Steve Jobs – the name has become synonymous with the company he leads. Journalists frequently ask “What will Steve Jobs do next?” as if he is the sole owner, developer, tester, screamer, and thinker at Apple. It’s undeniable that Steve is the force behind Apple’s success over recent years. But this Great Debate asks - is he what’s best for the company going into 2007?

The most common pro-Steve argument is that Apple would be nowhere without Steve’s resuscitation of the company as iCEO and CEO. His ideas, his attention to detail, his eye for good design – all of these have been incorporated into Apple’s ethos and have propelled the company from rags to riches. Apple’s future is very bright, and Steve’s leadership has contributed greatly to that future… indeed, it might have been the only thing that gave Apple a future.

But has Steve overstayed his welcome? Perhaps taking a cue from his arch-rival Bill Gates, is it time for Steve to step down and let his company proceed without him? The question is not without merit. Folklore.org is chocked full of situations in which Steve held up development for trivial aesthetic concerns, among others. Today’s technology landscape is also vastly different than that in 1984 or even the mid-90’s when he regained the reigns. Can a habitually proprietary Apple (a philosophy very much influenced by His Steveness) thrive in an increasingly open-source world? Will consumers continue to suffer with 1st Generation products with a history of poor performance?

His company has reached the ripe old age of 30 and shows no signs of slowing. Will Steve Jobs be the factor the holds Apple back?

On the other hand, is Steve Jobs even replaceable?

Steve is replaceable in the same way that any other person is replaceable. He has certain skills, aptitudes and viewpoints. In his case, there are not many people with the same balance.

Many other people, no matter how powerful, would have caved into the RIAA. Steve just has a different viewpoint on how things "should" be.

With a little luck, Apple will find someone who is as passionate about how things should be. With a little more luck, so will Microsoft. Then we could have a bit more competition (since even vista is no competition for os x) and make things better for everyone.

Nick

I don't know if it would be a good idea for him to step down quote yet, Jobs has a lot of connections in the media industry that has really helped the iTunes Store get going. Maybe in a year and a half -ish? I think he should stick around to finish off the transition to Intel. I think he will stick around until he absolutely has to leave, because he loves Apple, and Mac/Apple users love him (for the most part),

Apple won't have trouble putting out great products after Steve has decided to leave. And it will be cool to see what fresh ideas the new guy (or girl!) brings. And I think ultimately people need to be open minded to whoever replaces him, he has to start out being supported. I'd hate to see people dislke whoever it is simply because they're not Steve Jobs.

i agree that people need to be open minded, but steve jobs is steve jobs. he singlehandedly brought apple back from the dead, and now its growing more than ever. YOu can tell he lovs his job too, because he has been working for only $1 (plus stock) a year. he is very eccentric, and i dont see him stepping down for another 2 years. io can live with that, simply because i know it works. apple is doing great with him in power.

While I think Steve's ... umm... job is basically done, I agree that it is a little pre-mature for him to go. He certainly is not overtly hurting Apple yet, but if he stops Apple from licensing OS X in the future, it could be a big problem.



Exactly, he is literally an icon that simply is not replaceable.

You're all forgetting about Steve's innate natural ability:

"The Reality Distortion Field"

No one else has it, no one else ever will...

He's done a lot for Apple, just as any good coach would do for a team. As for if he's replaceable, of course he's not replaceable. The whole Scully incident years ago and then Steve returning and helping to make (he didn't make it happen, he helped it along) Apple what it is today and continues to be a force to be reckoned with. But he's not Apple, he never has been. He's just the frontman that can put on the show that the potential investors and the current stockholders love to see better than anyone else can.

Fear is a powerful motivator. Scully couldn't project it, and even after asking Steve for his resignation, that wasn't enough "fear" for Scully to put in his pocket and use to move or motivate the company. One would think, "My god, he just fired Steve, the guy that helped create the company... what will he do to me?" was the implied scare tactic in effect after Steve left and Scully fully took over, but it didn't work that way.

But Steve... I've had friends that worked at Apple in the mid-80s, and their tales are the stuff of legend as most of the better ones you read online at various places are. When he comes around, you better have something happening or else...

Now that's fear, and Steve can wield it with a natural Skill level of 22 and he rolls 20s... watch out.

bb

ps



iCon, a fantastic book about Steve. Highly recommended.

I don't think Steve is hurting Apple. The hurt came from when he left it and it almost died.

