All these comments are merited, but I think the manner of the transition to a new
CEO could alleviate some people's fears.
Steve Jobs has been more than a CEO - he has been the face of Apple. It may be that he will stop being the face, but continue his CEO duties more privately. I think it would be great if he would let others be at the front for publicity... Maybe the speculation around his health would subside if he didn't make public appearances.
There are a lot of talents at Apple. There might even be a potential Steve Jobs replacement among them. But knowing how corporations work, it is unlikely that the right person will be in the right spot at the right time, even if this person exists.
Here is a real basic problem. Steve has never been a subordinate. Everybody else at Apple is. Steve would probably suck as an employee. He would not be a "team player". Would not suck up to the right people, or to anybody probably. He would not complete tasks he was uninterested in (we are talking about a college dropout here). He would likely be fired.
In fact, a guy exactly like Jobs would probably never get through Apple HR to begin with. Certainly not for any management post:
* He dropped out of college after one semester.
* He took LSD and considered this a valuable experience.
* He went backpacking around India to find philosophical enlightenment.
* He cheated Wozniak out of about $2000 on their first partnership doing some work for Atari.
* He has no MBA, never went to Harvard or Yale or anywhere like that.
Apple has talents. So do a lot of companies. But Apple has focus. Focus is something most companies talk about, but few have. Apple's product list is so small, a single person can memorize the whole thing, and even know the history of each product back several generations. This is the case for many of us here.
This is absolutely impossible with any other major electronics manufacturer.
There is a reason for this, two actually. One is that there is in fact exactly one person handling Apple's entire product line: Jobs. The other reason is that Jobs does not believe in being everything to all people, including Apple's employees.
There are probably tons of product ideas floating around at Apple. A lot of these have certainly cost money to develop. But if Steve says no, that's the end of it. With normal managers, this is impossible. They have to justify their budget. If they come up with a dud, they are losers who get sidetracked. There is a huge amount of pressure in most companies to push projects through long after everybody knows they no longer make sense.
Not only that, most employees feel strong pressure to adopt new buzzwords and concepts no matter how ill-advised or poorly defined they might be. The reason is that if they don't, it looks like they are losing their edge. Jobs, on the other hand, decides what he cares about and what he doesn't. And if he doesn't care about something, he's not going to work on it. He also doesn't care what the analysts say. These are people who never have an original idea.
What Jobs does is hard. More important than hard, it's fundamentally counter intuitive to corporate types.
I'd be seriously surprised if Apple without Jobs maintained its focus and vision for longer than the current roadmap. Tim Cook sure as heck isn't going to drive that, or anybody else that I can see.
There are a lot of talents at Apple. There might even be a potential Steve Jobs replacement among them. But knowing how corporations work, it is unlikely that the right person will be in the right spot at the right time, even if this person exists.
Here is a real basic problem. Steve has never been a subordinate. Everybody else at Apple is. Steve would probably suck as an employee. He would not be a "team player". Would not suck up to the right people, or to anybody probably. He would not complete tasks he was uninterested in (we are talking about a college dropout here). He would likely be fired.
In fact, a guy exactly like Jobs would probably never get through Apple HR to begin with. Certainly not for any management post:
* He dropped out of college after one semester.
* He took LSD and considered this a valuable experience.
* He went backpacking around India to find philosophical enlightenment.
* He cheated Wozniak out of about $2000 on their first partnership doing some work for Atari.
* He has no MBA, never went to Harvard or Yale or anywhere like that.
Apple has talents. So do a lot of companies. But Apple has focus. Focus is something most companies talk about, but few have. Apple's product list is so small, a single person can memorize the whole thing, and even know the history of each product back several generations. This is the case for many of us here.
This is absolutely impossible with any other major electronics manufacturer.
There is a reason for this, two actually. One is that there is in fact exactly one person handling Apple's entire product line: Jobs. The other reason is that Jobs does not believe in being everything to all people, including Apple's employees.
There are probably tons of product ideas floating around at Apple. A lot of these have certainly cost money to develop. But if Steve says no, that's the end of it. With normal managers, this is impossible. They have to justify their budget. If they come up with a dud, they are losers who get sidetracked. There is a huge amount of pressure in most companies to push projects through long after everybody knows they no longer make sense.
Not only that, most employees feel strong pressure to adopt new buzzwords and concepts no matter how ill-advised or poorly defined they might be. The reason is that if they don't, it looks like they are losing their edge. Jobs, on the other hand, decides what he cares about and what he doesn't. And if he doesn't care about something, he's not going to work on it. He also doesn't care what the analysts say. These are people who never have an original idea.
