Ok, let me just get the obvious out of the way: we all wish the very best to Steve Jobs in his recovery from, what sounds like a pretty serious ailment. Questions about the handling of this whole thing aside, he is another human being and he and his family are going through a tough and worrying time. Having said that, Apple is a large company and the cogs have to keep turning, and I have no doubt Tim Cook will do an excellent job running the show while Steve is recuperating. Reading the various blogs and media, however you cannot help but notice the distinct sense of gloom this news has brought. People are already writing the company off for the next six months, and people are coming up with some ridiculous suggestions, such as a return to the Performa days if Jobs isn’t tightly golding onto the reigns of the cupertino electronics firm.
If I worked at Apple I think I would find some of these suggestions pretty insulting. Steve has been a visionary over the years in that he has seen trends in technology and acted on them, but he does not make everything himself. You would swear that he was solely responsible for everything that goes on at Apple to listen to the way some people are talking. Apple has a great engineering team and a great management team. This is a radically different company from the one of the 90′s which released some pretty bad products and lacked direction. Apple today is tightly focussed and run by intelligent and driven professionals, and to suggest that they can’t function without Steve is to do them all a disservice.
So here then is the opportunity for Apple. More than ever it needs to show that the company’s success has not just been a stroke of luck or the result of a series of eccentric whims by it’s famous CEO. Apple needs to not bury it’s head in the sand over the next 6 months and continue to pump out products and updates as if nothing had happened. Apple needs to be firing on all cylinders to show the world that the company is bigger than one man, because one way or another Steve Jobs will eventually step down permanently. Tim cook will undoubtedly be under intense scrutiny and the slightest thing will be interpreted as the realization of everyone’s fears, but I suspect that issues about Steve’s health and the surrounding press furore have been dominating the inner workings of Apple a lot more than they are letting on over the past year, and now they have a clear decision they can focus and just get on with it.
I have confidence in the company as a whole because the work of a lot of people at Apple has seen some spectacular products coming from the company, and they were made by the great collection of engineers and designers, people like Jonathan Ive and his team, Scott Forestall and his devision, and brought to realization by a whole chain of people, not magically waved into existence by the super-powered aura of Steve Jobs. So while his focus and drive has brought great things to Apple and the world, the talented people he put in place will continue to excel, and the world will go on. Steve, we wish you well, but the best thing for the company that you love so much, is for it to continue to thrive in your absence.
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Steve Jobs, meanwhile, will be putting his feet up today as he begins a leave of absence until June on health grounds. The Apple boss sent an e-mail to staff last night, explaining: “During the past week I have learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought… to take myself out of the limelight and focus on my health, and to allow everyone at Apple to focus on delivering extraordinary products, I have decided to take a medical leave of absence until the end of June.”
Wow.
You make some very good points.
I am surprised no one has talked about the great products Apple made when Steve was absent from Apple starting in 1985 (I believe): Quicktime, Mac II Ci, AppleTalk, PowerBook 100, Newton (although it did not sell well, it was brilliant technology), speech recognition, text-to-speech, etc. I am sure there are many more. My point is that while Steve was away the first time around Apple continued to innovate, only falling down during the mid-’90s. They were also trying to find their way against the onslaught of Windows 95 and falling PC prices. Apple doesn’t have those issues anymore. They have a stream-lined product mix, dominate the digital music arena and they are slowly becoming a huge player in the smart phone market. His staff has had ten years to learn how the processes work and the strategies involved in making great products and services. And Tim Cook is a rock-solid COO and will do a great job.
I’m not worried.