Easily the best post in Daring Fireball in months.
Reminds me of 'The Tablet' (http://daringfireball.net/2009/12/the_tablet) and others to just how different Gruber is from other tech writers, even apple-related-tech writers like Andy Ihnatko, Jason Snell, etc. He throughly thinks about the topic with tremendous insight and unique points of view.
This post is an interesting view on the world of tech, finance and journalism.
It's a solid post but this is batting practice by Gruber. Anyone following Apple would bet the farm on Gruber's shortlist and the only serious candidate I'd entertain besides Cook would be Ive. Notably, Gruber missed a chance to link back to the Apple University effort which is another huge giveaway that a successor will almost certainly come from within.
Glancing over the archive, imho Gruber's best posts in the last few months have been his iPad 2 review (custom benchmarks!); taking All Things D, Engadget, et al. to task for weak attribution; and taking non-Apple tablet reviews to task for grading on a curve.
Gruber's dismissal of Ive as a candidate is pretty solidly based. I don't think Ive has even appeared in a speaking role in a keynote. I just don't think it's his kind of gig (and why should it be?)
To play Ive's advocate here: Jobs probably wants people who speak at events to serve specific functions. The product visionary role is currently filled by Steve. You only do a few of these a year and you aren't going to buzzkill the free pub by running the understudy up there if the lead is available.
Edit:
The above is in regards to Ive being a private person and not liking the public speaking gig. Of course for all we know Steve is a private person and may not like the public speaking gig but he does it because it's a necessary function.
The strongest argument for Ive of course is that what set's Apple apart from other companies is that it's design/product driven. See Steve's comments re: what happens when The Sales Guy ends up running the whole show.
Obviously you can say "well Phil is The Sales Guy" (which is a bit of a dodge) and also that "Tim took over for Steve when he was totally unable to work" which is at least partially true (was he really doing everything Steve did?). So maybe Tim Cook can by a product visionary. Maybe Jon Ive can't.
But if you start from this one small and very arguable given that Steve wants Apple to be led by a product visionary and not the sales/operations guy that leads you to Jon Ive being the best candidate. There's other evidence too of course, reports are the two are quite close on Apple campus although I imagine Tim Cook would qualify based on that criteria as well.
Not saying he can't possibly share the spotlight, but that Ive is not extroverted. (Tim Cook isn't a keynote kind of guy either for that matter.) Scott Forstall is pretty good in keynotes.
It reminds me a bit of "Tactics of Mistake" -- an old SF novel by Gordon Dickson. No ONE person can replace Steve, but maybe two or three can.
You stated "I don't think Ive has even appeared in a speaking role in a keynote" and I was demonstrating this to be untrue.
The idea that Steve Jobs can't be replaced by a single person is based on the requirement that Apple would have to continue on the exact same way. It won't. When a new CEO is appointed, it will be more of a "new normal".
And I think took much is made of the "waking up and Steve is totally gone" scenario despite health issues. More likely (and hopefully for his health) it will be Steve voluntarily giving up more and more control as the successor is tried out. We may be seeing some of that now, although I would say wait for a major product launch without him.
That is how Gates did it when Ballmer took over Gates was still heavily involved doing what he had always done.
Awesome to see Jony Ive on stage, thanks for the link!
I'd really love to see him more often in keynotes. I think he has a way of grabbing the audience's attention that's on par with Steve Jobs, but in a totally different way. It's like seeing a modest and friendly genius talking about his work, it totally sucks you in. <3
Cook was palatable to both Wall Street and Apple employees while SJ was on medical leave. IMO, he's passed the test already. Everyone was willing to accept him then, back when there was serious doubt about whether Jobs would return after his leave. So there's no reason why they wouldn't be willing to accept him in a genuine succession event.
Seems to me that the post doesn't fully address the most important fact: "He cannot be replaced..." Gruber takes the paragraph to points about what Jobs' absence will do to the stock, and then takes the rest of the post to talk about the sourcing of the story and who might eventually replace him, but those strike me as ancillary issues at best.
Jobs can't really be replaced, can he? Certainly Apple will continue to make heaps of money for the forseeable future, but without Jobs, the company will lose its essential nature. How can it not?
