Apple News, April 2026

April was a historic month for Apple: Tim Cook announced his departure as CEO after fifteen years, the AirPods Max 2 hit stores, and Apple posted another record quarter. Here’s the roundup.

Tim Cook steps down as CEO, John Ternus takes over

On April 20, Apple announced that Tim Cook is stepping down as CEO after fifteen years at the helm. Effective September 1, John Ternus, until now head of hardware engineering and with Apple since 2001, takes over. Cook remains CEO until then to ensure a smooth transition, after which he becomes executive chairman of the board, a role in which he will continue to maintain relationships with policymakers, among other things.

AirPods Max 2 now available

On April 1, the new AirPods Max 2 officially went on sale, following the announcement in late March. The new H2 chip brings Adaptive Audio, Conversation Awareness, Voice Isolation, and, for the first time, live translation to the over ear headphones.

Google confirms Gemini powered Siri

During Google Cloud Next, Google’s cloud chief Thomas Kurian publicly confirmed that Gemini will power a significantly improved, context aware Siri, set to fully arrive with iOS 27 and the iPhone 18 in September. Siri has already been using Gemini for better context recognition since iOS 26.4; according to Bloomberg journalist Mark Gurman, the deal with Google is worth about 1 billion dollars per year.

Another record quarter

On April 30, Apple announced its results for the second fiscal quarter: 111.2 billion dollars in revenue (+17% year over year, the best March quarter ever) and net profit of 29.6 billion dollars. iPhone revenue reached a quarterly record thanks to the iPhone 17, and Services revenue rose to an all time high of nearly 31 billion dollars. Cook did warn of significantly higher memory chip costs in the coming quarters.

That was the Apple news for April 2026. See you next month for another roundup.