“Will Apple fail or succeed without its cofounder Steve Jobs running the company? That’s the big question the tech world is asking after the man named Fortune’s CEO of the decade resigned as CEO,” Ian Paul writes for PCWorld. “It’s not clear why Jobs is stepping down now, but most critics wonder whether his health problems played a role in the decision.”
Apple’s legacy now falls to newly appointed CEO Tim Cook, along with Apple’s executive team that includes Jonathan Ive (industrial design), Scott Forstall (iOS software), Phil Schiller (marketing), Bob Mansfield (Mac hardware engineering) and others,” Paul writes. “Bets on how Apple’s leadership team will do range from failure to success (but perhaps not “insanely great” success).”
Paul writes, “So what happens now? It’s not as if Apple is suddenly going to stuff Blu-ray drives into its Macs and add Adobe Flash to its iOS devices — two technologies Jobs disapproved of. But neither is it a given that Apple will maintain its fast-paced growth that began under Jobs.”
Read more in the full article here.
I think some of these “experts” fail to realize that Apple has been operating the same way for much of the last two to three years.
BEFORE – Tim Cook was acting as day-to-day CEO with Steve Jobs providing strategic and conceptual guidance.
NOW – Tim Cook is CEO with Steve Jobs providing strategic and conceptual guidance as Chairman.
For the NEXT two to three years, Apple will probably do what it would have done if Steve Job was still officially the CEO. And Tim Cook (and his lieutenants) will execute “the plan” to perfection. In other words, no change… 🙂
Ditto
Can we please return to the regularly scheduled programme of Apple-related news, rather than continuing with this interruption, with articles about Post-Jobs Apple? I mean, I’m fully aware of the magnitude of this event in the eyes of the world business: most iconic CEO, most iconic (and largest) company in the world, but while everyone and their dog feels the need to chime in on this tectonic event, haven’t we already heard pretty much every kind of opinion there is to hear about Apple’s future sans Jobs? I’d love to hear other news related to Apple (as much as I have always admired Steve, as well as Tim Cook).
+1
Apple has a long-term vision, whereas consumers and competitors only see individual products that execute that vision.
I’m sure Tim Cook has a great influence over the details of producing and selling existing products and some influence over the selection and design of new products … but almost NO influence over the longer-term vision. The longer term strategy will probably take a generation to execute, if not longer.
From that perspective, Tim Cook is a key player but the company’s success is not highly dependent upon the role he plays. If he can’t execute the vision, someone else will be hired who can.
Oh, Tim Cooke is replacing Steve Jobs as Apple’s CEO? I had no idea!
No… he ALREADY replaced him… duh…
The product ideas didn’t spring from the mind of Steve Jobs, But the execution of those ideas did. The ideas came from many bright forward thinking engineers at Apple. As long as Steve’s design ethic has been passed on and I have no reason to believe that it hasn’t, then Apple will continue to develop desirable new products for years to come.
In other words…Ian Paul’s editor said “Paul, you haven’t written a thing about Steve Jobs in the last week. Its headline time. Get to work.”
Tim Cook made It clear where he is directing Apple in their innovation and creative Ideas, no one has picked up on it yet!
http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-apple-ceo-tim-cook-im-thinking-printers,21207/
My take of this whole thing is Jobs is going to take a more active role in the company as a working Chairman of the Board instead of not being the CEO.
I don’t think so. He’s obviously quite ill- did you read what he said? He wouldn’t have quit otherwise. And, yes, I feel sick about it.
He’s obviously not feeling as healthy as he wants to be. But even BEFORE the resignation, he already felt he could not function as CEO on a day-to-day basis. That’s why he was on medical leave.
So what he said in the resignation letter was a formality, to say that he did not want to be in this “on medical leave but still CEO” status indefinitely. It would not be fair to Apple, the “Apple community,” Apple shareholders, and Tim Cook.
That does NOT mean his condition has worsened since we saw him give the WWDC keynote less than three months ago. It may have, but to me, nothing related to his resignation is “proof” that it has. He asked to be Chairman of the Apple Board, which he was not previously. He is still a Director on Disney’s Board. Those things indicate to me that he expects to make a difference for a long time to come…
“Will Apple fail or succeed without its cofounder Steve Jobs running the company? That’s the big question the tech world is asking”
If by “tech world” you mean sad unimaginative hacks looking for hits, then yes. But the rest of us realise that this is merely a formalisation of existing arrangements.