Steve himself has said that the war is over and Winders won. It's time to find the next big thing and Steve did just that with the iPod and iTunes. Now, the theme is video and how to best get video done and on a TV screen.

No, that is not what happened. Jobs left in 1985, Apple had its marketshare peak about 1993:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/total-share.ars/10





It doesn't really matter what Steve says, he is liar and it certainly is not over. Things can change very quickly in the computer industry, and sooner or later "Winders" is going to be history, just like Apple almost was.

TheStreet.com is running a "rumor" that Jobs may be taking "taking a leave of absence": http://www.thestreet.com/_yahoo/markets/ac...E&cm_ite=NA

This is not going to surprise me, if it happens sometime this year: http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?s=&...st&p=266326

EDIT: Related dirt: http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=4227

Hes gonna be around for at least a year or so more. I think hes doing a great job for Apple, and like you say, there arent too many people who can do what he does and act the way he acts. And you cant look at the market share graph. It doesnt include the iPod, which is definetly something that has helped apple greatly. The iPod grabs about 75% of the MP3 player marketshare, and steve was the one that pushed developing it, so he is definetly helping apple.

Since the thread I originally posted the following in appears dead, I am reposting some of what I wrote here.

... it is not going to surprise me if Steve Jobs steps down from Apple this year. There seem to be a number of vacant executive positions at Apple which are not being filled and Jobs himself may actually be getting some heat over this "back-dating" of stock-options scandal. But more importantly, the last time I saw Jobs on stage he looked sick and we know his health is not perfect either. Sooner or later he is going to leave, and he may very well chose to quit when he is so far ahead. On the other hand, I do not think he really lives to do anything else, so we will have to wait and see.

...



There were some clearly expressed concerns about this back in August:

http://www.oreillynet.com/mac/blog/2006/08...from_steve.html

http://shauheen.ngareh.com/archives/000178.html

... and Apple (Steve Jobs) quickly acted to put a lid on them. But I think something is definitely up and we know that Jobs is personally implicated in the stock-option scandal which not gone away. In light of the HP "pretexting" scandal and such, it does sound like it is bad enough to seriously tarnish Jobs' reputation and AAPL stockholders certainly have nothing to bitch about either.



It is obvious that the contest to find Jobs' sucessor is well under way (but of course he is not exactly replaceable). These three appear to be the main candidates, as I think Apple will almost certainly promote from within:



I think all of them could do a decent job, but they are very different people too.

"Fat boy" Phil Schiller seems like a clown on stage with Steve, but if you look at his resume he can be taken a little more seriously and actually appears competent. Nonetheless, I think his slovenly image is inconsistent with Apple's slick product line.

Bertrand Serlet is my favorite and it is he who is largely responsible for OS X as we know it. I suspect he would cut OS X loose from Mac hardware, and really drive it's development with a new kernel and programming tools. But this guy is a rather eccentric computer scientist, so I really doubt he will be selected to run Apple now that it so heavily into music and video.

Scott Forstall is really the guy to watch, he is clearly being groomed to be Steve Jobs' successor by Steve himself. He seems like a fairly bright guy with both the technical savvy and political skills to really take Apple into the future. He is also the youngest of bunch which may be perceived as a benefit in light of Steve Jobs' health problems. However, I must say there is something about Scott Forstall that I really do not like either.

I think the real question now is what will Apple look like post-Steve. To begin with, who (or what) do we expect for the new leader of Apple?

If he was so sick(which he was), why did he do the ShowTime keynote by himself? He could have had th flu of something normal like that. Not cancer. The chance of any cancer in the general public is 1/10,00. If you had 10,00 people with cancer, 1,000 of those people the cancer, it is malignant so they die. 3,500 of those people die because their survival rate wasn't high enough. 5,500 people survive. Of those 5,500, about 550 have their cancer come back. Of those 550, 55 will die because of a second cancer. So therefore you have 5445 people that survived. Steve's Job's cancer is very rare. It is in about 1/100,000,000. That is low. The thing about his cancer is that it has a medium survival rate. Luckily Steve Jobs is the 44th richest person in the world and has over $5 Billion. He was able to get a $20 Million surgery on time. He had the surgery during MacWorld 2005, which is why Phil Shiller did the Keynote, which is also the year he released the "all in one" iMac design we know and love today. When people's cancer come back, it is usually after about 6-7 years. If I can do math it has only been a little less that two years. So therefore Steve Jobs is not dying and he will lead Apple to the Future. I love numbers.

