Apple’s incoming CEO doesn’t have a single post on his LinkedIn feed, and his profile is nearly blank.
John Ternus, Apple’s hardware chief and a longtime company veteran, is set to take the reins of one of the world’s most admired companies on Sept. 1, succeeding Tim Cook. The outgoing CEO will become executive chairman and retain his megaphone of over 15 million on X, while handing the operating job to someone with almost no public presence at all.
Despite leading a cornerstone of Silicon Valley, Ternus maintains a strikingly minimal digital footprint: just two roles listed on LinkedIn and no visible activity. Following Apple’s succession announcement in April, social media users were quick to seize on the irony. “In a world obsessed with personal brands, Apple just chose the guy who doesn’t have one,” one LinkedIn user wrote.
That makes Apple’s new boss an outlier at a moment when over two-thirds of Fortune 100 CEOs now have at least one social media profile, and of those post at least monthly, according to a 2025 report from communications advisory firm H/Advisors Abernathy. His quiet feed is hard to miss: as companies increasingly push their executives to cultivate personal brands online, Apple’s next chief executive appears to have opted out entirely. And while his predecessor, Tim Cook, has no LinkedIn presence of his own, he still maintains a massive audience on X, where he shares routine updates and product announcements with his over 15 million followers. Apple did not respond to Fortune’s requests for comment for this article.
