Tim Cook will be at Apple's Surprise and Shine event on September 9, but he will not be in it. The former CEO now carries the title of Executive Chairman, and John Ternus opens his tenure by announcing the iPhone Ultra, Apple's first foldable, arriving against a Galaxy Z Fold 8 that our review found nearly creaseless. That seating chart is not sentiment.
Cook gets a VIP seat, not a spot in the iPhone Ultra video
Bloomberg's lead Apple reporter Mark Gurman, in his latest Power On newsletter, says Cook will most likely sit in the VIP section of the event screening at Apple Park, alongside press and other notable guests. Gurman has been the most reliable Apple insider in the business for years, so I am treating this as close to settled.
He will almost certainly not appear in the pre-recorded event video, though. Cook is still expected to be photographed afterward handling the iPhone Ultra and possibly the iPhone 18 Pro models, which is the part Apple seems perfectly happy to have on camera.
In our article where we addressed Cook's expected attendance at the Apple event someone in the comments asked who cares about any of this, and that is a fair thing to ask. The reason it matters is that Apple chose to spend its riskiest hardware launch in a decade as the vehicle for a CEO introduction. Attendance in a VIP row is courtesy, but absence from the tape is an editorial decision, and Apple makes those frame by frame.
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I look forward to working with you very closely in my new role. Needless to say, I still plan to be very hands-on.
John Ternus, Apple CEO, in his memo to Apple employees, April 2026
We made the case back in May that the handover was timed around this event rather than around Cook's calendar. Now we know how far Apple is willing to take it.
Where do you think Apple is headed under John Ternus?
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What the iPhone Ultra bet says about Apple right now
If you are buying a phone this month, none of this changes the hardware in front of you. It does tell you what Apple thinks it is selling, though. The company avoided this form factor for seven years while Samsung, Huawei and Motorola shipped generation after generation, and it picked this of all launches to introduce the person now running everything.
If you are already carrying a foldable, the fair question is whether any of that should worry you. Our Galaxy Z Fold 8 review found the crease practically gone and the new titanium structure genuinely sturdier under the screen, and our Fold 8 Ultra review called it not quite zero crease but one of the best we have seen.
Still, we also photographed a two-week-old Fold 8 Ultra with a deeper crease than a four-month-old Oppo Find N6, so nobody has closed the durability question, Apple included. Fold 8 owners lose nothing on September 9. What changes is that the crease argument stops being a niche Android debate and becomes an iPhone one, which tends to move a lot faster and a lot louder.
The market numbers explain the timing better than the keynote will. Counterpoint expects foldable shipments to grow 21% in 2026, with Apple taking 25% of the category in its debut year while Samsung slides from 40% to 32%.
IDC, meanwhile, has the overall smartphone market falling a record 16.7% this year, with foldables the only segment still growing, at 12.6%.
So Apple is putting a brand-new CEO in front of the one category that is still expanding while everything around it contracts. For the rest of us, that is the reason the Ultra will be pushed hard in stores and carrier promos, whatever the price ends up being.
The real test of Apple's new CEO is about three years out
Ternus is an operations and hardware CEO opening with hardware, which is the friendliest first assignment he could have been handed. The iPhone Ultra is also a product he personally shepherded as head of hardware engineering, so September 9 is not really his exam. It is closer to a victory lap for work he already finished.
Cook and Ternus at Apple Park on the day the handover was announced. | Image by Apple
The exam is the first product he greenlights from nothing, and on Apple's timelines none of us see that for roughly three years. Everything shipping between now and then was approved under Cook. That includes the smart glasses Cook spent his final years chasing, which Gurman puts at the very end of 2027 in their display-free form, with true AR glasses expected around 2028.
So if you plan to grade Ternus next week, you are grading a presentation. It should be noted that the more useful question is whether he keeps the projects Cook cared about, or quietly moves the money somewhere else.
What I will be watching once the video starts
I keep coming back to how deliberate all of this is. Apple could have given Cook a farewell moment on screen, a handshake, a passing of the torch, any of the obvious choices, and it decided the first thing you hear from the new CEO should be the words "Apple's first foldable" with nothing else attached to them.
I would personally love to see the cameras find Cook in that VIP row for a second or two, because he has earned that much. But I already know Apple will not do it, and I think that restraint is the most honest thing the company will say about itself all day.
Johanna Romero is a Senior News Writer at PhoneArena, covering mobile technology news across Android, iOS, wearables, and the Google ecosystem she knows best. Drawing on 15 years in IT and tech support from 2007 to 2022, she brings a user-friendly eye for the practical features and lesser-known tricks readers care about. Google named her an official #TeamPixel member in 2022, and she also reviews the latest devices on her YouTube channel, JoJo the Techie.
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