My concern with a post-Jobs Apple is not their ability to iterate on existing product lines. I'm not confidant Apple can shift paradigms and disrupt whole industries the way the did under Jobs' leadership.
Here are some things I can think of off the top of my head that Jobs had a hand in during his career:
- Created the personal computer industry (Apple Inc)
- Revolutionized the personal computer industry (Macintosh)
- Revolutionized film animation (Pixar)
- Shifted the electronic device industry to minimalist industrial design (iPod)
- Changed the entire music industry's distribution model (iTunes)
- Completely shifted the paradigm of a cellular phone and arguably began the adoption of the mobile internet (iPhone)
There are several other things people may consider visionary (candy colored iMac, getting rid of floppy drives, OSX, Newton, stuff at NeXT, tech advertising with the 1984 & Think Different campaigns, etc). I'm not even including things like the iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV, health metrics, etc which Jobs may have been working on before his death. Clearly Jobs had lots of help along the way and is not singularly responsible for each of these things - but he's the one who oversaw and, in many cases, drove the vision.
I'm no Apple fanboy and Jobs had a very dark side to his particular brand of genius, but I find it incredibly disingenuous to dismiss the impact that Jobs had on Apple and the industry in general. Tim Cook is a very solid Tech CEO, maybe even a great operational leader, but he is not a visionary leader and my concern is that Apple lost a fundamental element with the passing of Jobs.
> There are several other things people may consider visionary (candy colored iMac
Come on. "We changed the color. Visionary!"
> - Revolutionized film animation (Pixar)
Pixar was doing lots of work before Jobs was on the scene (after seven years, when Lucasfilm decided it was successful / profitable enough on its own to spin it off) - he was an investor.
Hey man, I know it's kind of ridiculous but bringing whimsy and a bit of fun into hardware design could be seen as somewhat visionary. Before this, the boldest thing hardware manufacturers did was change the beige case to black.
Even if Jobs was still here, I'm not confident Apple could do it again. That kind of thing is hard.
One place Apple has disrupted/built an industry is with the smart watch. I was skeptical, but got a Series 2 on sale to try it out and recently got a Series 4. When I got the Series 2 I wasn't sure what I would use it for, but it's something I would miss not having now.
