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:
[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.
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
• 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.
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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If someone is creative in their 40s, there is still a very good chance they will be creative in their 60s. Conversely, I’ve been around plenty of 30 or 40-somethings who didn’t have a creative bone in their bodies—especially the engineering crowd. Jobs was unique in that he was both creative but had an engineer’s brain–i.e. he had no patience for pie-in-the-sky concepts which were divorced from engineering reality. Remember that one of his mottos was, “Real products ship.” Cook has done an outstanding job of getting most products to ship and to maintain iterative evolution of most products, but lacks a big picture or big vision for new ideas or products. Wasted all the time/resources/manpower on AppleCar and AppleVision with nothing much to show for it, and neglected AI.
Cook’s handling of Siri–DARPA influenced/not idiotic tech–is the only reason needed to confirm he swings and misses. AAPL/Job’s tenure purchased the dumb sorority girl nearly 15 yrs ago and she’s still dumb as a rock. This is not hyperbolic thinking…these are rational comments pertaining to the 3rd richest co in the World (for much of that term–the richest).
This is merely one of MANY dropped balls. Many others were more complex, but clearly more pertinent to market standing and most became product-interruptus (or interrupti).
I think Cook lacks more than a “big picture” grasp. Any company with AAPL’s resources should/would have been able to assemble a team that could fulfill plans gifted inventors/creatives. Nope. Cook was more dedicated & passionate about becoming carbon-neutral and his other pet projects.
Get rid of Ted Apple and at the same time load up their altAar to woke and pride that is defacing their courtyard. GET RID OF political gay disfunction ONCE AND FOR ALL.
No more Indians as CEO’s of American companies please!
FFS, this is our speciality. It’s our playground. Stop turning this country over to foreigners.
We have our own talent. We were ruling the roost long before the DEI curse was forced upon us.
Disagree. Craig is the most technical here and takes a lot of design direction from other losers. He’s by far the best of the bunch. MDN take is wrong here. He’s the only ex-NeXTer there. He’s the only one that lived through that turn around.
Evan Spiegel (Snap Inc.): 32 years old
Mark Zuckerberg (Meta): 38 years old
Sundar Pichai (Alphabet): 46 years old
Tim Cook (Apple): 64 years old
Craig is too old. Craig missed GenAI. No on Craig.
Thats not a fact check, it’s just a retarded non sequitur post.
Moron “youth” is required dish** spew.
Any one from NeXT has sh** out and forgotten more about tech than any new script kiddy wannabe will learn in this and the next lifetime.
Just moronic.
What you dont know about Craig and AI can overflow a black hole.
I agree with MDN about Ternus; but even better would be to bring back Scott Forestall (who was Steve Jobs’ protege) and correct his unfair departure after being forced to prematurely release Apple Maps which then Tim blamed him for its temporary flaws.
Ternus could be the tech czar under Scott and I would applaud.
hes done nothing for 13 years, try a Google News search, its like he doesn’t exist, NO
internal ceo CHOICES:
damn boring, visionless, Apple mojo killers. The sole chance was Jony Ive. Otherwise, who has iSteve’s vision, creative tech genius?
only a few companies created cultural-changing SHIFTS. at most 1-2. Apple did it over 10x! They deserve success. But iSteve who chose Tim C as ceo, would have fired him by now. Apple has yes, catapulted the $tock to the stratosphere, been the first co. to reach $1T, $2T, $3T, but not $4T and is losing mojo, vision, quality, excitement, future tech, ai etc., merely iterating updates, no longer inventing/moving forward.
TIM C took Apple from 1998 $1B to $3T yet will lose all his legacy as he put Apple at risk, putting all its eggs in 1 basket, China. His short term vision was short sighted. Now that he tries to expand manufacturing to other nations, China won’t allow it to leave for India, Singapore, Vietnam, EU etc. Apple is not just visionless but trapped! To top it all off the new U.S. president is so f’g dumb, he puts not America First, but punishes Apple legally, financially, business-wise, when Apple is the 7th biggest tax payer in USA, but won’t be. If Apple manufactures in the USA an iPhone will cost $3k+. Tim C even screwed the Apple Car project, missed the chance for social media, missed taking the iPhone to the next level, will foldable save it?! Missed AppleTV. Missed the next iPad tech. Missed Apple Energy market. Missed too much.
Many behemoths, thought to be GODLY, unbreakable, such as Kodak, Sony, Grundig, Loewe, Blaupunkt, IBM, Dell, HP, Compaq, SyQuest, Iomega, Nokia, Blackberry etc. have all disappeared, as they sat on their past success laurels, did not move forward with time, lost the Zeitgeist, but Apple has weathered the Millennium / Dot Com Bust & BoOm etc., only to still falter at ai. How the hell does the virtual assistant / Siri & Machine Learning pioneer not see ai?! Or do they, but are quiet as usual, launching new tech like a tsunami? Is Apple hyping ai but has no vision or is the news media hyping/exaggerating it? Does Apple need to buy Perplexity etc. or can they do their own? Does this depend on a new ceo or are they getting a handle of it internally?
A new ceo must come from OUTSIDE. But who in the world is this sophisticated, mature, professional, has the iQ/eQ/creativity/wisdom/character/charm to see far beyond, connect the dots, connect all the Apple departments etc. to reach the essence of Apple, launch the Next Great Thing…?! Perhaps, it will take an iSteve-like tyrant, as the current over-democratized Apple leadership is a total mess, stemming from too many meetings, too many opinions, too many chefs in the kitchen, not enough clear vision, though their woke vision & individual rights are clear, but it does not help produce Greatness/Genius products/services. Hopefully the tyrannical, meaning disciplined, pro-active next ceo, will make the right choices, see the right vision for Apple, in honor of Steve Jobs’ Jandali’s baby. Which strangely enough, his own wife Laurene Powell seems to have been at traitor by joining Jony Ive on OpenAI $6.5B io. An Apple CEO needs character. Would Ive have lead Apple had he not quit for Apple losing its mojo?
Bring back Scott Forstall PLEASE!!!!!
Forstall is 55 but I think he would bring vision. Tim Cook booted all the people who were visionaries out of Apple including Ives, so he could implement his plan to make money but not seamless product experiences.