What Jobs does is hard. More important than hard, it's fundamentally counter intuitive to corporate types.
I'd be seriously surprised if Apple without Jobs maintained its focus and vision for longer than the current roadmap. Tim Cook sure as heck isn't going to drive that, or anybody else that I can see.
While I certainly agree that it would be near impossible for someone like Steve Jobs to make it to a top position in Apple today, I think Steve's first departure taught him, in many ways, that such is a good thing. The one comment I hear most about him once he came back was how focused he was on making both innovative products and making innovative products that people (not just himself) would enjoy.
No one but Steve could have pulled Apple back from oblivion. But now that he's put Apple back where it deserves to be and hired the right people to succeed him, I don't see there being a huge issue. If you watch his keynotes, his engineers surpassed his knowledge long ago (just watch Steve talk about Mass Branch Predictors), but instilling people in the company that share his sense of minimalism and streamlined operational directives will go a long way in the end. He hired them for a reason, after all.
While losing Steve will certainly not be fun, I do believe Apple can live on and retain it's quality without him.
As grains of sand pass through the hourglass of time, we age As some have already touched on, succession is certain. The challenge for any company is to forecast, plan, and implement leadership transition.
From my outsider?s perspective, part of Apple?s mountain to climb lies in adjusting the iconic public face of the company. Naturally, that face means different things to different people; and transforming it has different implications and consequences to different people. Knowing that the very character of the Apple engine that drives Wall Street speculation, that fuels the passion of its longstanding and newly arrived consumers, that captures press in ways like few others, it should not get lost on Apple that mixed messages and unexpected signals is unhealthy through and through. Some proactive press releases or a conference call or two on succession would go a long way in keeping the Apple ?Vision? focused. This may run somewhat counter-intuitive to the company?s corporate culture, but keeping product development a closely guarded secret is entirely different --- and necessary --- than medium and long term management direction, particularly for a company with such a flat hierarchy. In this case, Apple should tip its hand to disclose --- even in broad strokes --- where and how it will meet the succession-puck. As it follows this mantra for its products, so, too, should it follow it for itself.
Wow, just think of all the press that will be generated at the sight of 1000 dudes dressed in black, all with less than 10 percent body fat. I can see it now, "Health of entire Apple team in question, stock price drop!!!!"
But now that he's put Apple back where it deserves to be and hired the right people to succeed him. He hired them for a reason, after all.
I don't see a lot of evidence he hired anybody to succeed him. I think he hired people to augment him, the way a good carpenter would buy the best tools. I think he's got brilliant people (this includes Cook, don't get me wrong), but they are all "vertical" to their task. I don't see any big-picture types, any philosophers.
So these guys would need to run the company by consensus, since none of them get the whole picture. But consensus is slow and is fraught with political dynamics. If executive A supports an initiative by executive B, then B will "owe" A support for the next thing A comes up with, even if it's crap. If not, A will feel betrayed. A will especially feel betrayed if his project is not crap, but is merely OK. If you work on something for a couple of years and it's not that bad, you are likely to convince yourself that it's great.
This isn't evil. It isn't even incompetence. It's just human nature. Today, Apple is actually a very large small business. It cannot become a corporation and stay the same.
Now if I'm reading things right Steve has been in trouble for some time now. He may or may not be seriously planning for the case of his own demise. If he is, he may have identified the right characteristics in some individual, maybe two, and may have picked one of these as his successor. But I don't see who that person could be, nor is there any obvious evidence.
Why do people insist on posting on things they have no concept of?
The analyst is right. Companies have cultures. A CEO's biggest role is to define and develop the culture of the company so that everyone is marching in the same direction. The analyst is simply saying that Jobs has done a great job of getting enough people on board that his changes are internalized ('institutionalized'). When a CEO manages to do that well, companies excel. They also survive times when the boss is unavailable for a period of time.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wealthychef
Well, plans are all well and good, but without good leadership, a plan quickly goes by the wayside. The spirit and the plan have to be executed by the chief executive, and if that is a dull man like the guy doing the Macworld keynote, Apple will lose its sparkle no matter how much talent they hire. Look at Microsoft. They have talent to spare, but no sparkle. If Apple doesn't come up with another Steve Jobs, I'll be selling my stock.
