Steve Jobs of Apple steps down

Picture: Steve Jobs

ON JANUARY 5th Steve Jobs, the revered and controversial boss of Apple, disclosed that “a hormone imbalance” had been “robbing” him of proteins all last year, which was why he has appeared so gaunt. He insisted that the cure would be “simple and straightforward” and declared defiantly that this was “all that I am going to say about this.”

But on January 14th he had to say more: “I have learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought.” He announced that he was taking medical leave until June, during which time his number two, Tim Cook, would run Apple. “I look forward to seeing all of you this summer,” Mr Jobs ended his latest letter to his firm’s employees. But there is a real possibility that Mr Jobs, who had surgery for a rare form of pancreatic cancer in 2004, will not come back.

And so the era of Steve Jobs at Apple may already have ended. Investors, customers, employees and fans have barely begun to absorb the consequences. No boss today embodies and defines his company as completely as Steve Jobs. “I don’t see an Apple, the way we would define the company, without Steve,” says Mark Anderson of Strategic News Service, a technology think-tank.

Two separate dramas will now begin playing out. One is the unfolding of Mr Jobs’s personal story. He founded the company with a friend in the 1970s. He pioneered the era of the personal computer in the 1980s. He was thrown out of the company in a boardroom coup in 1985. He spent 12 years remaking himself, then returned to lead the then-struggling firm to its greatest triumphs: the iMac, which reinvigorated its computer business; the iPod, which has transformed music; and the iPhone, which has shaken up the mobile-phone industry.
The other drama is the unfolding of Apple’s story. The closest to a successor that the company has is Mr Cook, who is chief operating officer and briefly ran Apple while Mr Jobs was having his cancer surgery. Mr Cook keeps a very low profile, as Mr Jobs prefers his staff to do. He is single and a workaholic. He has a southern drawl and is as cool as Mr Jobs runs hot. He is the master of Apple’s operational minutiae. But not a single gesture by him or Mr Jobs has ever suggested that he might become the permanent chief executive.

To take his own place on a stage this month, Mr Jobs instead chose Apple’s marketing boss, Philip Schiller. Mr Schiller put on a gamely performance, but in subtle ways the absence of Mr Jobs, a consummate showman, was felt throughout. Mr Jobs likes to tease audiences toward the end of speeches with “one more thing”; Mr Schiller, as though emphasising that he was not trying to replace Mr Jobs, turned it into “one last thing”.

It is unknown whether Apple has a pipeline of innovative new products on the scale of the iPod or iPhone. A tablet-like device to contest Amazon in electronic-book readers, or an internet-capable television set, is possible. A new line of laptops has just been announced.
But the real question for Apple is whether the person of Mr Jobs is the glue that holds the talent underneath him together. Apple’s magic is part design, part engineering, part logistics and part vision. Design is the domain of Jonathan Ive, a shy Briton; engineering is split into hardware and software; logistics is run by Mr Cook. And the vision thing belongs entirely to Mr Job. Without him, will all the other pieces, and the magic, come unglued?