Cult of Mac

The “CEO of the Decade” is no longer CEO.

After the initial shock, a general impulse seems to have seized commenters, which is to reassure everyone that everything will be OK.

“Apple will do amazingly well without Steve Jobs,” says Slate’s Farhad Manjoo.

PC World‘s Tony Bradley says we shouldn’t panic, because “Apple Is Still Apple.”

“Apple will continue to shine without Jobs at the helm,” says Seeking Alpha‘s Carl Howe.

Why? Because Apple “is more than Steve Jobs,” according to Christina Rexrode of the Associated Press.

All these headlines are technically true, but add up to wishful thinking that masks the larger truth. Yes, Apple is more than Steve Jobs.” But Apple without Steve Jobs is less than Apple with him. A lot less.

When you’re a football player, you rely on your team’s playbook for learning and referencing different plays and strategies. For the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, iPad 2s will replace hefty playbooks. And the team’s 90 players will be able to peruse NFL video archives from the .34 inch tablet.

Here’s a great idea, executed with typical Far East crapgadget mediocrity by Brando: what if your iPad 2’s Smart Cover was actually a battery pack?

Not a shabby idea in the abstract, but Brando hopelessly mucks it up with their Anytone Smart Cover. While it can extend the iPad 2’s 10-hour battery by another four or five hours, the proper way to do this is to make a Smart Cover with the battery packs inside the Cover, not slapped as a sticker to the outside.

What do you expect for the price, though? It’s just thirty eight bucks.

The most valuable tech company on Earth has a new boss, and it’s Tim Cook, an intensely private and soft-spoken man who is taking over the role of CEO from one of the most iconic personalities on the planet. But who is Tim Cook? What’s he like? What’s he done to deserve the job? And can Apple really succeed without Steve Jobs at the helm?

To the latter question, the answer is a resounding yes. In fact, Tim Cook has arguably been running Apple’s day-to-day operations for years. He has been more integral than anyone else in the company short of Steve himself in turning Apple around from a dying and moribund PC maker into the unstoppable juggernaut the company is today. Here’s what you need to know.

Although stepping down as CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs will continue as a controversial member of Disney’s board, reports say. Jobs is Disney’s largest shareholder, owning 7.4 percent of the company. Wednesday, Jobs announced he would also stay on as chairman of Apple, the tech giant he co-founded.

Let’s just take a few minutes away from the stories surrounding Steve Jobs and Tim Cook and talk about the iPad 3. We know it’s not going to launch this year — I’d have put money on that from day one — but according to one report it could go into production as early as October… without Samsung on-board.

The man who is perhaps the best salesman of the modern era has rarely been at a loss for words. Whether talking product design, the direction of technology, thoughts on Apple or life in general, Steve Jobs gives us lots of food for thought about what keeps him going. Here are some of his memorable quotes over the years.

“Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?” [Speaking to John Scully, 1983]

Even before Apple founder Steve Jobs cleaned out his CEO desk, rival companies are commenting on his legacy and bravery in the face of illness. Although Jobs’ departure may be his rivals’ only chance to compete with Apple, the glowing words should be for a dead leader, not one of the most ferocious competitors in Silicon Valley.

Things at Apple are going to be a little different without Steve Jobs at the helm. I have no doubt that Tim Cook will step up to do a fantastic job, but there are many reasons why we’ll never forget Steve’s time at Apple. Here we take a look at some of Apple’s greatest achievements while Steve was at the company, and the products that have made it the world’s largest company.

After Steve Jobs’ resignation, Apple’s new CEO Tim Cook sent out a gracious letter to staff in which he spells out the future of Apple and what it was like to be mentored by Steve for so many years. We’ve got the full text below.

Cult of Mac readers are reacting to the news that Steve Jobs has resigned his place as CEO of Apple, Inc. and although he’ll still be around as the Chairman of Apple’s board many of you were just as shocked and surprised about the news just as much as we were at Cult of Mac.

If you haven’t read the comments on the posts about Steve Jobs you should since some of them are very interesting. I’d like to call your attention to a few of them written by readers after they read my post about  Jobs resigning as Apple’s CEO and COO Tim Cook named as his replacement.

So now I’ll step away from the podium and let you see what some of Cult of Mac’s readers had to say about yesterday’s announcement.

Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs has always had a love-hate relationship with the media. Those feelings were evident Wednesday, when the tech giant founder reportedly worked a full day before resigning, sticking it in the eye of headlines suggesting he was near death.

Steve Jobs may have technically resigned as CEO, but according to Walt Mossberg, Jobs is still in charge at Apple, and his position at Cupertino will largely remain “unchanged.”

Stock markets appear to recover from Wednesday’s news of Apple CEO Steve Jobs resignation. Early Wall Street trading showed the tech giant off just 2 percent as analysts assured investors the future is in good hands with Tim Cook.

Following Steve Jobs’ decision to step down from the position of Apple CEO yesterday, the internet is awash with reaction pieces and opinions from some of the industry’s biggest names. MacRumors points to a rather humorous anecdote from Google’s Vic Gundotra, in which he pays tribute to Steve’s meticulous attention to detail — which Gundotra believes every CEO should have.

Gina Smith editor-in-chief of BYTE.com and co-author of  iWoz: How I Invented the Personal Computer and Had Fun Along the Way (available at the iBook Store) spoke to Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak yesterday and according to BYTE the announcement that Jobs was stepping down as Apple CEO made him “happy for Jobs. ”

When I heard about Steve Jobs’ resignation as Apple’s CEO on Wednesday afternoon I mentioned casually to a friend my assessment that “he’s probably the most influential human being of the past one hundred years.”

My friend laughed and said, “no way, you really think so?”

If you’re a regular visitor to Cult of Mac, you’ll already have some appreciation of how terrific Steve Jobs is. But do his employees share the same opinion of him as us fans?  Well, according to the employment reviews and rating site Glassdoor, 97% of them approved of him as CEO — making Steve one of the most successful CEOs among those rated on the site.

Apple’s website already has a new executive profiles page emphasizing Tim Cook as CEO . I guess it should come as no surprise. Steve Jobs has always been disciplined and unsentimental.

Below, Jobs is listed as Chairman of the board. Let’s hope it stays that way for some time.

We all knew this day would come — but not so soon. My reaction was a sudden exclamation of “holy crap” after seeing the USA Today headline pop up on my iPad while on a conference call.

Thank You, Steve Jobs.

We all reacted with surprise and disbelief today as we heard the news you were resigning as CEO of Apple. Anyone who follows Apple in even a cursory fashion knows that you have not been well, so the news was not entirely unexpected. But still quite sudden, and reaction has been swift around the world.

Here are some quick thoughts about Steve Jobs’ resignation…

Steve’s stepping down has been some time coming, but it’s still a shock. We all knew he would be standing down eventually, but that was at some point in the future. Maybe next year, or the year after. It was a shock to hear he’s stepping down. And obviously, it doesn’t bode well for his health.

Steve Jobs has suddenly surprised everyone and resigned as Apple’s CEO. It is really difficult to imagine Apple without Steve Jobs, but here we are so now nothing is left to the imagination. So what will happen now under the leadership of Tim Cook?

@Scott Troyan

When a photo is worth 1,000 words…