I was watching the Apple Event, but not for this year's version of "bEsT iPhOne eVeR mAdE (wHiCh cAn nOw fOLd)" but for John Ternus’s first Apple keynote as CEO. Something about it felt different. I kept noticing one tiny word “I”.
In my head, Tim Cook has always been a “We” type of a leader. "We’re excited". "We’ve built". "We can’t wait for you to experience it".
But Ternus seemed to use a lot more "I". He sounded more personal and opinionated. More willing to put himself into the story and share his perspective. "I continue to be inspired…", "What I like to think of as an intelligent personal hub".
I couldn’t quite put a finger on it, so yes I went down the rabbit hole. Spun up a research agent to investigate. Was there actually something here, or was I just hearing a new voice and mistaking it for a new approach?
My research agent compared the keynote transcripts, counted the pronouns across the years and the counts gave my hunch some backing. Cook used “I/me/my” once for every 7.5 “we” references (~13.3%) from 2022-25. Whereas Ternus used “I/me/my” once for just 3 “we” references (~33.3%).
So Ternus' absolute rate of "I" is just moderately higher than Cook's. But what is interesting is how differently each of them used it in speech…
Cook’s “I” usually expressed emotion—not an idea
When Cook did use “I,” it overwhelmingly fell into two categories.
Emotional endorsement:
“I’m so excited about Apple Watch Ultra.”
“I love the new Apple Watch…”
“I’m really proud of the Apple Watch team…”
“I can’t wait for you to experience these amazing products.”
OR
Presenter Mechanics
“I’d like to show it to you now.”
“I’d like to introduce it to you now.”
“I’d like to provide a couple of updates.”
These statements tell us how Cook feels or what he will do next. They rarely tell us how Cook personally understands the product or the future.
His underlying structure was:
We designed it.
Our teams achieved it.
I’m excited to show it to you.
The “I” functions like an approval stamp.
Ternus used “I” to claim a point of view
Ternus’ most important uses were completely different:
“I have spent much of my life at this company…”
“I continue to be inspired…”
“What I like to think of as an intelligent personal hub.”
“I started the day with the idea of an intelligent personal hub…”
These are not merely expressions of excitement. They establish:
His personal history
His interpretation of Apple
His way of thinking about the iPhone
His central idea for the presentation
Just think about it for a second. The phrase “what I like to think of as…” is particularly unusual for a modern Apple keynote. Apple could easily have written:
“We think of iPhone as an intelligent personal hub.”
That would sound like a conventional Apple corporate position. Instead, the script deliberately attributes the framing to Ternus himself.
I think this makes the audience feel that they are hearing a Product Leader's own thesis, not a multi-billion dollar company's marketing copy.
Personally, I think I liked that. Someone explaining the thinking behind a product, and putting their name to that thinking.
Initially, I also thought Ternus had simply spent much more time speaking, but he had only about a minute more than Cook’s previous event. What stood out was his role: he introduced the central idea, returned to it, and delivered the “one more thing” reveal himself. There was a thread running through the event that belonged to him.
At this point, I had a fairly satisfying explanation: Apple was giving its new CEO a more individual voice.
Then, Naturally another question came up in my head…
What was Tim Cook like when HE was the new guy? 🕰️ ⏮️
With that, I sent off my research agent a little over a decade back to October 4, 2011. The iPhone 4S launch. Cook’s first product keynote as a new CEO, roughly six weeks after Steve Jobs resigned.
[Quick Note: I know it’s easy to blur the timeline looking back, but Jobs was still alive that day. He passed away the next day, while leaving behind a company, and a way of thinking about products, that would carry his imprint for decades to come. Tim Cook was literally stepping into a role that the world still associated with Steve.]
Now, How do you think Tim Cook began his debut keynote?
By talking about himself.
Yes, he spoke about loving Apple, his nearly fourteen years there, and the privilege of taking on the role. He even joked about it being his first product launch as CEO, as if anyone in that room needed reminding.
This was interesting. I had gone out looking for the ultimate “We” guy. Here he was, saying “I”. Quite a lot, actually.
Fun Fact: Across Cook’s CEO-led sections in 2011, the balance of personal to collective pronouns was about one to three. Almost identical to Ternus’ debut!
Okay. Well. That complicated my neat little theory 😓
Maybe I’d been comparing a new CEO introducing himself with a familiar CEO who no longer needed to. The Tim Cook I remembered was the one who had spent years becoming Apple’s voice.
But the similarity only went so far…
Once Cook finished introducing himself, he moved into stores, sales, growth and market opportunity. His personal connection to Apple opened the door. The company’s momentum did the rest.
Ternus kept his own thinking in the foreground. He introduced an idea about the iPhone, developed it through the event, and personally delivered the big reveal.
That difference became clearer when I found some news coverage from 2011. Wired’s analysis picked out Cook’s attention to the enormous handset market Apple had yet to reach. In hindsight, it feels like an early glimpse of his priorities: taking extraordinary products to an extraordinary number of people, scaling the company.
Carmine Gallo’s review in Forbes looked at how Cook carried forward Jobs’s presentation approach while sharing the stage, but differed in energy and presence. Another interesting thing was that Cook didn’t introduce the iPhone 4S himself. Phil Schiller did it!
Whereas Ternus got to own the big "one more thing" moment in his debut.
So even when both men said “I”, they were establishing different kinds of authority. Cook showed why he could lead Apple forward. Ternus gave us a sense of how he thought about the products that would take it there.
And maybe that makes sense when you consider whose shoes each was stepping into.
Cook was succeeding Steve Jobs. The question hanging over Apple was whether the company could keep creating without the person so closely associated with its creations. Familiar faces, familiar presentation choices and evidence of a thriving business offered reassurance.
Ternus was succeeding the man who had spent fifteen years successfully providing that reassurance. So there was room to make the individual more visible again.
Was all of this deliberate positioning? We can only observe the script and the staging but can’t know every conversation behind them. And pronoun counts certainly aren’t a personality test.
Still, I find the possibility of this positioning interesting: a new CEO’s “I” might help us get to know the person before we accept them as the voice of “We”.
I just followed by instinct whether "Ternus sounded different from Cook". But going back to Cook’s debut made me realise I also needed to ask: "which version of Cook?"
I know I’ll be listening for that in the next few events now. Once the introductions are over, does Ternus keep bringing his own POV into the product story?
Phew. All this started from an “I”. And no, not the one in new iPhone Duo 😉
Research footnote: This exploration was developed with Codex Agent. Pronoun counts and speaking-time estimates come from our comparison of English captions for the 2011 and 2022–26 iPhone keynotes. They are approximate; interpretations of Apple’s intent are my own reading of the presentations.