Don't forget that the majority of those things would have been setup on his watch - the Mac Pro, for example, came out only a few weeks after he left on leave. Also, I don't recall iOS 3 being particularly "ugly" - all in all, I remember it as a big step up in usability and reliability over iOS 2.

App rejections were silly pretty much right up until September of last year when they released more guidance - well over a year after he came back from medical leave.

Were he to quit tomorrow and never talk to an Apple employee again, we wouldn't see the damage done/advantage gained until at least 6 months, if not 12+. Product design and direction is set a long way before release, and though he might veto early products, I doubt anything hardware related within a 3/6 month window of release has ever been killed (nothing would have been allowed to get that far).

The Pro hardware will have been setup in advance, but the pricing will be done very close to launch, and the launch was a couple of months after he left.

The MacBook that was a MacBook and then a Pro is a much more telling example, which you skipped over. A reverse-face like that after Jobs's return shows pretty clearly that they'd got it wrong in his absence.

iOS 3 brought the universally derided striped icons, which sounds like a minor point, but is actually the sort of attention to detail Jobs brings.

There's plenty more like that in there, but I don't think there's much value in such aesthetic quibbling. My overall point is that there was undoubtedly a difference in Apple's direction and approach during that time, and I don't think it was for the better.

EDIT: Cor, that's a lot of upvotes. The consequence is that Jobs now contributes so little to this perfectly humming Apple that he can leave abruptly amid a medical crisis and they don't make a mis-step? I don't buy it.

There are so many examples of Apple doing something weird and reversing direction, with or without Jobs at the helm. Especially picking out a minor detail like stripped icons seems akin to reading tea leaves. The iTunes and Mac App Store UI and the iTunes symbol have been “universally derided”, too.

(I would also like to note that, on the grand scale of things, your examples are minor. Sure, they matter, but they are at least rectifiable at a minimal loss.)

Yes, this is all very true. If I'd thought "Jobs matters" was going to be so controversial I would have prepped the examples better!

Even if they were minor, I think they show a tendency that Apple has, and always has, that very few people can rein in -- or at least that there are very few people that Apple will allow to rein in.

More than anything, Jobs's return brought focus to Apple. With him gone, that will be the challenge more than any of the PR sizzle or attention to detail that he also brings.

That focus is something that must be brought to the table. After all, Apple keeps its staff a very long time. This is still, at some level, the company that loves to make new things but will channel that energy into OpenDocs and Dylans and Soups and MPWs and zillions of other cool things that don't get it where it needs to go.

Are any of the current leadership team the type to bring that focus that harnesses that energy? I haven't seen it yet.

“If I'd thought "Jobs matters" was going to be so controversial I would have prepped the examples better!”

I’m not disagreeing with you. I just don’t know how Apple would do without Steve Jobs and I don’t think Steve Job’s recent leave showed any clear or dramatic effects, I’m not even sure whether there were any changes at all.

Anything longer than six months might be different but I’m not sure about that.

> iOS 3 brought the universally derided striped icons, which sounds like a minor point, but is actually the sort of attention to detail Jobs brings.

Well, under Jobs, every damned official Apple icon is either a blue rectangle on iOS or a blue circle on Mac OS. Maybe Apple just suck at icons.

I've just counted default icons on iPhone iOS 3, and even with a generous interpretation in your favour I get 7 blue and 14 non-blue, and that's leaving out Maps as Google related and counting weather, camera and remote in with the blues.

Jebus H. I was trying to make a general point, not run a statistical survey.