John Ternus just took over as Apple CEO a week ago, on Sept. 1, succeeding Tim Cook after serving as the company’s senior vice president of hardware engineering.
While it’s not Ternus’ first appearance at an iPhone event — he introduced the iPhone Air during Apple’s September 2025 event — it is his first as the chief executive running the show. Whether he’ll have his own flair or present it differently than Cook or Steve Jobs did remains to be seen, but we’re expecting the usual run of events with Ternus just a week into the job.
As the head of the company, Ternus will also be on the hook for any massive price increases we see across the iPhone 18 lineup, even though those will have been decided long before he took the reins.
Ternus is a “products guy,” coming from a background of mechanical engineering and working his way up the ranks of Apple over 25 years on the hardware engineering side. He worked across many flagship devices, including the iPad, AirPods, iPhone, Apple Watch and, most recently, the MacBook Neo.
“There is no better person to take the helm of the company,” Cook said in his farewell note as Apple CEO last week, adding that Ternus is “brilliant and wonderful and capable.”
“Few people understand what it takes to build products that change the world the way John does,” Cook wrote.
Ternus added in his own note to Apple employees on his first day as CEO that Wednesday’s launch would be “phenomenal” and “huge.”
“I’m just as excited about what lies beyond that, including the incredible products already in the works and the ones we haven’t even imagined yet that we’ll dream up and create together,” Ternus added.
Cook now serves as executive chair of Apple, so we’re not expecting to see him present any of the new Apple devices on Wednesday.