Steve Jobs is going to die!
Update: anyone arriving at this article today, it was written as a reaction to utterly distasteful and disrespectful articles doing the rounds at the time, speculating on Jobs’s health. Jobs died on October 5, 2011, two-and-a-half years later. He never did get well, but I hope the time he had between this article being written and the day of his death were full of joy.
It’s true: Steve Jobs—Apple messiah and all-round clever chap—is going to shuffle off his mortal coil, kick the bucket, and generally become an ex-Jobs. But here’s the thing: it’s probably not going to happen this week, this month or even this year. The guy’s had and survived cancer, now clearly has a medical problem that means he’s not getting nutrients from food, and is under a lot of constant stress that’s making his condition worse. The most obvious medical advice for such a thing: take a break—a long one—until you’re well again.
Of course, the latest from Apple sent the stock markets crazy, due to idiots somehow equating Apple with Jobs. Sure, Jobs ‘saved’ Apple to some extent during his return, but many forget that Apple now is Jobs, in the sense that his personality is directly infused into company procedures and processes. In other words, even though Jobs won’t be at Apple for the forseeable future, Apple still is Jobs anyway. It’s hardly the most confusing concept in the world, but a lot of people appear to be having trouble understanding this basic fact. (Also, publications and analysts that continue to rattle off ‘Apple needs to start thinking about a successor’ garbage, please shoot yourself—anyone who genuinely believes that Apple has no contingency plans doesn’t deserve the tag ‘journalist’ or ‘analyst’. In fact, they barely qualify for ‘sentient’.)
So: Tim Cook will take over for a while (a safe pair of hands, to say the least), and Apple will continue working on products already devised for the next 18 months, during which time Jobs will still be directly involved in important strategic decisions anyway. And even if, God forbid, Jobs does end up bowing out in a very final sense sooner than expected, Apple’s got the likes of Cook, Ive and Schiller to see the company onwards.
In the meantime, here’s hoping publications finally get bored of the speculation and rather morbid obsession of “Will he? Won’t he?” surrounding Jobs. Maybe one of them will even have enough guts and integrity—and I know this is unlikely, but what the hell—to merely publish a piece with four simple words: Get well soon, Steve.