“We don’t know what’s wrong with Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive. But it’s got to be serious. You don’t take a six-month leave of absence, as he is, just because you’ve got a stomachache,” Saul Hansell reports for The New York Times.
“So that raises the question, for investors and customers, about whether Apple’s amazing record of innovation and financial success are at risk while Mr. Jobs is on leave — and even more so if he never returns,” Hansell writes.
“In the short run, Apple is on a roll… But the risk to Apple is far higher if we imagine the grim possibility that Steve Jobs is unable to return to work… the essence of Steve Jobs — the obsessive visionary who involves himself in the smallest details of Apple’s products and advertising — has fostered what is in effect a corporate operating system that will need to be completely upgraded whenever a successor is named,” Hansell writes. “After all, however talented the executives at Apple, one skill they all need is an understanding of how to work with, and when appropriate, defer to, the whims of Steve Jobs.”
Hansell writes, “It’s almost impossible to imagine the next chief executive of Apple having the same sort of autocratic and impulsive personality… [however] Steve Jobs can be replaced, even if he can’t be duplicated. There are lots of ways to run successful and innovative companies. And Apple couldn’t be in better shape, financially or in its public image, to withstand a change.”
Hansell writes, “But the inevitable process of reworking the entire corporate operating system, changing the culture of how decisions get made and how executives relate to each other, entails enough risk that investors and customers are right to wonder whether Apple after Steve Jobs may lose its way.”
Full article here.
This article depressed me to the point I may just take tommorow off to cry in a corner somewhere.
Get better soon steve 🙁
“What if Steve Jobs never comes back to Apple?”
Nothing, Apple is running Job’s philosophy, so even if Jobs left apple, his ideas won’t.
@Roy
1. El Jobso takes a much needed break
2. Gets some TLC on some beach somewhere
3. Recovers from what might be nothing that serious at all
4. Returns to a triumphant Keynote, stronger than ever.
I WANT TO BELIEVE
Doesn’t anyone understand business! A hard-charging visionary is critical for a young, growing company to be successful. But as the company grows, it brings on managers who are similar to the leader, possess the same traits, and believe in the same things. Then the visionary founder becomes less and less important to the company’s success and serves as more of a figurehead. This is Apple today.
Apple isn’t loaded with a bunch of incompetent rubes waiting in line outside Jobs office everyday for directions on how to manage the company. Instead, is it filled with smart, innovative managers who think and act like Jobs, albeit without the level of charisma and showmanship that Jobs is gifted with.
If someday the Golden Gate Bridge were to suddenly disappear, San Francisco would not instantly change from a successful, thriving city into a Detroit. The same is true of Apple.
It would be a knock to Apple if Jobs never went back, but it would survive. Unless Jobs came up with every single idea for the products they sell, then Apple will be screwed.
Last time Steve left Apple they thought they didn’t need him. This time Apple knows there is no better way to run the company than the way Steve does. Therefore they will continue to do things the way Steve would do things.
Viktor couldn’t have said it better… “Apple is running Job’s philosophy, so even if Jobs left apple, his ideas won’t.
Maybe Steve won’t return, so what?
As long as he recovers it’s all right with me.
I’m sure already has a pretty good 5 or so year roadmap in place that Steve has set. After that probably all bets are off if he doesn’t return.
Also while a bad comparison, many thougth WalMart would falter without Sam running the show. So we just won’t know till years down the road.
I am sure Dan Lyons wouldn’t mind running the company. Obviously HE thinks he can do better.
I just hope he’ll be able to survive on half his pay. He’s going to have to make that 50c go a long way….
“A hard-charging visionary is critical for a young, growing company to be successful. But as the company grows, it brings on managers who are similar to the leader, possess the same traits, and believe in the same things.”
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Correct; no matter how totalitarian Jobs is, those could would feel this as a burden would go away from Apple long time ago.
Also, Steven himself said couple of years ago that you (meaning himself) can not harshly order people around more often that once a year. Or you would loose them.
So people in the team have their own minds and their own ideas. And they perform good not because they blindly taking orders from Jobs about every little thing. Steven trusts them whole areas, even though he participates in almost everything — from interface button to NY’s giant glass cube design.
Apple will hardly go back to 1996 year even if Jobs will not return.
correction to the first sentence: from “could would” to “who would”.
First off: This article is desperate for attention. When speculative questions like this are asked without providing any resolution, what exactly is the point? (A) Filling type space on a page (B) Paying the writer’s paycheck (C) FUD.
Second off: What Steve Jobs IS to Apple is the spirit of the entrepreneur. Jobs is one of the most brilliant entrepreneurs of the age. Despite the rants about his attitude, he is also brilliantly balanced in his approach toward people. An entrepreneur who can comprehend and get along with both R&D;and marketing personalities is worth his weight in gold. Jobs is NOT NOT NOT an inventor. DUH. What he does is provide a habitat for invention that is both competitive and rewarding. He personally is part of both aspects of that system and he expects the same attitude within the rest of Apple.
