Apple CEO John Ternus has joined X, with his first tweet of "hello" inevitably becoming a very popular post as he makes a rare social move.
The CEOs of Apple tend to be social people, and in modern times that means having social media accounts. As such, that means new CEO John Ternus has to get one too.
The X account for @johnternus is now live and visible, coinciding with his first official day in the Apple driving seat.
The account is, as expected, extremely bare, having launched privately in June 2026 according to the profile. It so far has only one post, the lower-case "hello."
hello
— John Ternus (@johnternus) September 1, 2026
It is unclear whether it is Ternus making a tentative first step into social media, or if he's playing on Apple's use of the term greeting users to their new devices. Given his previous lack of social media history in general, it's probably both.
The five-letter message has helped generate a lot of attention for the account in a very short period of time. At the time of writing, the post has been live for 35 minutes, with a total of 748 thousand views, 31 thousand likes, 3.6 thousand retweets, and 5 thousand comments.
The account also has, at the time of writing, 34.6 followers. It's a far cry from the 19.8 million followers amassed by Tim Cook, but it's still early days.
So far, Ternus has only followed three other X accounts: Apple, Tim Cook, and Greg Joswiak. He may want to add @AppleInsider in the future.
It remains to be seen how Ternus will use his new mouthpiece. But, bearing in mind his lack of previous social posts, it's probably going to toe the company line rather than make any bombastic posts.
