mrhockey123

Apple Will Flourish With or Without Steve Jobs

It's hard to disagree with either side in this debate.
Jobs is a visionary leader, one who is willing to take chances, but who knows exactly where he wants to go. As has been mentioned, everything that Apple has done since Jobs came back was to position the chess pieces to quietly get Apple's products into most homes in America.
Job's vision, to use iPods as the "gateway drug" toward getting people to switch to Mac, has become more and more transparent lately with the introduction of iPod Touch and iPhone. These things are basically running OSX for all intents and purposes. If you can learn to use these products, you're 80% of the way to knowing how to use a Mac.
(cue the 'this is your brain - this is your brain on Mac' ads...)

The real issue with Apple is that Jobs has an almost omnipotent reputation in computer land, and also in investor land. The psychological effect of Jobs leaving may well be more severe than the real effect on the company. I am sure that as iron-fisted and as smart as Jobs is, he has learned well from his previous mistakes, and he knows exactly what would happen if he walked away and let the bean counters take over.

Having said that, most good organizations today, including Apple, emphasize culture very strongly. The whole point of a corporate culture is so that everyone is on the same page, and knows what they should be doing even if there are no hard and fast rules around for the particular situation. I think Jobs, and Apple, do have a plan for managerial continuity - it would be irresponsible not to have one.

The long and short of it is that when Jobs announces he's leaving (and let's face it, he IS HUMAN - which might be hard to believe some days) Apple's stock will likely fall hard. I'd say it would be a buying opportunity in the short term at least.