Daring Fireball's John Gruber has a nice reaction piece to the news that Steve Jobs has resigned as CEO of Apple. Jobs' resignation wasn't completely unexpected given his medical leave of absence, though it still comes as a surprise. Gruber suggests this is just the latest in a long planned transition:
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.
It was previously reported that Jobs had hired Yale School of Management Joel Podolny to help prepare for life after Jobs.
Steve Jobs hired dean of Yale School of Management Joel Podolny to run the Apple University, an internal group also featuring business professors and Harvard veterans that are writing a series of case studies to prepare employees for the life at Apple after Jobs. These case studies focus on Apples recent business decisions and internal culture, they are exclusive to employees and taught by top executives like Tim Cook and Ron Johnson.
Tim Cook is now CEO of Apple at the recommendation of Jobs.
Top Rated Comments
If the products are over priced, how come nobody could ever touch the iPods and iPads and even the iPhone in price? :rolleyes:
It's because Steve didn't create products, he created extensions of yourself in a digital form. Your Toshiba laptop is a throwaway but people care about their MacBooks. An iPhone is a device that changes a lot of people's life style and how they game and do business. A Droid is just your next phone. Steve Jobs is a true visionary.
Brilliant.
Apple has created a value and devotion for their products rarely, if ever, seen in modern consumers. The products aren't "forever" pieces, but the brand loyalty seems to be. That's value, that's rare, and it's unlike other consumer tech products of today.
Thomas J Watson of IBM may be a likely candidate. Just ignore that stuff that he did with "knockout boxes" at NCR.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
--Arthur C. Clarke
I have to disagree. If I saw a PC being thrown away, I probably wouldn't even think twice. But if I saw a Mac, even an old beige one, being thrown away, something inside of me would die.
Heck, I saved an old Power Mac 7500 from being thrown away. Works like a champ.
How you describe Tim Cook scares me. Steve was a dreamer and a risk taker and willing to take Apple to where no bean counter could see possible. Who is going to challenge Apple to be as bold as Steve has done? If apple is going to coast safely into the future, it will lose the vitality and daring it now has. Steve had the ability to generate a reality distortion field around himself and then make that reality real. Apple also needs a charismatic spokesperson to articulate the company product message a la Steve Jobs.
I think Tim will do a great job as CEO, but Steve will need to be replaced with more then one person when it's all said and done.
And P.S. the iPad is "magical," it's not bragging & stretching the truth to say so.