In Why Apple Will Be OK Without Steve Jobs, Leander Kahney bucks the trend and suggests the Cupertino giant will be fine, even if Jobs never returns to the company. He notes that Jobs is hardly alone in dreaming up and refining products (they’re not suddenly ‘discovered’—they come through a process of robust iteration and prototyping), that Tim Cook’s been a fine ‘acting CEO’ before, and that Jobs has turned his personality into Apple’s business processes.

He gets one thing wrong though, stating the following in his conclusion:

Apple will be fine without Jobs, although it won’t be the same. It won’t shine quite as brightly. It’ll be like the Rolling Stones without Mick Jagger.

Apple won’t shine as bright without Jobs, but it won’t be like the Stones minus Jagger, which would be nothing. The only musical analogy I could think of is unfortunate, in that it involves a death (which I surely hope doesn’t happen to Jobs), and it’s Joy Division.

When Ian Curtis left this world, the band suddenly found itself without its charismatic, amazing front-man. No-one really knew the other guys, and everyone in the press predicted disaster. One of the band (Bernard Sumner) got the ‘job’ of taking over, a new recruit (keyboardist Gillian Gilbert) came in to bolster the team, and they set to work. The first album was shaky (although I like it) but within a couple of years they’d put out Blue Monday, the biggest-selling 12″ of them all, and this was followed by critically acclaimed album after critically album.

There’s no reason to think that an Apple without Jobs couldn’t find itself in a similar place, especially if the company finds its own Blue Monday without him.

Steve Jobs is taking medical leave. There are now about a billion articles online, including a gem from SFGate, where Henry Blodget claims this wording that Jobs used is “not encouraging”:

I love Apple so much and hope to be back as soon as I can.

Blodget argues:

those are not the words of someone taking a short leave who is confident he will be back at the company soon (or ever).

FAN THOSE FLAMES, BLODGET! FIRE THAT LINK-BAIT SKY-HIGH AND FAR AND WIDE! I DON’T THINK THEY HEARD YOU ON THE MOON!

Oops. I appear to have left out a link. TSK! STUPID ME!

Apple’s media advisory just went out, with Steve Jobs telling Apple staff that he’s taking another “medical leave of absence” so he can focus on his health. Today, there’s no US stockmarket trading. Tomorrow, AAPL will fall off a cliff and people go OH MY GOD NO STEVE JOBS APPLE IS DOOMED, ignoring the facts that:

• Apple didn’t keel over last time Jobs took months off to deal with health problems;
• Apple has very capable people to take over the general running of the company (and, arguably, to offer both innovation and vision);
• Apple essentially is Steve Jobs now.

That last point bears explanation. I’m not saying Apple is Steve Jobs in the sense that if he is out of the picture, Apple ceases to function. I’m saying Apple is Steve Jobs in the sense that his way of thinking is now so deeply infused into the company that the company can continue to ‘be Steve’ even when he’s not there.

Hopefully, Jobs is merely taking a leave of absence to concentrate on getting fitter (day-to-day running of Apple is probably quite stressful and not ideal for long-term recuperation from a major operation) and there’s no recurrence of the cancer he had. Hopefully, he can and will get well soon. Hopefully, the tech press and traders won’t go batshit monkey ballistic over this news, spewing disinformation and bullshit everywhere. Sadly, I think the last of those is a very long shot indeed.

UPDATE: BBC News reports:

Apple shares traded in Frankfurt are down 7% on the news.

Don’t expect Apple to catch up with Exxon in 2011, then.

Rummaging through my feed of new iOS games, I spot Commando by IceFish (and immediately think: “Man, Capcom’s going to be pissed with that name”):

Still, a name’s a name and you have to call your Metal Slug rip-off something, right? And then I spotted the ENTIRELY DIFFERENT Commando Soldier, also by IceFish:

As you can see, this is a totally new, unique iOS game, and I felt the urge to immediately buy both games. But before I could click OH MY GOD BUY THIS NOW, Action Commando glued itself to my eyeballs:

Personally, I’m also hugely impressed that these guys managed to get the same score/health/ammo levels/time in place when taking shots for these three games, because that doesn’t at all make me think they’re lazy buggers, trying to spam the App Store with popular game names by flinging out the same game three times.

As reported on the internet, iOS 4.3 returns you to the home screen with a four finger pinch. But plenty of games and apps exist where you use more than three fingers to interact. There are light toys (like uzu), virtual musical instruments, and plenty of games (such as Eliss) where you could feasibly make that gesture and thereby quit the app. Maybe this won’t be the case, or perhaps Apple just doesn’t care. If the new gesture does impact on such apps, though, that’s a major blow to a touchscreen OS, especially on the iPad where multiplayer games are commonplace.

I asked for dev replies on Twitter and will publish them here, unless said devs see their words reprinted, hunt me down and force me under threat of being slapped silly to remove them.

Neil Inglis:

It’s worth noting that nothing’s set in stone. Apple’s developer release notes for the iOS 4.3 beta specifically state that they’re looking for feedback on how this affects people’s applications. If enough people say it’s a problem, they’ll remove it or scale it back.

Personally I love the concept but I think it breaks enough applications that they’ll be forced to remove it. It’s not just that some apps intentionally use these gestures, I think users are far too likely to accidentally make them.

The conclusion there is the thing I’m most concerned about. I can see people making such a gesture by mistake. Good that Apple’s looking for feedback though.

Matt Gemmell:

A pinch is a specific gesture, remember; it’s not just any old four-finger input. Apple hasn’t grabbed them all.

And in response to my query about the specifics of that gesture:

A specific, mathematically-defined gesture which takes into account both position & velocity. It’s not just 4 fingers moving.

Stephen Darlington:

Apple are specifically asking for feedback on the gestures so I don’t think you can file it under ‘don’t care’. My guess is that they’ll add an option for developers to switch the gestures off, much as you can turn off the task switching.

Patrick Scheips:

The apps don’t quit, they just ‘freeze’ if you use these four or five fingers gestures. But yes, these gestures even work in those apps. I’ve tested that in uzu.