Apple, Steve Jobs, and his Successor

So much of being a viable successor boils down to luck.  It is completely different when a visionary starts a company from scratch than finding a successor who can fill a different kind of shoes.  By the time there is a successor, the corporate culture of whatever company we’re talking about is long since established.  In the case of Apple, they sure still seem to be on the road to better things.  Steve’s resignation ironically comes at the glorious precipice of all their greatest achievements.  It is different taking over a company like Apple than having the profound wherewithal to get it off the ground in the first place.  I’m hardly inspired by Apple’s successor.  I don’t even remember the dude’s name.  Yet this is not fair of me to say because he’s hardly made an impression yet.  A company’s successor has to be more than cool in a marketable sense.  Frankly, if they want someone to take the products and the company to the next level, they should ask me to do it!

I’m a complete apple user.  It has made my life a creative joy.  I will never buy another Microsoft product again.  Windows always made me angry, something Apple has rarely if ever done.  It’s also worth mentioning how well I feel that Apple has taken care of me as a customer when I’ve ever had any issues.  Nothing ever changed the way in which I’ve been using computers in the last ten years until the iphone came along.  Furthermore that my iphone is an ipod, and serves so many other functions in one tiny device is unbelievable.  It’s a flashlight, a video camera, it can dictate my voice into writing, it edits photos, it edits videos, it serves me up news with one touch of the screen, it’s a multitrack recorder, it is a profoundly capable gaming device, it serves up radio channels from all over the world, and what else?  What am I forgetting?   I don’t know how anyone could ever unseat the dominance and superiority of this hand held device.

We are in a day and age when things are rapidly changing.  At every single moment there is so much human mental power being put forth in an effort to revolutionize the way things are.  It was just as true 10 or 20 years ago with both Microsoft and Apple that they could be here one day and gone the next.  At any moment a new idea could pop up and make these seemingly timeless things that define our technological reality obsolete.  Apple is at the cusp of innovation and it’s hard to imagine someone overtaking it, but with all the different things going on in a multitude of corporate environments, I can only imagine that the days of fascinating the consumer market with new and revolutionary products are hardly over.

Good luck, Apple!  The world appreciates you, unless we’re talking about unintelligent people who don’t know any better.  Steve Jobs, you have made my life infinitely enjoyable and productive.  I wish you the best for whatever comes after.