Note to journalists and panicky investors – Steve Jobs is still alive. The way things have been going around about his supposed frail looks, his apparent weight loss has somewhat detracted from Apple’s recent success with the iPhone 3G.

Guardian’s Technology blog carried the news of Jobs’s ‘mystery ailment‘ which apparently is the result of a procedure he had as part of his pancreatic cancer treatment. Said procedure -dubbed the Whipple- involves taking bits and pieces of his internal organs and rearranging them to bolster his pancreas. So the conclusion is he’s as healthy as anyone can be after having parts of your bile duct, stomach, gall bladder and small intestine cut and conveniently rearranged.

But all the recent panic and hoopla underlined one thing that spells potential bad news for Apple. No, not Jobs’s passing but the company’s overdependence on him. Yes, he is Apple’s current face. Yes, he suceeded in becoming a Svengali of sorts in transforming Apple into the current epitome of tech cool.

But look at Bill Gates. He left Microsoft and the world has not ended, we’re still (begrudgingly) buying Windows operating systems, the biggest software company in the world is not going to turn over and play dead because its founder did.

Steve Jobs is undeniably an institution of his own. Apple just happens to be hosting it. The panic, the ridiculous reporting over his weight loss – this should prove a wakeup call to even Jobs himself that it would do good for the company to find other faces to associate Apple with. Or perhaps begin imagining a world where Apple is less personality-driven, because to be frank, said personality isn’t going to be around forever.

Apple has managed, despite the odds, despite Jobs’s occasional missteps (and there have been some, oh fanboys) to remain relevant and profit in its own tech niche. Now, the question is, where next? It made iPods the de facto music player, changed the face of music retail and turned the smartphone industry onto its head. Yet for too long, Apple’s relied too heavily on its leading magician when its strength is keeping people guessing about what new trick is going to be pulled out of its hat.

The company will always have Jobs’s influence marked indelibly on it but right now it needs to wake up and become its own entity. Consumers aren’t going to forever be swayed by the reality distortion field. An Apple without Jobs is certainly a boring prospect but until we discover the secrets of immortality, it’s a reality closer than we think.

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Entry was posted on Thursday, July 24th, 2008 at 7:36 am under Apple, Opinion.

Read more entries by Erna Mahyuni.
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