So Steve Jobs is taking half the year off. I won’t speculate on who knew what and when, just that for the sake of his loved ones I hope he pulls through this without to much drama.
Now what are the day to day implications?
For starters, AAPL will take a bath until investors can be convinced that Cupertino is not going to undergo a nuclear meltdown in the absence of Himself. But if you look at the executive team, I would comfortably put them up against anyone else in the industry. You have Phil Schiller, who when he’s not being the sidekick is in fact as ruthlessly effective a marketing wizard as exists in the Valley. You have Jonny Ive CBE, whose industrial design over the past decade-plus has been the heart and soul of the turnaround – everything from the original Bondi Blue iMac to the iPhone has come off his drawing board. You have Ron Johnson, who goes largely unsung in the business media but who is the mastermind of Apple Retail, and that should speak for itself. And then leading the charge is Tim Cook, who was acting chief during the cancer scare four years ago and who has, in the intervening years, taken on much more of the day-to-day operations than anyone would expect. For a long time, Apple has been preparing for Cook to take the controls, and he is as ready as anyone could be.
And after a few months, when Apple hasn’t collapsed into a smoking crater, I think the stock will be just fine.
One more note: we used to refer to Jobs as “Himself” out of fear that he would magically appear, Beetlejuice-like, if his name were spoken. Since Tim Cook is an Auburn man, he will be referred to in these pages as “Hisself.” I hope to God his record is better than Gene Chizik’s.