Apple CEO Tim Cook to step down after 15-year tenure

Tim Cook will step down as Apple CEO in September after 15 years leading the company, passing the torch to hardware engineering executive John Ternus. Under Cook's stewardship, Apple transformed into what CNBC's Jim Cramer called "the greatest consumer-based enterprise in history," with the company's stock surging approximately 1,900% and its price-to-earnings multiple expanding from the low-to-mid teens to around 30 times forward earnings. Cook cultivated deep customer loyalty through a philosophy centered on reading personal emails from users whose lives were impacted by Apple products, describing in his farewell letter "the beating heart of our shared humanity" found in those messages. This approach helped Apple transition from a cyclical device business into a trusted brand generating recurring revenue through services like iCloud and Apple Music. Yet Cook's privacy legacy presents a more complex picture. While he cemented Apple's pro-privacy reputation in the United States by famously resisting FBI demands to unlock the iPhone of the San Bernardino shooter in 2015 and later launching App Tracking Transparency features that gave users control over data collection, Apple simultaneously made significant concessions in China, its second-largest market. In 2018, Apple transferred Chinese users' iCloud accounts to a state-backed datacenter in Guizhou, enabling Chinese authorities to bypass American courts and more easily access texts, emails, and images. The company removed popular messaging apps including Telegram, WhatsApp, and Signal from its Chinese app store in 2024, and declined to roll out its "private relay" feature in both China and Saudi Arabia. Privacy advocates argue that Cook's accommodation to Beijing's demands contradicts Apple's public stance on privacy as a fundamental human right, with the Tech Transparency Project noting that "a lot of that doesn't actually play out in the way it operates." Cook himself defended the approach, stating that participating in a country's market means being "subject to the laws and regulations of that country."