Apple doesn't need another Jobs. Jobs did something that you rarely see done so well - redefining the culture of the company so that the company stands for something - and everyone knows where the company is going. Another Steve Jobs would be a mistake. Rather, they need a nurturer (not in the HR sense, but in the culture sense) - someone who can build on a well established, successful culture and build a team which can use that culture.
Quote:
Originally Posted by quinney
Hmmmmm. Investing based upon the sparkle of a company. I can't say I have heard of that
before, but I do know a woman who bets on horse races based upon the colors the jockeys
are wearing. Please post again when you do sell. I have been looking for a good buy signal.
Believe it or not, successful investors do it all the time. The culture of the company is one of the major factors in deciding which stocks to pick. If you show me two companies with identical financials while one has a poorly defined culture where employees are at odds with management and everyone's going in a different direction while the other one has a strong team culture and an culture of innovation which all the employees understand and respect, I'd bet on the latter any day of the week - just as most stock picking experts do.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SpamSandwich
Plus, the "vision" has changed a number of times. Having one key decision-maker is good when it comes to keeping the direction of the company nimble and able to respond to market forces, but when the decisions are bad, they can bring a company down quicker.
That is almost impossible to pull off in a company the size of Apple. Even for Jobs - who has been shown to be an incredible leader - it took many years to make Apple what it is today. A nimble leader with a slow- moving company will fail every time. They will find that they routinely make decisions and the troops are too slow to respond. A successful company is one where the leader has developed a company-wide culture of nimbleness. The leader's role is to define the culture and define the direction of the company, not make every decision every day. Jobs understands that. Early on, he made a large number of decisions - mostly to prove a point. As the company has rallied to what he's trying to do, the stories about him making every single decision have died out. He has developed an exceptional management team which thinks much as he does - and therefore negates the need for him to personally make every decision.
Sounds like jragosta helped write this article! LOL
I've been a Mac fanatic since the very first Mac 128k rolling out in 1984. I've seen Apple develop through the years and have read just about every book on Apple and Jobs ever published. The fact is that Jobs is too unique to ever be complete institutionalized. Even so, Apple will not up and die when Steve does, although the idiots on Wall Street will certainly bash my AAPL holdings when Steve does go. However, it would be nice to get rid of Steve if it will also get rid of glossy screens, bring back Firewire on low end MacBooks, and make the Mini a power user machine with incredible expandability in a small form factor (anyone remember the SE/30? -- a machine designed during Steve Jobs absence at Apple).
I honestly think that in the future when Jobs is gone, we will see an Apple transition as Disney did without Walt. Yes, Walt still lives on at Disney as Jobs "spirit" certainly will at Apple. But the company much change with the times and construct a new path to greatness.
It is also worthwhile to note that there are various degrees of leadership. While Jobs has a lot of vision, he’s certainly not needed to carry out that vision. He has others doing most of the heavy lifting. I’m sure he put in very long hours in the last 10 years in turning around Apple; however, I don’t believe that’s required now that he has the infrastructure and people set up to carry out his wishes. So long as Jobs is alive, I believe he will ALWAYS be involved in guiding Apple. He might not be there every day because of his poor health but make no mistake that his imprint will still be felt throughout Apple.
What Jobs and the board want now is a way for Jobs to spend less time at Apple to tend to his health. There’s nothing wrong with that. It also will allow for a smoother transition if something were to happen to him. Hopefully, by doing this now, in a couple of years, investors would stop tying the stock price so much to Jobs’ well being. In the long run, it benefits all, including Jobs by not having his well being tied so much to the well being of the stock.
The knucklehead factor will be avoided, because Jobs will be heavily involved in choosing his successor, unlike the case of his previous departure.
Actually, in a manner of speaking, he did choose his successor last time around. While it certainly wasn't Jobs intention to have Sculley replace him, Jobs did pressure him heavily to leave Pepsi: "Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?"
I'm pretty sure the successor to Jobs will come from outside Apple. But will be brought in before he leaves. There's a word for it (I can't recall) that explains you can't see from inside, one must be on the outside looking in. Steve and Apple kinda had that relationship. He was outside the industry looking in. He had a vision and acted on it with the help from Woz. Together they created their vision, one that we all wanted to share and be a part of. 10 years later he was removed, place outside again. He created that vision again in NeXT but that vision later being OS X and it's abilities that extend to the user. So here we are 30+1 years later. His vision may be the same but the execution is changing with time, it's one we all want to be a part of. It's like life really, changing with time and being shaped and molded over and over again. While your location in life may change by both time and relation your vision and passion never do.
Finding someone like that...
