“If Steve Jobs ever steps down, Tim Cook’s elevation to COO confirms him as the top candidate to fill his shoes. Actually, make that to try to fill them,” Arik Hesseldahl and Peter Burrows write for BusinessWeek. “Tim Cook just moved up in the Apple Computer world — or so it might appear. Cook, Apple’s vice-president for worldwide sales, was named chief operating officer on Oct. 14. Apple explained the move by saying it’s a job that Cook, in effect, already had.”
“What does the new title mean for Cook’s role as a would-be successor to Jobs? Apple certainly needs to resolve the matter at some stage. Succession ‘is the biggest risk to Apple’s story,’ says Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster. Yet, while the promotion would appear to bolster Cook’s position as a front-runner, it by no means seals the deal,” Hesseldahl and Burrows write. “First of all, there’s no indication that Jobs is giving any thought to leaving. ‘As the head of a public company, Steve has a fiduciary responsibility to think about having a succession plan,’ says Creative Strategies analyst Tim Bajarin, a longtime Apple observer. ‘But Steve isn’t going to retire for a long time. He loves what he’s doing, and barring a major problem, I don’t seem him stepping down now or anytime in the near future.'”
Hesseldahl and Burrows write, “What’s more, Jobs is a tough act to follow. ‘They have the most charismatic leader in the business world, and Steve Jobs is Apple,’ says Munster. ‘When he wasn’t there, Apple had a lot of problems. You can’t find a successor to Steve Jobs. There’s no one that could replace him, within the company…. It’s not what Apple is thinking. It’s what does Steve think.'”
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Our best hopes are anti-aging medical breakthroughs and/or cloning. Make him live 200 years or figure out a way to download the contents of his brain, clone him, and upload to the blank slate. No offense to Tim Cook, but we still like Jonathan Ive, he’s our dark horse; it’s a charisma thing. No matter what, we hope Steve Jobs stays Apple’s CEO for decades more, he’s as irreplaceable as they come.
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What happens when Steve Jobs dies? – August 20, 2003