Apple said yesterday that longtime CEO Tim Cook will step down as CEO later this year and transition to executive chairman of the board. As many on the Street expected, he will be succeeded by John Ternus, currently Apple's senior vice president of hardware engineering. Ternus will take the helm on Sept. 1.

"Investors will view this as mixed, as this was a sudden move to executive chairman [and] there was clearly a push for change at the C-suite. These will be big shoes to fill, and the timing of Cook exiting stage left as CEO could make sense but also creates questions," Wedbush tech analyst Dan Ives said in a note.

Shares fell 1% in pre-market trading on today(Tuesday).

"Apple is making a major transition on its AI strategy, and longtime CEO and legendary Cook leaving now is a surprise. There was growing pressure on Apple to develop a successful AI strategy, and Cook must feel that the pieces are now in place heading into WWDC to hand over the reins at this time. Cook leaves a lasting legacy in Cupertino, and there will be a lot of pressure on Ternus to produce success out of the gates, especially on the AI front."

Here are seven early to-do's for Ternus as Apple CEO. Notching early wins could go a long way in Ternus building Street cred and silencing any doubt he is the right person at the right time to lead the tech giant:

1. Make Apple AI relevant.

Ternus will get a head start on this from Cook, but he needs to build on it and be unafraid to ink other partnerships. Apple and Google (GOOG) recently entered a multiyear partnership to integrate a custom version of the Gemini AI model as the new foundation for Siri and Apple Intelligence. This collaboration is worth an estimated $1 billion annually.

2. Set Apple up for life after the iPhone.

OpenAI officially acquired Jony Ive’s AI hardware startup, io Products, Inc., in May 2025 for approximately $6.5 billion to form its internal devices division. Despite recent shifts in focus, OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) is still expected to release its first piece of hardware with an eye toward challenging the iPhone this year. Ternus has to use his extensive hardware knowledge to think about what life after the iPhone looks like — and it needs to be more than the foldable device rumored to debut later this year.

3. Reset the size of the Apple workforce in the age of AI, like others in Big Tech.

Big Tech players from Oracle (ORCL) to Amazon (AMZN) to Meta (META) are firing people en masse amid pushes to adopt AI workflows. As is customary with a new CEO, Ternus may want to use his new position to resize Apple's workforce and reallocate those savings to growth investments or shareholder-friendly actions. Doing so would give Ternus an early win with shareholders and Wall Street, even though the headlines wouldn't look good. Apple is estimated to have 80,000 workers in the US and more than 160,000 globally.

4. Decide if Apple wants to put more gas on content ambitions to challenge Amazon and Netflix — or pull back.

Apple has spent an estimated $25 billion to $30 billion on original content for Apple TV+ since its 2019 debut. That's a lot of money for not a lot of hits, other than, say, The Morning Show with Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon and the F1 movie with Brad Pitt. Ternus has to figure out if Apple wants to go all in on content like Netflix (NFLX) and Amazon (AMZN).

5. Refresh the Apple management team.

It's standard practice for any incoming CEO. I suspect he has his preferred management team written up on a doc.

6. Befriend President Trump as Tim Cook did.

Tim Cook has conducted a masterclass in working with the unpredictable Trump. Ternus cannot waste time talking to Trump and investing time in building that relationship.

7. Meet Berkshire Hathaway CEO, Greg Abel.

Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-B) — now led by Greg Abel rather than Tim Cook fan Warren Buffett — holds approximately 228 million Apple shares. The stake is valued at roughly $62 billion, making it the largest single holding in Berkshire’s stock portfolio by a significant margin. It will be good for Ternus to establish a strong relationship with the fellow new CEO Abel. There is nothing like having a Berkshire seal of approval, especially when times get tough.

In additionally, TSMC is reportedly working to build 1-nanometer chips by 2029; Apple could be the big beneficiary.

Apple Silicon has another big journey to take, one that means Apple will probably be the first to introduce 1.4- and 1-nanometer chips inside its systems. If that happens, Macs, iPhones, and iPads will continue to lead the industry in performance per watt.

Why do I say this? Mainly because reports claim TSMC is working to build sub 1nm chips by 2029 — and Apple remains that company’s most important customer, despite competition from AI server manufacturers today.

Demand for AI servers could yet slow, given the looming energy crisis and the trend toward on-prem and edge AI services. I don’t think the current level of investment in AI is sustainable, which is why I think Apple will continue to be TSMC’s lead customer once that bubble, inevitably, bursts.

The latest news is that TSMC intends to begin trial production of its sub-1nm A10 process tech by 2029, setting up Apple to be the first big company to use these new processors inside its hardware when volume production begins.

What’s interesting is that this move to 1nm isn’t just about making transistors smaller, but also about ensuring close integration between chips, memory, and energy systems. A report in 2021 said TSMC was able to reach 1nm by using bismuth instead of silicon in the design.

Apple, of course, already works very, very hard to integrate those different elements on its existing processors, which is why it delivers better performance at lower wattage than competitors. That integration means its systems can accomplish a great deal more from lower quantities of memory, which helps protect the company’s margins against rapidly accelerating RAM prices.

We currently expect up to 30% improvement in both performance and power efficiency from these new chip designs. That implies that iPhone Pro models introduced in 2030 (or possibly 2031) will be powered by these new chips.

TSMC is expected to introduce 1.6nm chips in the next 18 months, though Apple might choose to skip that iteration to guarantee a leadership position once the 1.4nm TSMC process hits in 2028. That iteration will deliver yet another big speed and performance boost to Apple’s devices, with Apple becoming the first PC, tablet, or smartphone manufacturer to ship 1.4nm systems at scale.

What benefits can we expect? During TSMC’s 2025 North American Symposium the company said 1.4nm chips should be 15% faster and consume around 30% less power than the processors inside Apple’s current devices. That’s all good, but it is also interesting to note that the iPhone 17 series hasn’t even made the leap to 2nm as yet, with Apple using TSMC’s N3P process. So, the company has lots of scope to secure the future of Apple Silicon.

If it is correct that Apple will skip TSMC’s 1.6nm process and then climb aboard the 1.4nm and 1nm chips, we could see the two big processor development chapters between now and 2030. This year we can see it introduce 2nm chips, with 1.4nm to follow probably in 2028 and the huge leap to sub-1nm processors to follow in 2030-31.

As these chips will be deployed across Apple’s hardware platforms, including within new designs we don’t know about yet, it means you can anticipate highly significant performance gains wherever in the ecosystem you happen to sit. Whether you’re looking at the next-generation MacBook Neo, MacBook Pro, iPhone or iPhone e, you’ll see impressive performance gains unlocked in all into the last half of this decade.

Those performance gains, combined with improved energy consumption, allows Apple’s hardware designers to work towards thinner, lighter and smaller devices in a range of design configurations — some of which could not have existed before. (Think about spectacles with the kind of performance you once got from a Mac.) The way ahead is clear. Apple has a wide open road for chip design, and while tensions between today’s US and China could derail some of these plans, TSMC’s continued investment in fabrication capacity in the US might help mitigate against even that potential calamity.