I hear Bill Gates might have some time on his hands soon...

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

johnny isn't interested and he lacks the neurotic micromanagment abilities of stevie to handle the ship. tony fadell is capable of being groomed for corporate stewardship in another 20 years. the sad thing is a lot of the old guard that built the company to where it is today are all retiring.

@Step666: damn you beat me to it

Eric Schmidt

Steve may as well have said "Apres moi, le deluge."

Wanted: Megalomaniac keen on technological trends, cut-throat pricing, and closed operating systems. Support for liberal causes and mock turtlenecks a plus. Please include resume and 2-hr keynote speech.

George W. Bush

He may be looking for a new job soon and would likely foster awesome board room debates with Al Gore Jr.

Yeah, good call guys. My Vote's for The Ivy ;-)
But I can't see it, he'd struggle to get Board and Shareholder approval (because of his mellow attitude).

Let's see..we need to find an egomaniacal scumbag who terrorizes his own employees, willingly cheats and defrauds those who are critical for his own success, and has no clue about respectable and decent conduct.

They should focus their search at Yahoo!.

@willontech.com: I think it's really cute how your user name and profile picture are advertisements for your blog. Oh, the humanity!

@newgalactic: wasn't he Steve's alter ego?

Oppenheimer, eh?

Is he related to the guy who built America's first nuke?

Fake Steve Jobs FTW

Jonathan Ive:

[british accent]

Hello everyone and welcome to Macworld_

I present to you:

The "iThingaMaBob"

Thank you - I'm Jonathan Ive
----------------
then he walks off the stage to go backk to making cool "i" stuff_

.

Forgive me for speaking off-topic, but I'd just like to add that I want to have sex with whoever is in the accompanying photograph. I don't know who he is. I don't know if he's one of the people mentioned in the article. I don't know if the powers at Valleywag just put up a picture of some guy that looks vaguely Steve-ish. All I know is I want to have sex with him. Passionate, wet, loud sex.

Who do I contact for making that happen?

I fear for the company when he goes.

On the other hand I think hardware is becoming less relevant, so with or without Steve, the company has to move its centerpoint to more online activities. iTunes is a good model, if you jettison the dependence on Apple hardware, the iPhone is a good model, if Apple were doing AT&T's part as well, and the iBooks are good model, if ".Mac" were not such an also-ran compared to everything else in the known universe.

Jonathan Ive. Got it. New goal for this decade: have sex with Jonathan Ive.

Who are we kidding. Steve's not going anywehere for long. We all remember how well things turned out the last time he left.

I'm pretty sure that they'll keep him on staff unill he shrivels up and dies. Then they'll continue to go to his jerky-corpse for keynotes.

Ives shut up? Have you never heard Jonny prattle?

Gates and Jobs were the spirit of their businesses. They had more to gain than anyone (past or future) from their company's success.

Old farts like Craig Mundie and Ray Ozzie will not bring any bold new products to the table. However, they are competent enough to keep the stock price from crashing. Will they keep people from switching to the next great OS? I doubt it... it'll be an internet service.

The new generation of robber barons will use the internet to achieve greater market cap than MSFT and APPL ever possibly could. Google and Salesforce.com achieved multi-billion dollar market cap in under a decade.

Software has leveled the playing field. Anyone with enough grit to comprehend programming books can build an attraction on the WWW. I'm 18 and a weak programmer, although better programmers lack vision. I'm keeping off the grass, gonna make some monnnney.

@alexarch: Right? I didn't know tech executives came in "totally hot" flavor.

Al Gore! He has the keynote skills (An Inconvenient Truth?), the leadership abilities and he is the guy most Mac users would vote for as the leader of the free world. He is already on Apple's board of directors.

The guy is perfect.

he's hot.

Hot hot hot! Daaayum!

The only person who can replace O'Stevie is Jesus himself. Or perhaps his father, GOD.

Yes, I would also like to vote for some hot monkey sex with Mr. Ive. Perhaps if enough of us got together, we could get a group rate?

Oh, I mean as individuals each getting a shot: not like all at the same time. I mean, we aren't garter snakes.

Jony is looking a little peaked these days; he's put on a bit of flab as well.

Probably all that pot[ted plants] in the ID building.

Bring back Avie Tevanian.

could be worse, they could have Phil Schiller

This is a stupid question. Everyone knows that Steve Jobs is immortal.

There won't be a successor. To the faithful, Steve Jobs is Apple, and any attempts to replace him will fail.

Thus, when Steve Jobs leaves Apple, the company will be shut down.

First, are we missing the point here? Is SJ gonna pull out will his illness coming back? Didn't you see his last Keynote and weakened state? I thought he had surgery to remove that form of pancreatic cancer...

Could anyone REALLY replace iGod?

What's that Scully guy up to these days? He could restore Apple's lost irrelevance like no one else.