Apple without Steve: the pundits weigh in

APPLE WITHOUT STEVE: For years, much attention has been lavished on the question of how Apple will fare in the absence of its much-admired chief executive. With Steve Jobs' resignation, speculation is swirling. Gruber gives his take:

Apple’s products are replete with Apple-like features and details, embedded in Apple-like apps, running on Apple-like devices, which come packaged in Apple-like boxes, are promoted in Apple-like ads, and sold in Apple-like stores. The company is a fractal design. Simplicity, elegance, beauty, cleverness, humility. Directness. Truth. Zoom out enough and you can see that the same things that define Apple’s products apply to Apple as a whole. The company itself is Apple-like. The same thought, care, and painstaking attention to detail that Steve Jobs brought to questions like “How should a computer work?”, “How should a phone work?”, “How should we buy music and apps in the digital age?” he also brought to the most important question: “How should a company that creates such things function?” Jobs’s greatest creation isn’t any Apple product. It is Apple itself.

Well put. Read his whole post. Slate's Farhad Manjoo seems unconvinced of the idea that Apple is heading for a decline as a result of Jobs' resignation, although he harbors no doubt about his massive contribution.

Apple will surely change in small ways. The Stevenote—Jobs' fluid, engaging, product-unveiling keynote address—will turn into an on-stage committee, with execs taking turns unveiling products, none of them with the panache that Jobs brought to the task. We're also unlikely to see Tim Cook dash off e-mails to curious customers, and I don't think Cook will take the same keen interest in software design or typography. (There are others at Apple who certainly will, though.) But none of these things are central to Apple's success. On the big stuff, Jobs and Apple have achieved a total mindmeld. He'll be gone, but it'll be impossible for Jobs to be forgotten.

He's right, actually. Apple will be fine (in fact, it may even thrive without Jobs – more so than we can already see), but the change still seems drastic to us, even from the outside looking in. Of course, Stephen Fry should always have the final word (or tweet): "Terribly upset at the thought of Steve Jobs not feeling well enough to be CEO. Wishing him all the very very best…" Agreed. And that was that.