Every time I say this, some people start getting all shirty and saying: “Yes it is! Steve matters!”
After my Don’t Panic post yesterday, there were similar comments, like this one: “Yeah, actually Steve Jobs health is our business. He made Apple, he revived Apple and he brought Apple to it’s current massive success. Steve Jobs IS Apple. Without him the company has a far smaller chance of survival.”
I completely disagree with this line of thinking, and here’s why:
If Apple is nothing without Steve, we might as well all pack up and go home right now. Not because Steve may or may not be seriously ill, but because Steve is not immortal. One day he’ll die, just like all the rest of us.
Some folk seem to think he hasn’t thought of that.
Steve – or ANYONE in a similar position – would know that the ongoing survival of the company depends on having a strategy in place for the charismatic CEO’s exit, *no matter what the manner of that exit is*.
So if Steve’s ill, be assured that he does not need reminding of the fact by the press, that he has been planning his exit from Apple for some time, and that Apple itself – Apple the company comprising many thousands of talented individuals – most certainly WILL have a future afterwards.
You and I both know that if and when Steve does leave, the shares will fall and the newspapers will predict the End of the World for Apple.
But. As long as Apple keeps putting out high quality computer hardware and software, created in secret by extremely clever people, there will be people like us waiting to buy it all.
I just don’t accept that an organization like Apple would allow itself to become so dependent on one individual. Can you imagine Steve allowing that, if the individual everyone was talking about was someone else? Of course not. He’d fire that person, just to make the point.
Steve knows, and everyone knows, that Steve cannot be in charge forever, in the same way that no single person can be in charge forever. It’s obvious that Steve and the rest of the senior management team will have been working on strategies to deal with this for some time.
Now I realize that simply by posting this I am breaking my own rule: “Don’t write about Steve’s health”. Just by writing these words, I’m becoming the very thing that I can’t abide.
That said, I dislike the argument “No Steve == No More Apple” so much that I’m prepared to break my own rules a little. I’m not saying things won’t be different, of course they will. No Steve means a Different Apple, that’s all.
Now I’m going to shut up about Steve Jobs’ health, as I hope everyone else will.
Giles Turnbull is a freelance writer in England. He also writes for the Press Association and The Morning News. You can find out more at his website, and follow him on Twitter @gilest.
