Who will be Apple’s next CEO? A new look at Tim Cook’s potential successors

(Apple/Steve Jobs logo image by Jonathan Mak)
Apple this week announced a major C-suite overhaul, with Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams stepping down this month and retiring by year-end. Previously considered a potential successor to CEO Tim Cook by some (not MacDailyNews), Williams’ departure raises questions about who among Apple’s remaining executives could take the helm as the next CEO.
Michael Grothaus for Fast Company:
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[F]inding a competent successor to Cook is top of mind for many institutional Apple investors, not to mention the company’s board…
So, who is, among the executives at Apple in 2025? Here are the five most likely candidates:
• John Ternus: Ternus is Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, holding the role since 2013. If you’ve watched Apple’s keynotes in recent years, you’ll know he’s an increasingly visible member of Apple’s C-suite, which may be a sign in itself that the company sees him as CEO material.
• Sabih Khan: While Khan was serving as Apple’s senior vice president of operations, he didn’t seem like an obvious candidate for CEO, despite his 30-year history at the company. But now that he will soon be the company’s COO—arguably its most important position besides CEO—and will also report directly to Cook, one can’t help but think that Apple may be prepping Khan, and making investors comfortable with him, to take the CEO role when Cook retires.

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MacDailyNews Take: No, the last thing Apple needs is another operations guy handicapping the company.
Tim is not a product person, per se. – Steve Jobs
Considering its current situation, blindsided and way behind in GenAI and going nowhere fast (but, hey, here, have some Liquid Glass; shiny!), Apple hasn’t needed an operations guy as CEO for the past several years (especially one who couldn’t recognize China was a problem and who didn’t mobilize to diversify production anywhere near quickly enough).
The time to accelerate plans to move production out of China was November 9th 2016, but, hey, six years late is better than never! – MacDailyNews, December 4, 2022
Grothaus continues:

• Craig Federighi: Besides Cook, Federighi is probably Apple’s most recognizable figure. The silver-haired exec features heavily in Apple’s keynotes, usually in humorous scenarios, like being an F1 race-car driver. He also happens to be the company’s senior vice president of software engineering…
• Eddy Cue: Cue is Apple’s senior vice president of services—an increasingly important revenue stream for Apple, considering, like most services, they are high margin and profits are made via recurring subscriptions.
• Greg Joswiak: Better known as “Joz,” Joswiak is Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing.

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MacDailyNews Take: No. Eddy Cue, 60, and Joswiak, 61, are both close to the same age as Williams (62) who just announced his retirement. Tim Cook, by the way, is 64 years old. These guys are all near or past retirement age for a tech company CEO.
Federighi, not far behind at 56, is as responsible as anyone in Apple’s C-suite for its current dismal GenAI dilemma – so, “no” to him, too.
Ternus just turned 50 in May. He’s the best of the bunch listed above, by far, especially as he joined Apple in July 2001 as a member of the Product Design team, working as a mechanical engineer focused on hardware design, initially contributing to projects like external Mac monitors before taking on more significant roles in developing mobile products, including the iPod, every iPad model, AirPods, and the iPhone 12 and later.
John is a product person, per se.
That said:

For its NeXT CEO, Apple needs relative YOUTH, not another 50- or 60-something calcified company lifer who was part of the so-called team that blindly missed the GenAI paradigm shift.
Steve Jobs was 42 years old when he returned to Apple as interim CEO in September 1997. pic.twitter.com/Bk0kdul7QF
— MacDailyNews (@MacDailyNews) July 10, 2025

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