Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Steve Jobs has died, but will Apple live forever?

Steve Jobs passed away on October 5th, 2011.  His passing deeply affected many people, myself among them. But many years before this, Steve Jobs said that Death is a natural part of Life and should not be feared; nay, we should contemplate it every day and live our lives in harmony with the knowledge that we will one day die.

He concludes that Death is just and proper, as it clears out the old to make room for the new and that every young person eventually becomes old, and is then moved aside to make room for the "new" new people.  Although Steve Jobs passed away, the company he founded is thriving robustly and is by some measures the largest company in the world with a brand positioning at the forefront of technology and communication.

Apple, with a market capitalization of over $400 Billion  dollars and thousands of patents, will surely survive for a while.  One year?  Ten years? 100 years? If it lives 100 years from today, it will live longer than me.  Even if it eventually goes bankrupt, some portion of its assets/patents/human talent will be bought up by another company, consumed and assimilated.

It is likely that Apple, Steve Jobs creation, will be functionally immortal.  It will never die.

It defies the natural cycle of life and death that Steve Jobs embraced psychologically.  And that is not a good thing.

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