@Everyone. Who will take over for Steve Jobs once a successor must be named? Voting for fun at tinyComb

http://tinycomb.com/2008/12/20/who-will-take-over-for-steve-jobns-poll/

@Kevin Kelleher — Yes Apple has a very strong team and can flourish for years without Jobs — but Steve Jobs is irreplaceable, and it is unlikely that Apple will prosper as much without him over the next decade as it would with him.

@Alice — The evidence on the ground points to just the opposite. I was in the 5th Ave. Apple store yesterday afternoon (buying my wife an iPhone, her T-Mobile contract ran out on Friday). There was a big line outside in the freezing cold, the place was unimaginably crowded, there was a big line at the registers inside, even though many shoppers (like us, we had made a “personal shopper” appointment) didn’t pay at the registers. People may be cutting back in a lot of areas, but they don’t seem to be cutting back on Apple products.

It does make a certain amount of sense: people buying $300 computers are the ones suffering the most in the current economy. People buying $2000 computers and iPhones are less vulnerable — thus vendors of cheap PCs/phones will get hit first. Also, Apple sells heavily to college students, who aren’t going to stop needing a new laptop because the economy went bad.

I think Apple will survive tho, its just going to be difficult for them for the next couple of years.