As of Tuesday morning, Apple has a new CEO — John Ternus, former Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering, is the new big boss. And it only took a matter of hours for the old CEO’s internal farewell message to leak onto the wider internet.
Ternus officially took over as CEO on Sept. 1, with Tim Cook vacating the position he took over from Steve Jobs. Cook, as outgoing executives are wont to do, sent a long-ish farewell memo to Apple employees, and 9to5Mac obtained it for our prying eyes.
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The five-paragraph memo is fairly standard stuff, filled with positive messages about Cook’s time working as Apple CEO. At one point, Cook discusses the importance of Apple’s company culture.
Per 9to5Mac, the outgoing CEO wrote:
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There is something truly special about Apple. I am most proud of what an annual report could never capture. This place is proof that culture triumphs over everything. We share a belief that what we build matters, and that we have both the opportunity and the responsibility to leave the world better than we found it. That purpose is part of what makes this place extraordinary. Apple helps nurture it, but I believe it lived within each of you long before you arrived here.
Cook’s memo also included a quote from Jobs. Cook reportedly said, “We have made it possible to leave our ‘dent in the universe,’ as Steve once described it, because of who we are and what we believe, because of what we value and how we see the world. How fortunate we are. How fortunate I am.”
Cook isn’t leaving Apple entirely, and he’s now the Executive Chairman of Apple’s Board of Directors. In the memo obtained by 9to5Mac, Cook also took some time to lay out why Ternus will be a good replacement:
I will miss leading you and being with you for every step, even as I take enormous comfort in handing the helm to someone as brilliant and wonderful and capable as John. Few people understand what it takes to build products that change the world the way John does and I could not be more excited for his leadership.
In many ways, the memo reads like a longer, more expansive version of the emotional message Cook shared on social media yesterday.
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We’ll get our first real look at the Ternus era at Apple next week when the company announces the iPhone 18 lineup.
You can read the entire memo at 9to5Mac.
