What Should Steve Jobs Do?

Oh Lordy did my man Shawn King stir up a nest of MacMacs with his opin­ion piece today titled Steve Jobs Should Not Come Back to Apple. And, since it’s not in my nature to let any decent shit-storm remain unstirred, I think I’ll add my two cents.

First though. fair warn­ing to those who only read this blog to see me froth at the mouth and call peo­ple “cum guz­zling ass weasels.” Since Shawn is one of the van­ish­ingly few writ­ers on the whole gods damned Internet who’s capa­ble of string­ing together more than one cogent thought with­out resort­ing to a cor­nu­copia of log­i­cal fal­lac­ies and link-baiting idiocy, I’m inclined to engage in actual dis­course. Yeah, I’m dis­ap­pointed too.

Anywho, mov­ing on to mat­ter at hand.

Shawn makes two propo­si­tions in the arti­cle. First, that Apple does not need Steve Jobs as CEO, and sec­ond, that Steve Jobs would be bet­ter served by not return­ing in that capacity.

On the first propo­si­tion, you will hear no argu­ment from me. I’ve always main­tained that the sturm und drang from the so-called “media” regard­ing Steve’s health and his role within Apple was absolute idiocy. To quote Shawn:

Tim Cook, from all out­ward appear­ances, has done his usual calm, cool and col­lected job as the replace­ment CEO as he has in the past as the company’s Chief Operating Officer. We have not heard one sin­gle word ques­tion­ing his abil­ity to lead Apple through not only the inter­nal tur­moil Jobs’ absence may have caused but also the exter­nal tur­moil of the world econ­omy at large. Cook’s lead­er­ship seems to have calmed investor’s fears regard­ing the com­pany. The stock has closed above US$100 for the past week with no signs of col­lapse on the hori­zon. Developers are pleased with the course of the iPhone 3.0 soft­ware announce­ments, due later this sum­mer, and Snow Leopard is mak­ing steady progress.

I couldn’t say it bet­ter myself. Although, I prob­a­bly would have used the word “fuck” more often.

To the sec­ond propo­si­tion, let me quote Shawn, then I’ll opine.

So while Jobs may want to run the com­pany, he doesn’t need to. Wouldn’t Jobs be hap­pier as a “Big Picture Guy?” A guy who doesn’t need to deal with the minu­tiae of the day to day oper­a­tions of the com­pany. Doesn’t need to deal with the media’s seem­ing obses­sion with his health, his wardrobe, or where he parks. A guy who can focus, behind the scenes, on cre­at­ing the next Great Product for one of the most remark­able com­pa­nies in the world. Why come back and sub­ject him­self to all of us peons ques­tion­ing him, sec­ond guess­ing him, pry­ing into his pri­vate life and his health? Why not be a “behind the scenes advi­sor” or even the company’s offi­cial “Chief Idea Officer?” After all, it seems like he’s already doing some­thing sim­i­lar. He said in his January let­ter, “As CEO, I plan to remain involved in major strate­gic deci­sions while I am out.” Does any­one believe that Jobs is com­pletely hands off dur­ing his recuperation?

Once again, I’m going to agree with Shawn. Steve Jobs would a much more valu­able asset to Apple in some sort of “Wise Aged Elder” role fol­low­ing the lead of Bill Gates at Microsoft. Here, though is where I some­what dis­agree with Shawn. While I agree with Shawn’s assess­ment, I’m bas­ing my rec­om­men­da­tion as to what Apple should do on one sim­ple fact. Steve Jobs is an arro­gant mofo, who can hold a grudge like no one else.

Why is that a fac­tor? Well, let’s cast our mem­ory back to the days of yore. Once, long ago Steve Jobs allowed him­self to take the role of the “idea guy” while some­one with, puta­tively, more busi­ness acu­men took the CEO role. And, what hap­pened boys and girls? That’s right, Steve got booted the fuck out of the com­pany, and a series of “busi­ness guys” pro­ceeded to run Apple straight into the ground. I hon­estly believe that Steve Jobs will never will­ingly let go of con­trol of Apple again.

So, given that, here’s what I thing that Apple and Steve should do.

When Steve’s health per­mits, he should return to Apple in all the osten­ta­tious glory that the MacMacs demand. I mean call a spe­cial media event. Have Steve ride into the audi­to­rium on a white stal­lion. Fuck, have him descend bod­ily from heaven. Go absolutely fuck­ing nuts with it. Hell, announce a net­book while you’re at it. Then, once every­one has been duly schooled that “the Steve” is back on the job never let him out in pub­lic again, with one exception.

And what is that excep­tion you ask? Simple, Steve should still appear at the yearly share­holder meet­ings and be present (but silent) dur­ing the quar­terly earn­ings calls. That way, none of the Jim Cramer wannabe slug-fuckers in the finan­cial “press” can try to spin that Steve is not run­ning the show.

Let the MacMacs howl, it’s what they’re good at anyway.