If Jobs has really, truly done it right this time, he won't need to be replaced. Cook, Forstall, Ive, and Schiller are obviously people he trusts with his life's work. Time will tell how good his choice of stewards was, but given that he learned the hard way nearly three decades ago, I'd say the odds are in his favor.
Jobs can be replaced, he's not some magical being, he's a person making decisions and he isn't doing it all by himself.
He probably won't be replaced (at least not completely by one person) but -- and this again ties back to the Apple University effort -- it will be even more impressive if the crux of what makes Jobs/Apple great is successfully imprinted on dozens or hundreds of Apple execs and engineers.
Jobs actually is sort of magical, at least at Apple. One thing Jobs has that will be hard to replicate is that fact that he's Steve Jobs. His decision is final and adored. Forstall or Cook won't try an end run to try to make something happen and hope that with enough corporate backing they can put Jobs's back against the wall. Won't happen. With any other CEO it could.
It's not just the decisions that Jobs makes that are important, but the fact that a decision coming from Jobs means something to every employee at Apple.
Ive+Forstall are within a couple of orders of magnitude from Jobs (the only people who are even in the neighborhood of reverence). But the fact that they're two people, with two egos will probably mean that the two together as the visionary aspects of the company won't be as unified as a single Jobs.
You're correct, but I think this also is why it needs to be Cook.
Essentially, Apple is a one product company. That product is "the mac". The "mac" comes in the form of a combination of software and hardware. OS X on Macintoshes is the past, iOS on iDevices is the future. All of that is Forstall (if I'm understanding things right.) And even then, the hardware is merely the box for the software. They make a very great box.
But Forstall is the "new jobs" in that regard. Ive can demand that it have fewer buttons, and Schiller can demand that marketing be on message, and Forstall has to listen to them, and if he doesn't then Cook should have their backs. Cook is thus well placed to be the "vision guy" (and yes, I think that is a legitimate description and that he'd be just as good as jobs at it) whose got his finger on the daily operations but also is looking 5, 10 & 15 years into the future.
Apple University is the glue that holds these four guys together and keeps them on the same page. Plus, of course, The Writings of The Chairman from Jobs over the years.
In fact, I would bet good money that there literally is a book within Apple, that probably only has a dozen or fewer copies, written by Jobs about the Apple Way and presenting his vision for the Apple Way. In a way, his living will to the future.
I think this book is Apple's equivalent to Cokes "secret formula", only Apple doesn't trumpet that they have a secret formula, they keep even the existence of it secret.
Tim Cook's function at Apple is to take care of all the shit Steve doesn't want to be burdened with because Steve wants to spend all day obsessing on small product details like removing unneeded buttons. Steve is a designer. Jon Ive is a designer. Tim Cook afaik is not a designer. Who's going to take the prototype home and obsess over the tiniest details?
That's essentially why Cook will be the new CEO. No one will accept a "new Steve Jobs" in the Steve Jobs role, so trying to foist a new Steve Jobs onto the company -- and into the public eye -- would be an exercise in futility. People would rebel. People would doubt. People would question this person's every move. One slip-up or bad quarter, and people would be calling for his head; analysts would be publishing lengthy diatribes about how Apple had lost its way. Etc.
Apple has some amazing designers and engineers in the likes of Ive, Forstall, etc. It doesn't need to promote one of them to the top spot in order to extract the genius from them.
This is why Cook wins by default. He's a CEO Wall Street and employees will accept, and nobody's expecting him to have a Jobsian design aesthetic or artistic vision. But they're expecting his lieutenants to carry that torch while he keeps everyone and everything unified.
It depends on your definition of "product", but most would classify the iPhone as a different category of product from a mac, not just a different product. As different as a minicomputer is from a desktop. I think before long we'll see Apple launch yet another new category.
Even if we forget the special talents of Steve Jobs, most companies go downhill without their founder/s. Probably HP most famously. It's partly that others lack the unique clout of founder, as kenjackson says. In addition, founders tend to be insightful, energetic and bold (else they couldn't have succeeded as founders). Employees generally don't have that crazy extreme fire, or they'd be founders themselves.
But Jobs is unique beyond that, because it's rare for even founders to create more than one dominating industry. Jobs has done it with the Apple IIe, iPod, iPhone and iPad. It's that he can see what's important; and can make it happen.
I think his design talent/taste is in addition to this, and while yet another unique talent in its own right (and related), is not quite as important.
