Ternus bridges the gap between Jobs and Cook. He joined Apple in 2001 and rose to vice president of hardware engineering under Cook in 2013, overseeing the launch of post-Jobs products like the AirPods and the iPhone Air. Apple’s newly appointed chief hardware officer, Johny Srouji, is in a similar position. He joined Apple to work on the A4 chip in 2008 and went on to launch the company’s first in-house Mac chip in 2020. Sabih Khan, who initially joined Apple in 1995, stepped into the role of chief operating officer last year.

Still, as one would expect after 15 years, Apple’s next leadership team is very much the team created by Cook. In many respects, he kept around the Jobs-era crew for a remarkably long time. There remain people on Apple’s leadership team who were there when the company wasn’t the behemoth it is today. But that era of executives is very much winding down.

It’s now up to these new leaders to leave their own stamp on Apple. During his tenure, Cook and his team have transformed Apple into a $4 trillion company. With Cook handing Ternus the reins to one of the biggest technology companies in the world, he’ll have some major decisions to make about where to take Apple next.