With that nerd look? no my good, the Winner Mac is about turtle neck and jeans, its part of the cool look.

In the other hand the day Mac start liscensing is the day Apple losses. Apple is a HArdware manufater of consumer products.

Nothing is gonna happen in the liscensing field.

Jobs is just starting Apple revolution, the Maworld banner says so...

That's what I meant with "eccentric", but if you take a look at previous Apple presidents,

Michael Spindler:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Spindler




and Gilbert Amelio:
http://lowendmac.com/orchard/05/1221.html




... then Bertrand Serlet does not out of the question.

http://www.apple.com/pr/bios/serlet.html




...and of course internal politics play a huge role here. A related question is whether Apple really needs to promote from within or not.

Not that I really care but, I would say Bertrand Serlet is the best of three stooges

I just watched Steve Jobs's interview on CNBC. He looked to be in good health and very clearly stated that he intends to stay at Apple for the indefinite future. So, I now looks like we are in good hands and talk of succession is premature to me.

lol what's with all the commas?

After that incredibly encrypted post, I hereby nominate Mr. Mac as the next Chairman of the Board and CEO and CTO and CFO and everything else under the sun for Apple, Inc. His apparent knowledge and skill coupled with his deft manipulation of "The Reality Distortion Field" in that post certainly makes him a viable replacement for Steve Jobs himself. Also, his wizardry with numbers should be put to good use on the books of Apple, Inc. He can sure make any P&L statement blacker than Buckwheat himself.

Should we take a vote?

bb

DISCLAIMER:

The preceding text was meant as a joke, and should be taken as such.

i cant imagine apple without steve jobs, he cannot be replaced

true, jobs cannot be replaced

-but then if you tink about it every new person is different and will lead in a different direction. after all isnt apple inc.'s moto "think different"

change isnt always bad --- unless your switching from mac to windows of course, that would be a long hard ride

So do you guys think that Steve should stay or leave?

haha in my school we have hundreds of those black and white pictures with people such as Ghandi on them with their colorful apple. i wanna take one of them before i graduate!:)

Steve should stay there until he dies.

i seccond that. he rocks

in the words of Peter Seagal "Uber Geek"

jobs brought apple back from the brink not so long after they tossed him out. NeXT became os x
whatever issues you may have with him (and some of them are justified), jobs IS apple. eventually hell be replaced but right now is a critical time for apple if they ever want to gain some dominance in the market and if he left mac usage would plummet. steve kept apple ahead of the game and they owe most of their success to that

i second alloutmacstoday: he rocks

I think steve should leave, simply because I'm a poet.

Which Steve? The Woz certainly isnt hurting Apple

As for Jobs? He might be a flamboyant asshole, but he knows what he's doing. Let him stay.

Everyone is a flamboyant asshole at Apple, legal. You should know

I don't think that Steve Jobs sould step down, in about a year or two he should step down for a new CEO but still be in the board.

That's what I think.
Everybody can be replaced, but Steve Jobs is Steve Jobs.

Steve is Apple.

The company once thought they could do without Steve, and failed miserably.

No Apple without Steve, ever.

i was going to say the same

I can tell you, if Steve Jobs ever left Apple, and they started marketing the Mac based on actual fact instead of inflated numbers, and talked about the real reasons why a Mac is better, rather than "PC's suck, and this isn't a PC", then I might actually consider getting one.

Right now, I don't want to be associated with a company that lies about its product, and has such a low opinion of its own products that its only marketing tactic is to make fun of the competition.

Amen. This let's compare Windows 95 problems to OS X, and we're so hip style doesn't cut it. The PC is for work (which makes the world go round), and OS X is for fun is also something else. This whole mac community thing needs to fly away. It's a damn computer, I also don't like the fellow users attitudes. The lack of customizability also hurts.

Macs are for fun? You've been watching too many Apple commercials. How many games do you play on your Mac? Have you seen how many games are available for Windows? There are about 6 at any given time for Mac, and they're all 2 years old. I guess if you consider making a crappy home movie that no one will ever watch and then sharing it on the web where no one will ever download it fun, then yes, Macs are for fun.

Check this out for a laugh:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=938TNncqmc8

Yep, I agree. Not only that, but DX 10 kicks the crap out of Apple's Multithreaded OpenGL. The movies, yep a perfect waste of time also, so is that little iWeb blog that maybe only a few zealots will read on your .mac account (which is a holdup). Real Video, real web design? Well, both can be done about the same on a PC with Dreamweaver and Avid, both Windows versions. Macs are nice, but there's nothing really so beneficial about them as much as ties to Windows.