I mean, yeah, I get that that's the hope, but I'm not sure I buy the idea that a collection of individuals even as talented and capable as those can really replace someone with as singular a vision and fierce a personality as Jobs. I'm sure they'll be able to run the company, but I just don't see Apple maintaining its place as market-inventing thought-leader, or at least not to the same degree.
Jobs is a time teller. He can look up at the heavens, see the positioning of the stars in the industry and tell you exactly what the time is and for what. It's extremely rare for such time tellers to exist, and it's doubtful anyone exactly like Jobs will ever come along.
However, for any great company to stand the test of time it needs to answer the question who tells the time after the time-teller is gone? That's why a company built to last is like a clock. It is a part of the ethos and the system for it to tell the time, and that's the bit that makes all of the difference.
So, if he has spent the last decade making a clock, then Apple will survive him and the loss of Tim Cook, Ive, Schiller and almost anyone you think is crucial to Apple's success, because the ability to predict and act on those predictions would have been built into the structure of Apple itself.
There is a better chance of Apple choosing its next CEO through a raffle of ten golden tickets hidden inside iPad boxes distributed around the globe than that they’d give the job to Eric Schmidt.
well Guy was chief evangelist at apple during the 90s, thats what he's actually famous for (originally). Now he's famous for self-promotion and tangientially his vc activities.
I imagine that's why he even mentioned him. Though I don't understand why he mentions Ellison and Bezos. This is like the King of France giving up his position so he can be the King of England. Gates? Ballmer? Padding the list I guess.
Who on that list would want to succeed Steve Jobs? I agree, for once, with Gruber that Apple's best bet is to change as little as possible. Don't fix what ain't broken.
And conversely, there's virtually no upside for any high profile CEO to take this job. You'll get none of the credit for keeping the company on a roll, and take all the blame if it begins to turn downwards.
With that said, Apple w/o Steve Jobs and MS w/o Bill Gates just aren't the same companies. They're the Magic Johnson/Larry Bird of my generation. You have to pick one to cheer for, but you respect them both.
IMHO there is a big difference between Apple and Microsoft, Bill Gates was surrounded by suits, Steve Jobs is surrounded by Engineers and Designers... I like all the guys that surround Jobs, Philip Schiller, Scott Forstall, Jonathan Ivy even Bob Mansfield are a good candidates, there is no reason why Apple should look elsewhere for CEO candidates.
IMHO there is a big difference between Apple and Microsoft, Bill Gates was surrounded by suits, Steve Jobs is surrounded by Engineers and Designers...
You know very little about Microsoft. You're right there was a difference. Jobs was surrounded by engineers and designers. Gates was surrounded by engineers. Gates top business guy was a math geek from Harvard with not much in the way of business experience (Ballmer).
If you look at Gates's colonels you'll see they were mostly engineers. Allchin was a widely respected developer prior to MS. Silverberg was a dev on the Lisa project. Rudder, Muglia, Sinofsky, Maritz, all rose through the ranks at MS in enginnering.
It wasn't until Ballmer became CEO did "suits" start moving up the ladder.
If you look at the execs that Gates surrounded himself with, you'll have a hard time finding a stronger team of executive engineers than he did. It even puts Google's current execs to shame (w/ respect to engineering horsepower).
I'm not sure where you got your info on Ballmer. Yes, he has a degree in Mathematics and Economics from Harvard, but he was a P&G marketing guy before coming to Microsoft.
That P&G gig is pure business, and though I think Ballmer has some understanding of technology and engineering, he doesn't have the near the depth that gates has.
I also disagree with your comments re: the executive engineers, though I'm sure you could convince me otherwise.
Executive Engineers or Designers isn't important, it is a leader with a clear vision which is needed. Gates was able to envision the future technology and push to get it done, same with Jobs. Ballmer just doesn't have that, and Microsoft has missed that over the last few years.
Re: Ballmer. He worked less than two years at P&G, which is why I said "not much in the way of business experience".
I also disagree with your comments re: the executive engineers
I'm not really sure what you're disagreeing with. I agree that Ballmer is no Gates. My first post in this thread was how Apple/MS aren't the same companies w/o Jobs/Gates. The follow-up poster made the point that Gates was surrounded by suits, and my point about engineering execs was that Gates wasn't surrounded by suits, but rather by engineers.
