Apple
US maker of the iPhone, Mac and related services, based in Cupertino, California.
John Ternus took over as Apple's chief executive on 1 September 2026, after a handover announced on 20 April, with Tim Cook becoming executive chairman. Ternus inherits a €500m EU penalty under the Digital Markets Act over App Store steering rules, levied by April 2026.
Last refreshed: 12 October 2026 · Appears in 3 active topics
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Media's AI PivotBackground
Apple's leadership changed hands on 1 September 2026. John Ternus, who joined the product design team in 2001 and later ran hardware engineering, became chief executive. Tim Cook, in the post since August 2011, became executive chairman, and Arthur Levinson took the role of lead Independent director. Apple said in April that its market value had grown from about $350bn to roughly $4 trillion under Cook. Second-quarter revenue reached $111.2bn, with research spending up 33% to $11.4bn; the third quarter, to 27 June, brought $109.4bn, 16% higher than a year earlier.
In 2026 the company's security exposure arrived mostly through third parties. On 31 March the IRGC put Apple on a list of 18 US technology firms it called targets, alleging they supplied AI used in strikes on Iran, and told staff near their offices to leave. In June the World Leaks group claimed 630GB taken from Tata Electronics, an Apple contract manufacturer, and said the haul included Apple manufacturing drawings.
Apple's 2021 lawsuit against NSO Group over the Pegasus spyware still carries weight. Britain, the US and the Netherlands treated it as the precedent when they exposed Iranian spyware on 15 September 2026. Anthropic also named Apple on 8 April as one of 12 partners given restricted access to its Claude Mythos Preview model through Project Glasswing.
Apple drew an early heavy DMA penalty
By April 2026 the European Commission had fined Apple €500m under the Digital Markets Act over its App Store anti-steering rules, which stopped developers telling customers about cheaper ways to pay outside Apple's store. Apple had argued that those rules already complied with the act. Its penalty was the largest in the first round of substantial DMA sanctions, ahead of a €200m fine on Meta.
Against Apple's annual revenue of more than $380bn, €500m is a modest sum. The DMA ceiling matters more: the act allows fines of up to 10% of global turnover, and the Commission kept using it through 2026 against Google and Meta, so the App Store's payment terms stay exposed to further action in Europe.
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Written with AI from Lowdown's published reporting. Not individually reviewed by an editor. Updated 12 October 2026. Editorial standards.