by Patrick Appel
Nicholas Thompson contemplates Jobs' resignation as CEO:
The big question now is whether Tim Cook, Jobs’s successor, can succeed. I’m sure he’s good, and the people around him are good too. But he won’t do as well, for at least one reason. Steve Jobs built a cult of personality that gave him power. Many of Apple’s future fights will be about content. Which tech companies will get the rights to show what things, in what ways, on their devices? Jobs had a power that Cook could not possibly have here, just because he was Jobs. He could summon anyone he wanted to meet with him; he could get journalists to write whatever he wanted them to write; and, if he and Apple threatened to screw you over, you had to believe them.
Zachary Karabell differs:
Because Jobs was a master of control, his vision suffuses the company and its nearly 50,000 employees. They have drunk the Kool-Aid, and few companies have morale as high, employees as driven, or customers as loyal and growing. The mark of a great company is not just a visionary and capable CEO but the degree to which that vision suffuses the entire organization. On that score, you have only to go into an Apple store to know that the person selling you an iPad is as feverish, opinionated, and focused on perfection as Jobs has been. And now, freed from the darker side of Steve Jobs’s need to control everything, those employees may find that the company is even more creative and even more potent.
The Dish 