Apple CEO John Ternus's first memo: key takeaways

John Ternus became the eighth chief executive in Apple's 50-year history on Tuesday, and he marked it with a memo just four short paragraphs long. He opened by thanking staff for their "warm wishes" and then turned to Tim Cook, who moved into the newly created role of executive chairman the same day.

Ternus praised Cook for leading "with his values and with such decency and humanity" over nearly 15 years as CEO. Then came the line that outlets from Bloomberg to 9to5Mac ran with: "We have a giant launch next week that's going to be phenomenal." He named no products.

John Ternus's first memo to Apple staff

Ternus came to Apple in 2001 from an engineering education background. He remained within the hardware department of the company for the following two decades before being promoted to the role of senior vice president of hardware engineering in 2021.

Apple's board appointed him the CEO-in-waiting back in April, completing the succession plan focused on his product experience rather than Cook's operations experience.

With the very same April appointment, Apple assigned Ternus's former position to Johny Srouji, formerly the head of Apple's custom silicon effort. Srouji's new position as the chief hardware officer makes hardware engineering a part of the hardware technologies group that he used to run, uniting the efforts related to chips, cameras, sensors, and product design.

Ternus's memo pointed toward Apple's "Surprise and shine" event, set for 10 a.m. Pacific on September 9 at Apple Park. Reporting from Bloomberg and The Verge suggests a foldable iPhone and the iPhone 18 Pro line are likely candidates, though nothing in the memo itself confirms what's coming.

Ternus closed by looking past next week, toward "products already in the works" and others "we haven't even imagined yet".