Tim Cook’s Apple reign ends with triumphs and betrayals

The Tim Cook era at Apple ended Tuesday after 15 years.

John Ternus succeeded Cook as CEO, becoming Apple’s first new leader since Cook took over the business from cofounder Steve Jobs six weeks before he died in 2011. Cook has become executive chairman and will remain involved in dealings with policymakers.

Cook inherited a company valued at $350 billion. He leaves the CEO’s office with Apple worth more than $4.5 trillion, Reuters reports. For LGBTQ+ people, Cook’s tenure carried significance beyond Apple’s balance sheet. In 2014, he became the first CEO of a Fortune 500 company to come out as gay.

“I’m proud to be gay, and I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me,” Cook wrote in Bloomberg Businessweek.

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Cook later opposed discriminatory “religious freedom” legislation, and Apple became an early corporate supporter of the Equality Act. But his record grew more complicated during President Donald Trump’s return to power. Cook personally donated $1 million to Trump’s 2025 inauguration. Months later, he appeared beside Trump in the Oval Office with a glass engraving mounted on a 24-karat gold base as Apple announced another $100 billion in U.S. investment. Apple secured an exemption from Trump’s threatened semiconductor tariffs.

In January, Cook attended a private White House screening of the first lady’s film Melania just hours after Border Patrol agents killed Minneapolis nurse Alex Pretti, prompting boycott calls. He later said he was “heartbroken” by events in Minneapolis but did not condemn Trump or his administration.

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Cook insisted in March that his relationship with the White House concerned policy rather than politics. “I’m not a political person on either side,” he told ABC’s Michael Strahan. “I’m kind of straight down the middle.” Cook had not said he used his access to defend LGBTQ+ people while Trump dismantled protections and targeted transgender Americans.

Ternus’s public test arrives immediately. Apple will hold its September product event, themed “Surprise and shine,” on September 9 at 10 a.m. Pacific. Apple has not identified the products, but the company is expected to unveil iPhones and potentially its first foldable model.

The launch will offer a glimpse of how visibly Ternus intends to lead a company that has struggled to keep pace in artificial intelligence and delayed its promised Siri overhaul.