Magna cum laude typically represents about the top 20% of a class, with summa cum laude often around the top 5%. Although I'm unclear why the distinction mtters in this discussion.
Those people who knew him seems a good guide. In that video, he's talking about accounting math. Actually, I assumed "math whiz" meant proficiency in proving theorems, but the ordinary meaning of being good at arithmetic is reasonable, and probably what's meant here.
Although he's a maths geek in that sense, and he also went to Harvard, I think combing those two as "math geek from Harvard" suggests the theorem proving meaning.
To clarify: that wikipedia article says he graduated magna cum laude. I think to be a maths whiz, you need to be really good at it.
Minor quibble: Gates was surrounded by suits and lawyers. The Microsoft empire was built on having a better understanding of IP law and licensing than pretty much anyone else at the time.
One of Jobs's much underrated talents was (and presumably still is) supply chain negotiation -- Apple's first billion came from a combination of brilliant negotiation (getting floppy drive mechanisms at an incredible price) and engineering (Woz created a brilliantly simple and inexpensive floppy drive controller for less than a tenth of the cost of competing equivalents).
This also goes back to how News Corp has changed the Wall Street Journal since it's acquisition. The quality has deteriorated. And it's shows what News Corp real focus is - it's not news, and it's not really conservative or liberal issues either - it's sensationalism, in any form. Because thats what gets peoples attention.
Historically, there were probably more gays and such in public life than the history books would suggest. One American president (never married) is thought to have possibly been gay. Lots of historical figures who were very successful were minorities of some sort and hid it and tried to blend: Jewish, Hispanic, etc. They altered their names, dyed their hair, learned to dress more "white" and so on. (Rita Hayworth comes to mind -- half Spanish, dyed her hair blonde and made her name more anglo.)
I wear my health issues and alternative medicine approach to them on my sleeve when online but have gone out of my way to downplay it without lying when at work. There is just not enough time in the day to explain my situation to everyone I interact with for five minutes and it is too distracting. It's not important.
This is indeed something memorable, but considering main stream America's view on homosexuals, I don't think this is something that should be mentioned too often.
Au contraire, this is something that should be mentioned as often as possible. It's time that "mainstream" America realizes that gay people are just as valuable members of society as everybody else.
I get the impression that the mainstream already thinks that Apple users are basically equivalent to whatever they think homosexuals are, so this probably wouldn't have an effect.
By the way, I am not trying to say anything negative about either group. Simply pointing out that from simply living in N. American society and reading forums such as reddit, I have observed prejudice against linux users, Apple fans, GBLT folks, non-white middle class people, and so on which all has a similar flavor.
Imagine you're dying of cancer and you have raised a few intelligent children to a certain age. Now you have to ask others to raise your children in your image. Not in their image, but yours. You might not trust anyone with your children, moreover, expect them to see the same vision you had for your children - which is based on the progressive iteration of your children's development.
Can anyone raise Apple like Jobs? Probably not. Does that mean Apple is doomed? No, it doesn't. Anything beyond is speculation.
I think Tim Cook would be a mistake as awesome as he is (see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2134181). Tim is too operations-focused, and that will bleed over into the products.
Apple needs a design-oriented CEO. Tim can balance that and make the company amazing from an operations-perspective. I don't know who the person is, but I do think he (or she) exists.
One other reason Apple will make Cook the CEO -- it will make the least waves. No one at Apple will quit if Cook becomes CEO. If Apple were to hire anyone from the outside I think there's a decent chance that they lose Cook for starters (Cook can write his own ticket anywhere he wanted).
Ok, Gruber's answer is probable, maybe even correct. But what exactly is Jobs responding to[1] here? Not the ramblings of a tabloid magazine, but the reporting of a world-class newspaper. And before we band together behind a blogger it's worth at least considering exactly why (or if) his position is better.
Where the WSJ seems to have black-box-trusted someone else's expertise, Gruber seems to depend only on facts that he has a good command of. In other words, yes, it's easy to side with Gruber here (I know I do), but the problem is that even if he has actually named the correct successor, in at least one crucial aspect of the debate, he is still wrong: it is a disservice to the transformation Apple will have to undergo to simply name the CEO. Who's next is an important fact, but it is not the most important fact.
