If you haven’t read it yet, please don’t hesitate and go over to Monday Note and enjoy Jean-Louis Gassée’s article on Steve Jobs, Steve: Who’s Going to Protect Us From Cheap and Mediocre Now?

Gassée ‘nails it’ from the very start:

Until the last sinew, the last synapse gives up, Steve will continue to influence the company he co-founded and later recreated.

I’m still reading here and there on the Web the craziest pieces about Jobs and the consequences for Apple now that he’s no more the CEO of the company. I still read phrases like “Now that Steve is out of the picture”, or comments which, while conceding Steve Jobs is a genius, at the same time assert that his leaving his position as CEO means that Apple will no more benefit from his vision and input.

Genius cannot be transferred, all right. It cannot be switched on & off, either. No one knows exactly how things are organised inside Apple, so most speculation I’m reading on Apple’s future is mostly futile. If you do want to speculate, though, just remember the opening sentence of Gassée’s article I quoted above: Until the last sinew, the last synapse gives up, Steve will continue to influence the company he co-founded and later recreated.