Tim Cook’s Emotional Farewell Message on His Final Day as Apple CEO

An era at Apple comes to an end with Tim Cook’s farewell as CEO. Cook, who succeeded Apple co-founder Steve Jobs in 2011, led the company to new heights over the past 15 years. Now, as he hands the baton to his successor, John Ternus, Cook shared a heartfelt message with Apple employees.

In an internal email obtained by a famous publication, Cook told employees that serving as the company’s CEO had been “the privilege of a lifetime.” The outgoing CEO emphasized that his team was the driving force behind his success. “You have brought out the best in me. In my entire life, I have never seen or worked with such an extraordinary team of people, and every day I see more examples of that,” he wrote.

In his statement Tim Cook mentioned Steve Jobs’ well known phrase about leaving a “dent, in the universe.” He said that Apple today still follows Jobs’ vision. “We have managed to leave our dent in the universe, ” Cook said, adding that this is because of who we are, what we believe, what we value and how we see the world.

John Ternus takes over as Apple CEO; Tim Cook calls him brilliant

It is worth noting that Tim Cook at 65 is not leaving Apple entirely. Instead, Tim Cook will move into the role of Executive Chairman, from which Tim Cook will continue to oversee aspects of Apple. Meanwhile John Ternus will assume day‑to‑day responsibilities, as CEO.

I read that Tim Cook described Ternus as the person to take the helm. Tim Cook said, “It gives me comfort to hand over the reins to someone as brilliant, wonderful and capable as John Ternus.” Tim Cook also thanked the Apple community in a post on X noting that while Tim Cook’s role would change, Tim Cook’s love for the Apple community would not.

Cook has worked at Apple for thirty years. He became the executive officer of Apple in August 2011 only a few weeks after the Apple co-founder Steve Jobs died of pancreatic cancer. While Cook was CEO of Apple released items such as the Apple Watch and AirPods and Apple grew the iPhone, iPad and Mac product families.

Under Cook’s direction Apple turned into one of the most valuable firms worldwide; Apple’s market worth went beyond four point five trillion dollars on Monday. In August 2011 Apple was worth three hundred fifty billion dollars.

Cook focused particularly on expanding Apple beyond hardware. Services such as the App Store, Apple Music, and Apple Pay came to represent a larger share of the business.

Who is John Ternus?

John Ternus, 51 joined Apple’s design team in 2001. He later became Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering. He reported directly to Tim Cook. He was in charge of the engineering teams, for all of Apple’s products. This included the iPhone. He managed the work across the product lineup.

Ternus will take over as Apple CEO just days before the company’s next event. Scheduled for September 9, John Ternus is expected to take the stage to unveil the iPhone 18 Pro series and the first-ever foldable iPhone.