Also take note to the .ani glitch in Windows. Today I just downloaded Microsoft's fix, and intentionally looked for a bad .ani file, and I got off fine.

I feel the same way but not to the same extent. OS X really owns, but they shouldnt have to continually bash PCs to promote it.

But replacing Steve at Apple would be like replacing Bill at Microsoft.
There is very few men that can even think in future terms like those two.
We think of today or maybe a few days down the road.
Those two think 5 years or even 10 years down the road.
Steve is heading in the right direction with Apple, that I can see ...

Hope he keeps it up.

Just my two cents .....


ZZ

Honestly, I don't see what Bill has EVER done for Microsoft.

I haven't taken much time to read up on the history of Microsoft, but didn't he do the business things for awhile before becoming the laid back CEO he is now?

Bill isn't the CEO at Microsoft. That would be Steve Balmer (aka the crazy chair throwing gorilla - "DEVELOPERS!").

Honestly, Windows was crappier, but politically better under Bill's control versus Steve. Back in the days of Win 3.1/95/98 windows stunk. Crashed all the time. I had to reinstall at least every few months. Things would lock up for no reason. Etc. But overall it wasn't very restrictive. Fastforward to modern day.

Now, truth be told, functionally, Windows 2000, XP, and even Vista aren't that bad. I use all 3 on various systems. They're fast, responsive, and never crash. Sure spyware and adware is a problem for some Windows users, but as a very computer literate person (programmer/DB admin with a BS in CompSci), I never have issues with those (I use Firefox, keep my box patched, and don't download every other stupid cursor mod or desktop buddy program I see). The problem these days though is that I can't change more than a handful of components before the OS wants to call home and reverify itself. Microsoft's media player has the most restrictive DRM model I can imagine. If you want to protect your license files (like say, if you need to reinstall), you have to back them up separately, but the person who sold the media can stipulate that it can't be backed up - so essentially if I reinstall I lose that media, and there's no way to prevent it.

I'm not sure if I'd prefer to deal with the crappy functionality or the restrictive babysitting more, though "neither" is certainly my preferred answer (which is why I try to use OS X or Linux these days).

Check out this Video, First time I have seen it, this ran so smooth 11 years ago. and wow does it seem like the OS we have today. Not much has changed...

OS X before it`s Time.

Quoted above "You can tell he loves his job too, because he has been working for only $1 (plus stock) a year."

Yeah... that (plus stock) gave him over 300 million dollars last year. I hate the fact that he publishes this because its simply not true. There are many many many CEOs who make less than he does when you factor it all in. If he was truly in love with his company, he'd give that stock back or do something good for the community. His publicity stunts make me sick.

phpguru

Who cares what Steve makes, if I had a job I'd want to get paid doing it.

The Apple stock is at all time highs, what has Steve done wrong?

Right, but you don't try to fool the public into thinking you're some humanitarian when you're really just in it for the money like the rest of us.

There's no question that the company under him has done well. And from what he started, it could definitely do better. If done right (doubt it would happen under Steve), Apple could streamline their products and slash prices heavily on their computers and basically own the computer market. The way they put physical design > engineering needs to be altered to produce hardware superior products in addition to software superior products.

phpguru

Well, he has failed to release a mid-tower Mac, you know a regular computer like every other manufacturer sells...

Next, he has refused to license OS X to the likes of Dell, HP or Sony...

Which is really crazy because I don't understand what Apple would lose from such a computer. In fact they could gain tons more users.

they would gain users but then no one would buy imacs anymore. all the cost and development of the imac would go to waste and then they would start to fall in line with every other hardware manufacturer.

I disagree with this. iMacs are a different market, some people want an "all-in-one", some don't. The developing iMac or a new mid-tower Mac is negligible to a company the size of Apple. The idea of not given people a basic choice, a mid-tower, while trying to grow market share makes no sense to me.

I agree. Apple needs to get a mid ranged tower, because I sure as hell don't want an allinone, I don't want a mini cube, and I can't really afford anything but the minicube anyway so I DEFINITELY can't get the pro. They need a bargain computer that's upgradable, it makes more sense to me then anything. I'd actually buy a goddamn Apple if I could afford one, but the only thing I'd be willing to buy from them is a powerbook or a mac pro. Which as I've stated before are too much $$$.