t will likely be someone who has worked their ranks up in Apple, rather than parachuted in from outside. In this regard, that person should be fairly familiar with Apple’s design-led product culture, and should not stray too far from those values.
That is not always a good thing. When Tom Watson (think Steve Jobs of IBM) retired, IBM always replaced from inside. Unfortunately, these were all old men who were far behind in any technology learning that they might have once had. They were car mechanics continually trying to improve the Model A from year to year, and wondering why people didn't want a 1982 roadster, available only in black.
My first program was written 1n 1964, submitted on punched cards to an IBM 1401. (One of the larger ones - it had 12k of main memory) Over the many years since, I have seen one company after another rise to stardom, then make its inevitable descent to mediocrity. To wit...
IBM deliberately threw away the PC market that it almost entirely owned , with statements from on high that these new toy computers were a fad.
The story of Xerox showing their graphical desktop as a glitzy plaything is well known, but again, controlled by men who were too set in standard corporate ways to see the gold mine in front of them.
Novell ignored their mainstream product, playing around with trivialities until upstart Microsoft killed it with a vastly inferior product.
Boing once had a worldwide saying by airline passengers, "It it ain't Boing, I ain't going." Now it is, "We deliver 98 percent of our passengers alive."
Dell drove off a cliff after a cluster of Wall Streeters took the wheel.
An MBA CEO of Home Depot got the idea that firing most of the employees at the checkouts would really boost the bottom line. It did, but at Lowes.
Sears, of course, is the perfect (horrible) example that a bean counter CEO should be locked in his office and his PC disconnected until he leaves for the day.
etc, etc, etc.
If Apple selects a younger, forward looking CEO from within, that could possibly be wonderful, but if you try to get Las Vegas odds on it, they might be pretty long against.
