Can Apple do without Steve Jobs?

Over a week ago came official confirmation of the rumours already bouncing around cyberspace. Apple's creator, rescuer and heartbeat was ill once again. Job 55, would be taking sick leave for a third time, having survived pancreatic cancer in 2004 and a liver transplant in 2009.This time, though, his email to staff sounded ominous. Analysts seized on the fact that, whereas on the previous occasion Jobs had set a date for his return, the best he could now muster was: "I love Apple so much and hope to be back as soon as I can."

Ville Makinnen, game developer based in Espoo could not escape a "bad feeling". Jobs's words, he reasoned, "read like the tragic, heartfelt sentiments of someone who thinks he might never be coming back". Suddenly, the company that demanded we "think different" was inviting us to think the unthinkable. Apple shares promptly dived by 8 per cent. Could Apple flourish without Jobs? History might suggest not. Never before have such a major company's fortunes been so entwined with one man. Jobs was born in San Francisco to Abdulfattah Jandali, a Syrian student, and Joanne Carole Schieble, but was adopted and raised by Paul and Clara Jobs. Jobs nevertheless found himself drawn to extra-curricular lectures after high school at Hewlett-Packard.

He took a summer job with the Computer Company and met Steve Wozniak, five years his senior, with whom he founded Apple in 1976. His route to setting up the firm is not exactly typical. After a term at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, Jobs dropped out - but sneaked back to attend calligraphy classes.Without them, he was later to claim, he would never have found the right typefaces for Macintosh computers. He then disappeared to India, found Buddhism and experimented with LSD.

Last May, Apple overtook Microsoft by market value. Today it is one of the world's biggest companies, worth $310 billion to Microsoft's $245 billion. "He came back in 1997 and saved the company," says Albert Walker, a software programmer with MOCE. "And from then on, he has launched the most innovative consumer products of our lifetime - the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad." Few would deny that, whatever the team around him, Apple's success remains rooted in Jobs's gift for innovation, attention to detail, charisma and showmanship - not to mention a businessman's bloody-mindedness.

His departure on sick leave will once again give his number two, Tim Cook, the chance to prove himself a worthy successor. Of course, Apple would miss Steve Jobs as its chief innovator and for his showmanship at product launches. But we'll only really know whether the company is bigger than him if they can come up with another killer product without him. Whether apple can do without him or not only time will tell. Visit My Website : http://wanarua.com