They'll be no replacement to Steve, rather a change in drivers with the same vision. The vision will be the same although the the execution may change. That vision? Change the world and the way we use it. The execution? It's not diversity.
Although M$'s ad campaign didn't necessarily do what they wanted, they had a good idea with putting Gates into their commercials. Shows the Windoze fan base that he's still around.
Now, I'm not suggesting that Jobs should do the same kind of TV ads, but if he sticks around after the reigns have been handed over just to "touch base" with the base users (fanboys), that would be a good thing. Maybe pop in a single "I'm a Mac" commercial (for a short run).
I, too, will be sad to see him leave, but I have a feeling he'll still have some influence after retirement. Kind of like the old guy who retires and hands over the machine shop or construction biz to his son. He still gets in the son's face and tells him where he's screwing up , and offers some excellent advice (leaving the actual decision to the new boss) based on years of experience.
Comments
All these comments are merited, but I think the manner of the transition to a new
CEO could alleviate some people's fears.
Steve Jobs has been more than a CEO - he has been the face of Apple. It may be that he will stop being the face, but continue his CEO duties more privately. I think it would be great if he would let others be at the front for publicity... Maybe the speculation around his health would subside if he didn't make public appearances.
Here is a real basic problem. Steve has never been a subordinate. Everybody else at Apple is. Steve would probably suck as an employee. He would not be a "team player". Would not suck up to the right people, or to anybody probably. He would not complete tasks he was uninterested in (we are talking about a college dropout here). He would likely be fired.
In fact, a guy exactly like Jobs would probably never get through Apple HR to begin with. Certainly not for any management post:
* He dropped out of college after one semester.
* He took LSD and considered this a valuable experience.
* He went backpacking around India to find philosophical enlightenment.
* He cheated Wozniak out of about $2000 on their first partnership doing some work for Atari.
* He has no MBA, never went to Harvard or Yale or anywhere like that.
Apple has talents. So do a lot of companies. But Apple has focus. Focus is something most companies talk about, but few have. Apple's product list is so small, a single person can memorize the whole thing, and even know the history of each product back several generations. This is the case for many of us here.
This is absolutely impossible with any other major electronics manufacturer.
There is a reason for this, two actually. One is that there is in fact exactly one person handling Apple's entire product line: Jobs. The other reason is that Jobs does not believe in being everything to all people, including Apple's employees.
There are probably tons of product ideas floating around at Apple. A lot of these have certainly cost money to develop. But if Steve says no, that's the end of it. With normal managers, this is impossible. They have to justify their budget. If they come up with a dud, they are losers who get sidetracked. There is a huge amount of pressure in most companies to push projects through long after everybody knows they no longer make sense.
Not only that, most employees feel strong pressure to adopt new buzzwords and concepts no matter how ill-advised or poorly defined they might be. The reason is that if they don't, it looks like they are losing their edge. Jobs, on the other hand, decides what he cares about and what he doesn't. And if he doesn't care about something, he's not going to work on it. He also doesn't care what the analysts say. These are people who never have an original idea.
What Jobs does is hard. More important than hard, it's fundamentally counter intuitive to corporate types.
I'd be seriously surprised if Apple without Jobs maintained its focus and vision for longer than the current roadmap. Tim Cook sure as heck isn't going to drive that, or anybody else that I can see.
I think some analysts need to be institutionalized...
all Mac users by the automatic system update, ....wait for it,
That means now...... " WE THE MAN" !!!!! aw crap I ran out of hard drive space.....
There are a lot of talents at Apple. There might even be a potential Steve Jobs replacement among them. But knowing how corporations work, it is unlikely that the right person will be in the right spot at the right time, even if this person exists.
Here is a real basic problem. Steve has never been a subordinate. Everybody else at Apple is. Steve would probably suck as an employee. He would not be a "team player". Would not suck up to the right people, or to anybody probably. He would not complete tasks he was uninterested in (we are talking about a college dropout here). He would likely be fired.
In fact, a guy exactly like Jobs would probably never get through Apple HR to begin with. Certainly not for any management post:
* He dropped out of college after one semester.
* He took LSD and considered this a valuable experience.
* He went backpacking around India to find philosophical enlightenment.
* He cheated Wozniak out of about $2000 on their first partnership doing some work for Atari.
* He has no MBA, never went to Harvard or Yale or anywhere like that.
Apple has talents. So do a lot of companies. But Apple has focus. Focus is something most companies talk about, but few have. Apple's product list is so small, a single person can memorize the whole thing, and even know the history of each product back several generations. This is the case for many of us here.
