In May 2024, Bloomberg ran a feature story by Mark Gurman under the headline, “ Tim Cook Can’t Run Apple Forever. Who’s Next? ” The subhead: “John Ternus, the head of hardware engineering, is emerging as a potential successor to the CEO.” The nut grafs from that piece: There’s no reason to assume that a change at the helm is imminent. Cook may be older than the CEOs of the other tech companies at the top of the S&P 500, but he’s hardly the oldest person running a major corporation. “If Trump or Biden can be president at 80, Tim Cook can be CEO of Apple for many more years. It used to be automatic that CEOs are moved out at 65,” says someone who knows him. “The world has changed.” While Cook hasn’t given any indication how long he’ll remain in charge — other than telling Dua Lipa it would be “a while” — people close to him believe he’ll be CEO at least another three years. After that, they say, he’ll start a charitable foundation to donate the wealth he accumulated at Apple.…