Everyone is concerned about Steve Jobs’ health, prompting the obvious question about succession plans at Apple. The company seems doomed without him. Who has the vision and drive?
But Apple will be fine without Jobs, although it won’t be the same.
Here’s why, after the jump.
From the outside, Apple doesn’t appear to have a succession plan, despite Jobs’ assurances to the contrary. He recently said there are a number of executives who could step into his shoes.
The likeliest candidate to take over is Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook, an operations mastermind who helped turn Apple into the leanest, meanest company in tech. Cook is reportedly also a driven, ambitious hard ass and taskmaster — just like his boss.
Cook is more or less invisible to the public, and everyone is wondering if he has the vision and the charisma to take the helm.
But as I argue in Inside Steve’s Brain, Jobs has turned his personality into distinct business processes at Apple, which work just fine without him overseeing them.
For example, Jobs’ perfectionism has created at Apple a unique product development process based on the rigorous prototyping of new products.
Gizmos like the iPhone do not spring fully formed from Jobs’ imagination. Rather, they are “discovered” through the creation of hundreds of prototypes, which are refined, edited and often remade. Many products are prototyped hundreds of times, and often started over from scratch. It’s one perfectionism as a prototyping process. Jobs has his input, but so do his engineers, designers, and programmers. It’s not reliant on Jobs alone — and it’s possible to imagine the process operating without him.
The best evidence that Apple will be fine is Jobs’ other company, Pixar (now owned by Disney). Both Apple and Pixar are based on the same “generate-and-test” creative process. And both are run by small, tightly-integrated ‘A Teams” that work serially on one product after another, everyone chipping in ideas and fixing problems.
Jobs never managed Pixar the same way he manages Apple — he was pretty much the absentee owner. But Pixar has produced one blockbuster after another, and it’s done so without Jobs overseeing the process.
Nonetheless, Apple without Jobs would not be the same. The most obvious difference is the man’s charisma. The company would not be as cool, and Macworld would not be the same. But Apple will survive.
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander is an expert on:
Apple and Apple history
Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Tim Cook and Apple leadership
Apple community
iPhone and iOS
iPad and iPadOS
Mac and macOS
Apple Watch and watchOS
Apple TV and tvOS
AirPods
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
24 responses to “Why Apple Will Be Just Fine Without Steve Jobs”
i jumped, but found no “why”. tell me why!
Did you forget to post why?
hmm, great jump….
My apologies — we seem to be experiencing some technical difficulties. The body of the post has disappeared. Unfortunately, I’ve no idea what’s going on!
It’s back now… at least for me…
Now I’m worried (about his health, I mean).
I saw the body too…
As to your thesis.. I agree, there is usually a lot of fear when a dynamic founder leaves a company. At the time, no one could have imagined a General Electric without Edison. But a big part of what enables these companies success is their founders ability to imbue their spirit into the processes as you point out in your post.
As for a charismatic megalomaniacal leader, heck I’ll volunteer… I can see it now…
“Aieght, see here y’all… there here is the Eyah-Phone it’s got a screen an’ stuff… and no got-damn buttons! — hey you, gecha damn boots off ma’h stage!”
Yeah, Macworld would be different… It’s time for Barbecue y’all!
Wow. My very own… screenshot? It is nice to get a photo credit, thanks, but all I did (as you can tell from the fading iTunes controller) is take a screenshot of the keynote as provided by Apple. Anyone can do it!
My dark horse for next Apple CEO: Stringer!
While I can see why some would be concerned about Jobs’ appearance, there are very reasonable explanations. He may be looking drawn because of the cancer treatments he went through, or is still doing. He may have made a drastic change in his diet because of the scare. Or he may be exercising a lot (a whole lot). And he’s getting older.
I know a number of people who looked quite youthful until around fifty (+ or -). They were easily mistaken for ten years younger. All of a sudden their appearance aged about ten years in only two. It happens.
Unfortunately it happened to my sister, who looks a lot like me. Since I’m knockin’ on the door to 50, I fear I only have another year or two left to my pretty-boy looks. Bummer.
I’d look for somebody at Pixar for the answer. Especially somebody who also comes from NeXT.
I’m not as optimistic about Apple’s future without Jobs. Sure he’s got the brains and the ideas, but he’s also got the connections, partnerships and personality to step on that black stage and captivate all of us – no matter which product he’s pushing. Those are big shoes to fill and it might take a group of people to replace him.
A little bit of this annoys me slightly. I find that you, and most major Apple enthusiasts in general, give Steve Jobs much more credit than he actually deserves. He basically just bought Pixar and he has nothing to do with it. To say that he’s “done okay and the company has made hit after hit” is giving credit to someone who doesn’t deserve it. Pixar has produced hit after hit because of the hundreds of their animators, their movie’s creators Andrew Stanton, Brad Bird as well as others, and the years it took them to complete the movies. Steve Jobs doesn’t deserve to have any credit for what they did, he just bought the company.
Same with Apple’s products. He doesn’t hand design the products aesthetics and design their software. He is good at marketing, has a great vision, but in the end he tells them what he wants and keeps improving it and improving it. Their are devices I want to see that if I had the money I’d direct a team to make, it doesn’t mean I created them and deserve the credit for it. This is exactly why it annoys me when Steve Jobs is credited with so much all the time just because he’s Steve Jobs.