This is absolutely impossible with any other major electronics manufacturer.
There is a reason for this, two actually. One is that there is in fact exactly one person handling Apple's entire product line: Jobs. The other reason is that Jobs does not believe in being everything to all people, including Apple's employees.
There are probably tons of product ideas floating around at Apple. A lot of these have certainly cost money to develop. But if Steve says no, that's the end of it. With normal managers, this is impossible. They have to justify their budget. If they come up with a dud, they are losers who get sidetracked. There is a huge amount of pressure in most companies to push projects through long after everybody knows they no longer make sense.
Not only that, most employees feel strong pressure to adopt new buzzwords and concepts no matter how ill-advised or poorly defined they might be. The reason is that if they don't, it looks like they are losing their edge. Jobs, on the other hand, decides what he cares about and what he doesn't. And if he doesn't care about something, he's not going to work on it. He also doesn't care what the analysts say. These are people who never have an original idea.
What Jobs does is hard. More important than hard, it's fundamentally counter intuitive to corporate types.
I'd be seriously surprised if Apple without Jobs maintained its focus and vision for longer than the current roadmap. Tim Cook sure as heck isn't going to drive that, or anybody else that I can see.
While I certainly agree that it would be near impossible for someone like Steve Jobs to make it to a top position in Apple today, I think Steve's first departure taught him, in many ways, that such is a good thing. The one comment I hear most about him once he came back was how focused he was on making both innovative products and making innovative products that people (not just himself) would enjoy.
No one but Steve could have pulled Apple back from oblivion. But now that he's put Apple back where it deserves to be and hired the right people to succeed him, I don't see there being a huge issue. If you watch his keynotes, his engineers surpassed his knowledge long ago (just watch Steve talk about Mass Branch Predictors), but instilling people in the company that share his sense of minimalism and streamlined operational directives will go a long way in the end. He hired them for a reason, after all.
While losing Steve will certainly not be fun, I do believe Apple can live on and retain it's quality without him.
From my outsider?s perspective, part of Apple?s mountain to climb lies in adjusting the iconic public face of the company. Naturally, that face means different things to different people; and transforming it has different implications and consequences to different people. Knowing that the very character of the Apple engine that drives Wall Street speculation, that fuels the passion of its longstanding and newly arrived consumers, that captures press in ways like few others, it should not get lost on Apple that mixed messages and unexpected signals is unhealthy through and through. Some proactive press releases or a conference call or two on succession would go a long way in keeping the Apple ?Vision? focused. This may run somewhat counter-intuitive to the company?s corporate culture, but keeping product development a closely guarded secret is entirely different --- and necessary --- than medium and long term management direction, particularly for a company with such a flat hierarchy. In this case, Apple should tip its hand to disclose --- even in broad strokes --- where and how it will meet the succession-puck. As it follows this mantra for its products, so, too, should it follow it for itself.
.
But now that he's put Apple back where it deserves to be and hired the right people to succeed him. He hired them for a reason, after all.
I don't see a lot of evidence he hired anybody to succeed him. I think he hired people to augment him, the way a good carpenter would buy the best tools. I think he's got brilliant people (this includes Cook, don't get me wrong), but they are all "vertical" to their task. I don't see any big-picture types, any philosophers.
So these guys would need to run the company by consensus, since none of them get the whole picture. But consensus is slow and is fraught with political dynamics. If executive A supports an initiative by executive B, then B will "owe" A support for the next thing A comes up with, even if it's crap. If not, A will feel betrayed. A will especially feel betrayed if his project is not crap, but is merely OK. If you work on something for a couple of years and it's not that bad, you are likely to convince yourself that it's great.
This isn't evil. It isn't even incompetence. It's just human nature. Today, Apple is actually a very large small business. It cannot become a corporation and stay the same.
Now if I'm reading things right Steve has been in trouble for some time now. He may or may not be seriously planning for the case of his own demise. If he is, he may have identified the right characteristics in some individual, maybe two, and may have picked one of these as his successor. But I don't see who that person could be, nor is there any obvious evidence.
Warning.... clown alert.
Why do people insist on posting on things they have no concept of?
The analyst is right. Companies have cultures. A CEO's biggest role is to define and develop the culture of the company so that everyone is marching in the same direction. The analyst is simply saying that Jobs has done a great job of getting enough people on board that his changes are internalized ('institutionalized'). When a CEO manages to do that well, companies excel. They also survive times when the boss is unavailable for a period of time.
