Wednesday, August 24, 2011 will be remembered for a long time as the day that Steve Jobs, founding CEO of Apple Computers, resigned as that company’s leader. The story of Jobs’ ongoing, long-time medical issues has been pretty public and his lengthy leaves of absence for the past couple of years have caused many to speculate about whether he’d resign for good. Now, after apparent complications from his liver transplant put him on leave again, Jobs has officially decided to let someone else have the reigns of Apple.
That someone is Tim Cook, who sent an email to employees Thursday morning informing them of his new position as CEO and that he had no major plans for making any changes to the “DNA” of the company’s principles, values, or culture.
For Apple, this change in leadership will not likely mean any heavy changes to the company, as Cook promised. He is a close ally of Steve Jobs and the two are much alike in terms of style. It’s interesting to note that in the industry press, only two things seem to dominate with the announcement of the new CEO:
The fact that Cook happens to be gay and whether or not that has any significance (or should even be discussed).
The tidbit that Jobs plans to include this latest development in his upcoming autobiography.
Neither of these is, essentially, really all that important to the news of Apple’s changing of the corporate guard. Neither has any real impact potential, when you look at them. What they do say is simple: while the news that Jobs has stepped down and Cook has taken his place is a big headline.. there really isn’t much else to fill in the rest of the news column with. So reporters have to fish.
That tells you that while the change is big news, it’s hardly a shakeup and that Apple will not likely change in any fundamental way.
