IS Steve Jobs Coming Back? Ever?

Some time back I predicted Steve Jobs would “retire” across the board (Apple, Disney, etc). Kinda happy to have gotten that one a wee wrong.

Something’s really niggling me about his return though… I just don’t see it happening. It’s time to wonder now… will Steve Jobs return to the office off this most recent medical leave? I love to think he’s coming back. If for no other reason than to tell us all he’s licked the sicknesses plaguing him. To see his home built. To see old and new friends enjoying their lives. To build his “one more thing” that we fall in love with all over again.

Tim Cook has done a MARVELOUS job of showing Wall Street he’s not only capable of running the business. But that he’s capable of LEADING the business too! Which, let’s admit it… we fan boys love Steve for his charisma and chutzpah as much as anything he’s done on the business savvy side of things. In Tim we have another LEADER. Someone who gets the gestalt of design, business, supply-side. Someone who’s had his fill of the kool-aid alongside us. He’s as much a fanboy as the rest of us. He’s one amazingly driven gentleman.

Will the existing leadership take hills for him should his day come? Hell yes. Will the legion fanboy hang on his every word? You know?… I believe we will. It may take some getting used to him. Getting to know him. What makes him tick. But, I think all our love for Steve will be transferrable to Apple’s next full-time CEO. And I honestly think that’s Tim Cook. Retention of the existing talent set will be crucial. Forstall, Cue, Schiller, Ive, ALL the hardware and retail leadership, Serlet… Man, what a phenomenal bench! and that’s just the top of mind crowd. The veeps and directors and engineers and evangelists that bust their humps to get all this magical stuff done. Again, if anyone has the leadership chops to keep the house that Steve built together… It’s Tim.

An Apple, Inc. without Steve is a lesser place. To be sure. But, the Apple we all know and love is chock full of Steve-inspired, Steve-vetted goodness for many years to come. And, there’s no one better than Tim Cook to see that legacy executed and ultimately built upon and surpassed. I can think of no more appropriate homage to Steve Jobs than to take Apple Inc to the next level under able adult supervision WHILE he’s still kicking.

My hope is the AAPL board will name a successor while Jobs has the steam to bless the new Don.

Tim Cook, We Hardly Knew Ye

Unless you’ve been living under a rock all day… (and I was) The news du jour is Tim Cook, Apple’s COO, has the day to day while Steve Jobs is getting his shiz back together. Wish I could say, “Called that one back in 2007.” But, what were Apple’s options? REALLY?! Where did they have to turn? Lookit!…

• Meg Whitman’s off on a whiff to go all Gubernator 2.0 on us. So, she’s off the short list.
• Gates is too busy selling shoes with Jerry Seinfeld.
• Carol Bartz and Jerry Yang have new gigs.
• But, wait, Sue Decker came available… Hmmm…

Nah! Cook gets it. As much as I’d like to see Ive run the show… the professional manager Cook is the right call. Just so long as Ive gets all the aluminum his not-so-little CNC mill can munch, Phil Schiller is re-assigned to iChat evangelist and Bertrand Serlet is given the state of Oregon as his annual bonus for all the goodness we’re going to get in Snow Leopard.

And, you heard it here… Jobs ain’t coming back folks. He’s out. He just doesn’t acknowledge it (publicly) yet. He’s going to retire across the board – Apple and Disney – in one fell swoop. He’s earned his place in history plus some. Exit. Stage right.

A Startup Costs HOW Much!?

Premise: Guy Kawasaki knows what he’s doing. And despite better advice I highly recommend you kiddies try this at home!

Mr. Kawasaki’s startup, Truemors, set him back $12,709.09 in startup costs. Keep in mind… he’s the guy who wrote “Art of the Start” and funded more youngco’s than I’ve even worked in for crying out loud!

I’d like to contrast Truemors with Fake Steve Jobs (one of the 100 most popular blogs).

It costs NOTHING to start a blog on WordPress.com (independent) or at Blogspot.com (owned by Google). TypePad will set you back some change (and is quite good). There’s Facebook… MySpace… there’s a lot of free choices for blogging these days.

Granted, FSJ is about the most popular figure on the scene right now. Yes, there’s a FakeSteveBallmer. But, do you really think FakeTerrySemel.com is going to be worth anyone’s time. Nah. Now, FakePope.com is already taken (maybe not so safe for work). That person would normally be out less than $200 in startup costs (autorenewing, protected domains for the next 10 years). But, whoever’s behind it REALLY bootstrapped. ZERO cost! They’re hosting on a free platform. Fred Wilson thinks FSJ is raking in $200K+ annually.

Nice work if you can get it. Money for nothing and your chicks are free. Wonder if there’s a VC model in there somewhere? “I’ll seed you $0. Now. Go write like an iGod.”

iPhone Baiting

Curiosity it killing the cat (and no, not the lolcat… we’re talking the real deal here).

Need someone(s) proficient with Flash, CSS, Java, FLEX and Silverlight to help with an iPhone experiment.

ASSIGNMENT
We’re going to build very specific pages which (if they work as expected) will cause an iPhone to be deposited at very specific pages ONLY the iPhone could have reached.

Anyone game? We’re itching to see what will and what won’t work.

Now, if a certain Mr. Scoble will come through with one of his Super D Duper iPhone seeds to play along with out little experiment.

Dumbstruck. Simply Dumbstruck.

Version 1 of the iPhone isn’t that persuasive a device. Here’s why…

8 Gb storage. C’mon! OS X is going to chew up an ungodly portion of that and if it doesn’t then the OS is residing somewhere we don’t yet know about. So, carve off 1 Gb for the OS. How much more do you carve off for storage of music? Videos? Another 4 and probably more? OK, so we’re down to a svelt 3 Gb left. Quite a few of my Picture folder and their documents are bloating up there and would easily chew up the remaining 3 Gb.

Can I load my other apps? Mozilla? Firefox? Opera? Copy/Paste? TextExpander? You get the idea. The answer is probably not on version 1. Besides, there’s no space left.

OK, the FCC will probably approve this deal in flank speed. Apple will camp out in Washington to get it in and out. It’s just their velvet hammer approach. So, when it is approved the FCC is going to REQUIRE them to ship an unlocked version in the states. Absolutely true. There will have to be an unlocked version of this thing. That said, I’m curious to know how it will behave on someone else’s EDGE GSM network… like say, oh, TMobile. Keep in mind the selective voicemail “magic” is a Cingular trick. Will it work on TMobile? Will the unlocked phone be crippled to some degree? Yeah, the unlocked phone will probably have a reduced feature set.

Now, to it’s good… This phone is really sexy. The design is very simply minimalistic and elegant.

An oddity or two

• One button called “home”. (But, how the hell do you turn the thing on and off? Hmm?)
• Hip holsters anyone?
• Touch screens get so grimy and scratched…
• Device coverage for oopsies?

MacWorld LIVE Coverage

There is no better coverage right now than at Engadget (just have to reload a lot).

http://www.macrumorslive.com/ would be a close second.