(Originally published on Aug. 27, 2011)In a way, Steve Jobs might have saved the best “One Last Thing” for last: The legendary and now former Apple CEO has left his company in fine hands and on a path of prospects as great as his final years at the helm have provided.
There is no question that the Man of the Hour is now Tim Cook — Apple’s man of the future. He and Jony Ive have been Jobs’ two right hands for ages. While Jobs himself is irreplaceable, nobody is indispensable. The lines of succession and responsibility have been carefully crafted and are as sleek as any piece of hardware Apple has ever designed.
Cook is no showman in the mold of Jobs, but that doesn’t matter. Jobs’ prime days were well behind him before his last two public appearances this year, at the WWDC and, serendipitously, at the Cupertino town council to pitch for Apple’s new headquarters.
But Apple doesn’t really need a showman anymore, or even a legacy, though Job’s shadow will be long, and his shoes impossibly large to fill. That sort of thing was important when Apple was looking past minuscule market share for some respectability, to make the leap from the small sandbox of extreme loyalists to a beachhead in the mainstream of consumerism.
Apple is now the epitome of mainstream. Can one even call it a computer company anymore? Cook’s biggest strength is moving products from gestation to the hands of over-eager customers. Apple’s biggest problem these days: The company can’t keep up with the demand of its iPads. Tablets of most of its competitors are gathering dust or being sold at fire sale prices, as Hewlett-Packard was forced to do when it exited the business entirely. And for that course, Cook is, you will pardon the expression, an executive chef extraordinaire.
I have already been asked too many times since Wednesday evening to place Jobs in the pantheon of CEOs. The answer is quite simple. Jobs is the single most important figure in high tech’s digital era, and only time will tell if he is considered the greatest overall — bigger than the likes of Gates, Hewlett, Packard and other titans.
But Jobs is more than that. He is perhaps one of the greatest CEOs of any kind, a name which will be remembered generations from now even if the particulars of his achievements and personality are obscure — a Henry Ford of the Internet era, if you will, running the General Motors of the post-war boom.
It is also important to remember that, while it is clear that Jobs’ health is waning and he won’t be part of the daily grind, the notoriously-particular Apple co-founder is chairman of the company and will kibbitz as he sees fit. He will not undermine Cook, in any way, shape or form, but he will be there.
At this point, as the dust on yesterday’s inevitable announcement settles, my thoughts turn not to an Apple without Jobs but to a world without him. The morbidity of the death watch is an unseemly subject, but it is the elephant in the room. The criteria he had set for stepping aside cannot mean anything other than he is winding down because he must.
Jobs’ final thing was to compartmentalize his health and assure shareholders with winks and nods that there would be life after him, even if the tech press wasn’t in on the secret.
In a world where what’s good for Apple is also usually good for America, that is one of Jobs’ most remarkable achievements.
