Steve Jobs is not dead. Steve Jobs is still working for Apple. Everyone at Apple will still treat whatever Steve Jobs says as divine writ. So hold the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth for another day.
Steve Jobs's "resignation" last night has generated a massive amount of media noise, much of it reading like obituaries. But this isn't the usual CEO departure. Unlike Bill Gates in 2006, Jobs isn't heading off into the sunset to become a philanthropist.
Let's make this perfectly clear:
Tim Cook has been running the company on a day-to-day basis since Jobs announced his medical leave on January 17. So, no change there. Cook also ran the company for a while in 2009, and Apple neither collapsed nor became any less Jobsian for it.
Steve Jobs is not leaving Apple. He will be "Chairman of the Board, director, and Apple employee." That's straight from his resignation letter. Apple has been his life for decades, and he hasn't shown much public interest in doing anything else other than Pixar.
The man has left the CEO position and come back before, of course, and "retirements"—of which this isn't even one—often aren't a permanent thing. Anyone remember when Jay-Z "retired?" Remember when Michael Jordan "retired?" When your heart and soul is in a project, whether it be a sport, an art, or that apotheosis of Jobsiness that Apple Inc. has become, it's hard to stay in the background for long.
Jobs may be in poor health, and we may in fact be writing his obituary in a few years' time. I don't know his health status, except that he's gone on some long medical leaves. Those medical leaves definitely have people concerned. But this is all premature. Jobs's new role gives him more flexibility. He no longer has to do the scutwork of being a CEO: the partner meetings, the exhausting presentations, the long hours. But if you think Tim Cook isn't e-mailing him daily about every design project the company is working on, I think you're mistaken.
The obit writers may be making a mistake based on Steve Jobs's last departure, which had absolutely nothing in common with this one. Last time, Jobs was kicked out by a hostile company that wanted him gone. Now, he's asking for flex-time from a company that he's the undisputed master of, staffed entirely by his handpicked soldiers.
Even if Jobs decides to step back, there's another factor at work here. Product cycles are long, and Jobs' focus, famously, has been on the design phase. (Cook is the supply-chain and execution guy.) The design phase is the beginning of a product cycle. One of the reasons we've been hearing so much about LTE iPhones, even though LTE chipsets probably aren't ready for the iPhone 5, is that the Phone 6 is already being worked on. I don't have special knowledge of Apple, but I know phones. For Apple to release an iPhone 6 next year, they have to be working on it now. It takes that long to perfect a device.
So you can assume that the iPhone 6, the iPad 3, the next Macs, whatever, will all be thoroughly Jobsified. As twenty other pundits have already pointed out, any less-Jobsy products—if that ever happens, with Steve Jobs as "chairman" on speed dial from his chaise lounge—wouldn't start appearing until late 2012 at the earliest. And if Jobs has breath left in his body, do you think he won't try to right the ship if it lists? Have you ever read anything about him at all?
There's one possible short-term effect that Jobs's "retirement" could have on Apple, if he decides not to be the company's most prominent salesman. Apple's "reality distortion field" seems to be Steve's personal property. It's not for nothing that I found a book in a Chinese store with the amusing title "Why Stave Jobs' Presentation." Not why his "products." Why his "presentation."
Phil Schiller and Tim Cook have game, but they may not have that "presentation," the charismatic magic of Jobs's stage shows. How much does that matter, if the products are still great? I'm not sure all that much, but it may matter a little.
Only a little, though. Steve Jobs out of the game? Let's talk about that in 2013.