One thing to notice here is that Apple is a huge and complicated machine, and from the perspective of the CEO who knows all of this, it must seem absolutely precious that people like Gruber, and organizations like the WSJ believe they have a firm grasp on what's going on internally. In a lot of ways, this seems to have inspired the "Hogwash" comment, and on a darker note, it suggests something about the discussion as a whole: that the important bits, the descriptive and interesting bits, the more useful bits, lie in a discussion about what Apple should decide to be post-Jobs. What goals are realistic? What can and can't it be?
The work here is paving the way for who's next, and ensuring that there are clear objectives. THIS is the discussion worth having; points about who the next CEO are subsidiary, and only useful insofar as they give us information about these important questions.
Why do you imagine that the WSJ writer or Gruber feel that they have a firm grasp on the matters? They are just speculating, nobody is calling it here. As much fun as it is to deride these articles, you seem to be missing the point.
To better understand the role of Steve Jobs, I recommend reading this excellent article from Technologizer (that got buried on HN as some good submissions do) about Edwin Land of Polaroid and the innovative product of the time, the SX-70.
"Edwin Land was brilliant, prescient, prickly, and demanding, and hounded his employees into doing great things they might never have accomplished otherwise. That sounds like Steve Jobs. Land described photography as “the intersection of science and art.”
Jobs likes to cite Land’s quote and says that Apple’s work sits “at the intersection of the liberal arts and technology,” a location which is surely in the same neighborhood. Land demoed new Polaroid products himself at corporate events that were famous for their hypnotic effect. Jobs carries on the tradition.
And both Land and Jobs were forced out of the companies they founded, in two of the more preposterous decisions in business history."
I think a bigger problem is that there is still no competition to Apple in the market in terms of design and the drive.
Dell, Samsung and others could have learned something already but amazingly they keep manufacturing crappy hardware locked to crappy software, probably just a tiny bit better than before the MBP era, but overall their approach and philosophy hasn't changed.
Sony looks good compared to them, but unfortunately it's too expensive (you'd rather buy a Mac for that money, wouldn't you?) plus Sony has never been a company that designs stuff with users in mind. Their hardware can be solid looking but there is usually nothing new or exceptionally well executed for the user.
Now that's the saddest part of the story for me, rather than when and who will replace Steve Jobs.
I hate all of this talk because it's disrespectful to the man who has given his all and is very much present (and a man who certainly reads the Wall Street Journal). It's interesting to note that prior to this meme of "who an replace Jobs" the #1 meme was always "when is Apple going to die?" For my money on both accounts you'd be foolish to write off Steve Jobs until the fat lady sings.
The fact of the matter is that Steve Jobs on "medical leave" is doing a much better job of managing Apple than quite a few other tech companies where the CEO shows up each day and is in perfect health.
Gruber makes a good point about the likelihood of a successor coming from within Apple, but the following seems paranoid to me:
>I can’t see how a speculative and sketchily-sourced story such as this, published 30 minutes before Apple announced overwhelmingly positive financial results, was not intended to dampen, to some degree, the positive effect of those results on Apple’s stock.
What interest does the WSJ have in manipulating Apple stock? This is effectively what Gruber claims.
The WSJ doesn’t, but they like scoops because scoops draw traffic and thus, ad revenues. And lots of competitors have an interest in manipulating Apple stock, and they also know that a publisher like the WSJ likes scoops.
What do Controlled Leaks have anything to do with alleged willful downward stock manipulation attempt by WSJ using a story which was later refuted by Jobs?
Jonathan Ive - He's creative and brilliant similar to Jobs. Apple needs an unconventional leader - Tim Cook is too convetional to lead and inspire from the top.
"Put another way, the obvious structure for a post-Jobs Apple is simply Apple as we know it, without Steve Jobs."
Steve Jobs is as unique as it gets and if that wasn't already obvious - the one line summation was more than enough to express everything written in preceding lines. "Proving" other people as not being Steve Jobs was optional.
Although it remains to be seen how much of Apple as we know it remains after Jobs (things may warrant a change who knows).
Speculation on Steve Jobs' successor strikes me as, well, pointless. The dynamic that drives Apple today is very much the same dynamic that drove it at the start: Woz and Jobs. We saw, in the late 80s and early to mid 90s what happens when the "Jobs" half of that dynamic is not there. The "Woz" dynamic, however, has had a good line of succession to cary it forward the entire time. Looking forward, it seems pretty clear that with a few more years of grooming and practice on stage that Scott Forestall will replace Jobs and keep that part of the company moving forward. Astute observers, however, would also be focusing on Federighi. It seems less clear to me that he will be able to carry on Woz's legacy...but I could be wrong.
