Steve Jobs. Image by Getty.
There will be plenty of time for analysis of what now happens at Apple and whether the company can retain is extraordinary leadership of the world of technology, but my first reaction to the resignation of Steve Jobs as its chief executive is sadness.
Mr Jobs, at the age of only 56, stands as one of the great business leaders – arguably the greatest – of the postwar era. For the past 30 years, he has not only led the wave of technological change emanating from Silicon Valley – the personal computer, the internet, the tablet – but stamped his aesthetic on the world.
He has combined the iconoclasm and creativity of the rebel entrepreneur with the ability to assemble a world-beating manufacturing, design and marketing team around him. In the past few years, Apple has been not only unbeatable but hardly even matchable. Its competitors have fallen by the wayside in frustration.
Only this week, HP ditched its TouchPad tablet, which it had launched after its $1.2bn acquisition of Palm last year, on the grounds that it could not gain any traction for a competitor to the iPad.
At a human level, it is hard to read Mr Jobs’ letter to the Apple board, written with his customary pellucid simplicity, without being moved. He does not spell out the full truth about his long battle with cancer and ill-health but the elegaic tone makes it clear enough:
I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.
I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.
The best practice in UK corporate governance is for a chief executive not to be appointed chairman on stepping down from the executive role but in this case, as in many others, the rules are suspended for Mr Jobs. It is inconceivable that Apple’s board would reject his request to remain as chairman of his company.
At $330bn on Wednesday night, Apple’s market capitalisation falls just behind that of Exxon Mobil as the world’s most valuable company – a title it briefly took earlier this month – but the simplest measure of Mr Jobs’ success is that his creation vies with an energy company for top spot during a commodities boom.
The financial achievement is a reflection of a far broader one. Since he founded Apple in 1976, it has advanced the computer industry with elegant design, visual and technological innovation. At first beaten by Microsoft and his old nemesis Bill Gates, Mr Jobs came back to triumph over them.
His vision of integrated software and hardware aimed squarely at the consumer rather than companies is as much of a triumph for a single man’s insight as Warren Buffett’s forging of his iconoclastic investment fund out of Berkshire Hathaway, an ageing New England textile company.
Mr Jobs did it twice – first creating with Steve Wozniak, his early technology partner, the Apple Macintosh personal computer and then, after being ejected from the helm of his company, returning in 1997 to create the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad.
Meanwhile, he was an influential leader and early investor in Pixar, the computer graphics studio that revolutionised Hollywood animation, and brought a clean, distinctive design sensibility to all that he did.
The “i” in the titles of Apple recent run of products does not feel like a coincidence. In most companies, the chief executive may pretend to embody the enterprise but does so only temporarily and partially. Mr Jobs really has been Apple, and the company’s shareholders have long feared this day.
Happily, Mr Jobs will still play a role in his creation but the tone and content of his resignation letter are clear enough. This is the day of his departure.