Apple is not Steve Jobs. Apple is the Steve Jobs inspired habitat, with or without him. So, if Jobs disappears today, BFD. He has already designed, as manager, a company with the inventive and innovative habitat.
If Jobs disappeared, there would be the usual drift that happens with ALL companies: Marketing morons (versus marketing mavens) do their usual drive for power due to their basic insecurities, undermining the entrepreneurial spirit in the company, instead demanding a relational habitat within which they feel secure, eventually attaining power, and not having a frickin’ clue what to do with it. This is how companies mature, age and die.
And I can think of no other company on the planet to be SLOWER in this process than Apple would be at this very moment. Go worry about all the other companies on the planet who are engaged in the aging process.
So what to do right now? Watch the fools sell off their Apple stock, laugh and laugh at them, then buy up the stock when it drops into the artificial abyss provided by these dumdums. Thank you very much.
:-Derek
Shareholder will eventually realize that Mr. Jobs’ health issues have led to too much uncertainty. Without Mr. Jobs the market will price that uncertainty out of the market freeing Apple to climb the wall of worry everybody is facing: the economy.
Jobs is the Rembrandt, the da Vinci of Apple. Everyone else in the company is just an assistant to Jobs; helping Jobs create his visions.
Once Rembrandt and da Vinci died there were no more Rembrandt or da Vinci paintings painted.
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Apple already did the experiment of:
“What happens if Steve Jobs is no longer the CEO of Apple”
Result?
Total catastrophe.
Apple almost died. Remember CEOs Skully, Amelio?….ugh.
Without Jobs running Apple, the next CEO Apple is a bunch of numbers and charts and pleasing the stock holders. Not taking risks, no vision.
Want proof? Has anybody seen any of the top management out today meeting the press, giving interviews, going on TV talking up the great vision of Apple continuing?
Answer: No.
They only know the vision that Jobs has at the moment.
once he successfully launched iPhone Apple’s future for the next decade was set…
something tells me though that Papermaster is a piece of this puzzle
Bill Gates is going to take over, this is why he stepped down at Microsoft.
All part of the plan…..
Bullshit! Steve Jobs is fantastic… But he is just a human being! One day we come, one day we leave. It’s all the same for all of us and the world doesn’t stop turning yet.
Apple will survive without Steve for a while yet as our civilization will for the few years to come. Apple and our civilization will disapear one day anyway.
All things must pass : Georges Harisson
Notice not one commenter here even mentioned the name of the person taking over for Jobs and his/her great visions for Apple? Or this person’s great plans and ideas for Apple?
Jobs is Apple. Everyone else at Apple is like the elves helping Santa Claus. There is only one Santa Claus and no elf can ever take his place….
You know, I wonder if in someways Apple might be better off without Steve Jobs. Case in point, the decision to not have cut and paste or MMS on the Iphone. I’m not a programmer or developer, but I can’t imagine these two items are difficult or complex in implement. Only an autocratic leader like Jobs could ever withstand the public outcry for such basic functionality.
Wouldn’t someone like Cook take a look at the wants and needs of the customers, the very people that keep Apple in business, and say, so what, let’s just give them the damn cut and paste.
I also wonder about an Apple netbook. I know the famous quote about “not producing junk” but what about an $599 netbook that is head and shoulders above everything else out there. It’d sell like gangbusters. Acer had an INCREDIBLE 4th quarter. Would Cook look at this and say “Let’s jump on this bandwagon” instead of stubbornly clinging to old thoughts.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens.
I think Apple learned enough from the bean-counter experiment that it won’t be going that route again. The price of the stock will drop while he is on medical leave, even though he is still “at the helm”. It may well drop further if he surrenders even those limited duties. Certainly if he dies. But, most of the switchers are not focused on the Steve Jobs reality distortion field and few of the longer-term owners will be put off by simply a change in management. It will take several uninspired, uninspiring products (in a row?) to do that.
There is time for folks to get it together.
Oh … did I mention that the price of the stock would drop? That’s what the NY papers are most concerned about. Not the value of the company as an entity itself, but the price of the stock without regard for the value of the company. They see Jobs as THE THING that holds the price of the stock up. He says “the iPhone is selling well” and they believe for one more day. They are gamblers, after all, and easily swayed by rumor.
Oh yes, thats right with copy/paste and MMS support, Apple would sold millions of iPhone !
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But wait, Apple HAS sold millions of iPhone !!!
I have heard that a certain Mr Bill Gates (success breeds success) would be interested in the job if a vacancy should occur.
Sonyc: I’m well aware how many iphones have been sold, and I personally don’t think one person has NOT bought an iphone due to lack of cut and paste. But I’m also a little sick of having everyone point to such a glaring omission as the justification of the iphone not being the absolute best smartphone available.
Just put the damn thing in! Problem is, no one can say that to Steve Jobs, or at least say it and still be working at Apple the next day.