Apple with Jobs, but without Woz, is just an empty suit...a really, really well hand tailored $6000 fine Italian 3-piece suit...but still just a suit
I feel as though you're assuming facts not in evidence, here.
Can you explain a little bit more what legacy you feel Steve Wozniak has left at Apple that persists to this day, along with why it has been important to the company's success?
My analysis of Apple's latter day success:
- Steve Jobs, demanding a high standard of quality and providing vision for ongoing products and strategy. Selecting and grooming smart people for crucial leadership roles. Requiring accountability and virtuous integration between product components and even different products.
- Tim Cook, optimizing industrial and business processes, ensuring high margins, protecting profits and structuring clever, unmatched deals for manufacturing and supply sourcing
- Jonathan Ive, designing the physical incarnations of Apple that create strong connections to the brand for customers
So is your position that software engineering has had an equally critical role to what's described above, and the engineering leadership has been Woz-esque? While Apple does make world-class software, I'm not sure I agree about the Woz bit, but I'm open to a persuasive argument.
edit: Especially when you consider how much of Apple's software engineering assets and talent came from NeXT.
Woz's lineage is in the overall engineering talent. Woz himself was no longer a major part of the company by the time the Mac was designed. Guys like Bud Tribble, Andy Hertzfeld, and Bill Atkinson were three of Woz's (many) successors already. It's not down to any individual exec to carry on Woz's legacy, because Woz was never an executive, not even an engineering executive. He only wanted to be an engineer. There are thousands of successors to Woz, and perhaps not a single successor to Jobs in the whole company.
That alone means a lot of authority. Woz embodies half of Apple's soul - the brilliantly unique hardware. It's true his half has been taken care by his successors, but it's still his half, although I suspect the PC-ness of current Macs would be offensive to him and he being on board would be our only chance of seeing an elegant x86-based computer, ever.
That said, he wouldn't probably be a good CEO. But he could be brought on board as an advisor. Apple has grown into a vastly different company since the Apple II days, but there is nobody else who can personify what Apple is all about.
Interestingly enough, every interview I see with him is mostly Apple-centric. Although he doesn't work there for about 24 years, this shows how closely associated with Apple he is in the eyes of the public.
> I suspect the PC-ness of current Macs would be offensive to him and he being on board would be our only chance of seeing an elegant x86-based computer, ever.
In what ways do you find the iMac, Mac Mini, MacBook Air et al. to be inelegant or PC-like?
Every x86 box has, unless I am very wrong, an ISA bus buried somewhere in the chipset. Deep down there, you may find a functionally complete IBM 5150 PC. I wouldn't be surprised if, somehow, you could trick the video hardware into emulating a CGA (or an MDA text mode).
If you ever had the chance, take a look into the schematics of a 5150 and compare how clumsy, inefficient and plain inelegant it is when compared to a years-older Apple II. Then you will fully understand why I hold x86-computers in such low esteem.
And yes, I am typing this on a x86 laptop. I'd love to have an option.
It's no secret that x86 is an inelegant architecture. There was no shortage of RISC CPU architectures in the 90's designed to dethrone x86. Windows NT was even written to run on two of them (DEC Alpha and PowerPC). Apple and IBM carried this experiment forward the longest, but it didn't work out that way.
No it didn't because economies of scale took their toll. Still, it would be possible to build an elegant Mac around an x86 processor, but Apple would have to design and manufacture their own chipset. Nothing would make the CPU elegant, but, at least, the rest of the computer wouldn't be this mess.
But then Macs wouldn't be able to boot Windows. When that becomes irrelevant, we may see change.
Minor nitpick: Windows NT has been ported to MIPS, PPC, Alpha and Itanium, and was originally developed for the Intel 860 (though that version was never sold). Legend says there were Intergraph Clipper and SPARC ports too. If Microsoft pulls off the ARM release of Windows 8, that will be one more architecture with a Windows NT port.