Well, plans are all well and good, but without good leadership, a plan quickly goes by the wayside. The spirit and the plan have to be executed by the chief executive, and if that is a dull man like the guy doing the Macworld keynote, Apple will lose its sparkle no matter how much talent they hire. Look at Microsoft. They have talent to spare, but no sparkle. If Apple doesn't come up with another Steve Jobs, I'll be selling my stock.
Apple doesn't need another Jobs. Jobs did something that you rarely see done so well - redefining the culture of the company so that the company stands for something - and everyone knows where the company is going. Another Steve Jobs would be a mistake. Rather, they need a nurturer (not in the HR sense, but in the culture sense) - someone who can build on a well established, successful culture and build a team which can use that culture.
Hmmmmm. Investing based upon the sparkle of a company. I can't say I have heard of that
before, but I do know a woman who bets on horse races based upon the colors the jockeys
are wearing. Please post again when you do sell. I have been looking for a good buy signal.
Believe it or not, successful investors do it all the time. The culture of the company is one of the major factors in deciding which stocks to pick. If you show me two companies with identical financials while one has a poorly defined culture where employees are at odds with management and everyone's going in a different direction while the other one has a strong team culture and an culture of innovation which all the employees understand and respect, I'd bet on the latter any day of the week - just as most stock picking experts do.
Plus, the "vision" has changed a number of times. Having one key decision-maker is good when it comes to keeping the direction of the company nimble and able to respond to market forces, but when the decisions are bad, they can bring a company down quicker.
That is almost impossible to pull off in a company the size of Apple. Even for Jobs - who has been shown to be an incredible leader - it took many years to make Apple what it is today. A nimble leader with a slow- moving company will fail every time. They will find that they routinely make decisions and the troops are too slow to respond. A successful company is one where the leader has developed a company-wide culture of nimbleness. The leader's role is to define the culture and define the direction of the company, not make every decision every day. Jobs understands that. Early on, he made a large number of decisions - mostly to prove a point. As the company has rallied to what he's trying to do, the stories about him making every single decision have died out. He has developed an exceptional management team which thinks much as he does - and therefore negates the need for him to personally make every decision.
I've been a Mac fanatic since the very first Mac 128k rolling out in 1984. I've seen Apple develop through the years and have read just about every book on Apple and Jobs ever published. The fact is that Jobs is too unique to ever be complete institutionalized. Even so, Apple will not up and die when Steve does, although the idiots on Wall Street will certainly bash my AAPL holdings when Steve does go. However, it would be nice to get rid of Steve if it will also get rid of glossy screens, bring back Firewire on low end MacBooks, and make the Mini a power user machine with incredible expandability in a small form factor (anyone remember the SE/30? -- a machine designed during Steve Jobs absence at Apple).
I honestly think that in the future when Jobs is gone, we will see an Apple transition as Disney did without Walt. Yes, Walt still lives on at Disney as Jobs "spirit" certainly will at Apple. But the company much change with the times and construct a new path to greatness.
What Jobs and the board want now is a way for Jobs to spend less time at Apple to tend to his health. There’s nothing wrong with that. It also will allow for a smoother transition if something were to happen to him. Hopefully, by doing this now, in a couple of years, investors would stop tying the stock price so much to Jobs’ well being. In the long run, it benefits all, including Jobs by not having his well being tied so much to the well being of the stock.
The knucklehead factor will be avoided, because Jobs will be heavily involved in choosing his successor, unlike the case of his previous departure.
Actually, in a manner of speaking, he did choose his successor last time around. While it certainly wasn't Jobs intention to have Sculley replace him, Jobs did pressure him heavily to leave Pepsi: "Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?"
The fact is that Jobs is too unique...
Jobs is too one-of-a-kind? I think that's how one's spirit gets institutionalized in the first place.
Finding someone like that...
They'll be no replacement to Steve, rather a change in drivers with the same vision. The vision will be the same although the the execution may change. That vision? Change the world and the way we use it. The execution? It's not diversity.
Now, I'm not suggesting that Jobs should do the same kind of TV ads, but if he sticks around after the reigns have been handed over just to "touch base" with the base users (fanboys), that would be a good thing. Maybe pop in a single "I'm a Mac" commercial (for a short run).
I, too, will be sad to see him leave, but I have a feeling he'll still have some influence after retirement. Kind of like the old guy who retires and hands over the machine shop or construction biz to his son. He still gets in the son's face and tells him where he's screwing up