Often, firms that were successful start to fail after a successful CEO departs, largely because they spent little time mentoring the successor in mak… - Rob Enderle

Steve Jobs set Carly Fiorina up over a decade ago. He used compliments and empty promises to make sure HP never brought to market an iPod competitor and, while it isn't certain that HP would have been successful, had it been, Apple likely wouldn't be around today, and Fiorina lost her job partially as a result of that scam.

Apple is becoming more and more like a typical tech firm — that is, long on technology and short on magic. ... Apple is drifting closer and closer to where it was back in the 1990s. It offers advancements that largely follow those made by others years earlier, product proliferation, a preference for more over simple elegance, and waning excitement.

Steve Jobs is the Ronald McDonald of Apple, he is the face.