I agree with Gruber's analysis, but one part that worries me is the idea of having each SVP accountable for product decisions for their own area. I think that so much of Apple's advantages stem from hardware and software that are designed with each other in mind, that it would be much better to have a single person be SVP Product Design under Cook, so that there was always someone responsible for the entire cohesive user experience. Unfortunately, choosing such a person for this role among the three product SVP's that Gruber names is itself a very difficult political problem, and any choice could result in other talent leaving.
In Daniel "Fake Steve Jobs" Lyons' book Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs, the real Steve hires a stand-in so he can finally take some time off. Are we sure this hasn't already happened? :)
What's most important is what Steve Jobs has taught us.
If you have a relentless drive and a vision to make products better people will flock to you. It doesn't happen overnight but it does happen.
The next CEO will or won't embrace Steve Jobs' vision and the company's success will reflect that. It's inevitable, but the lesson has been learned and can be applied again and again by anybody who cares to.
Flake may be too strong of a word but Woz is a little odd. It's not that he praises the competition but that he doesn't seem to be aware of the potential media storm that follows it. He also mentions that he only carries hundreds and advertises his whereabouts on Twitter. Then there is the painful appearance on Dancing with the Stars. It just wouldn't be the way a potential CEO would act.
I agree that neither would he be interested nor would he fit the role of CEO. But I don't see how he's a flake. The guy is brilliant and is an important reason why Apple ever got off the ground in the first place.
even though I'm anti-Apple, I've always thought James Dyson would be a perfect fit, along with his company. Apple -> Dyson -> Sensor Network -> Internet of Things(with some design love)
some of these choices are designed to be provocative, not necessarily legitimate. "built to last," the wonderfully insightful book on technology entrepreneurship by jim collins, contains interesting analysis about the difficulties in replacing a charismatic, controlling founder like jobs. suffice to say, the odds are against apple. but so they were in 1998. http://www.amazon.com/Built-Last-Successful-Visionary-Essent...
Jack Dorsey would be a good candidate for Apple CEO but I cannot imagine how he's going to handle three rapidly growing companies. He is the CEO of Square and the Chief of Product Design at Twitter and according to a recent interview, he mentions that he works 18 hours a day managing the two companies. Though Jack Dorsey is a good fit for Apple, he will never be CEO of Apple.
I think I would be perfect for the job. he he, but seriously, they should look the the startup world, that is the only way to match the creativity of the jobster.
And, the Wall Street Journal turned into the Yellow Journal years ago. I wouldn't wipe a parrot's ass with it, let alone lend any credence to what's printed in it.
Apple needs someone who has wired their mind to think just like Steve Jobs. Someone who is able to rationally explain all of the decisions made at Apple, even the ones that look downright crazy to most outsiders. Someone who has spent the last 10 years trying to make themselves one with the Apple brain trust so that they can accurately predict Apple's future game plan. Someone who has immense support from Apple employees and customers alike.
It's obvious why Gruber omitted this, but you know it crossed his mind, and I'm surprised no one here on HN has mentioned it: Apple should hire John Gruber to replace Steve Jobs as CEO.
Gruber is a fervent follower, and good at reading between the lines, but he's demonstrated no ability to set his own rudder. His vision is simply Apple's vision.
Sorry to be this thread's grammar troll, but I would be very happy if OP (and the person who wrote this article) would edit the title to read:
On Seceding Steve Jobs
Succeeding means something totally different than seceding!
That bit of ugliness aside, I agree with the basic premise of this article. It would be tremendously risky for the board to bring in an outsider, and when you consider the structure of Apple's management, Tim Cook is the only reasonable choice to secede Jobs. However, Mr. Cook will have his work cut out for him as Jobs has an iconic stature, both within his company, on Wall Street and throughout the technology community.
However, on a strictly personal note, I feel sorry for whoever does eventually replace Mr. Jobs. There will inevitably be a few years when every time the new CEO makes an error, someone (either within the company, on Wall Street or within the media) will say, "If Steve Jobs were around this would never have happened."
In that regard, getting Steve Wozniak to firmly and publicly support the new CEO will be a major factor in his/her success.
Reminds me of 'The Tablet' (http://daringfireball.net/2009/12/the_tablet) and others to just how different Gruber is from other tech writers, even apple-related-tech writers like Andy Ihnatko, Jason Snell, etc. He throughly thinks about the topic with tremendous insight and unique points of view.
This post is an interesting view on the world of tech, finance and journalism.