Apple After Steve

Apple's universe has been rocked with yesterday's news that Steve Jobs will have to lay off work for 6 months. I guess it looks like stage 2 cancer may have kicked in. Tragic.

So it got us thinking - what might Apple look like after Steve? Is there anyone on this planet capable of filling his shoes or should Apple merge away with another tech leader?

You see there's still so much that Apple has to do for us all. They've only just scratched the surface of touch screen capability and need to make it pervasive across all their hardware. They need to finish the job of seamlessly interconnecting all our Apple devices and they have to kick out the iPhone Nano whilst truly re-inventing the TV.

But they also need to get into services, turning all their software into cloud based media service engines - iTunes as content publisher as well as distributor. iMovie helping you sell movies as well as producing them and iPhoto as photography marketplace. Then they need to mash software such as iMovie, Script writing software, iPhoto and iTunes together to deliver a full, online service for scripting films, photographing locations, shooting and then distributing - you get the idea.

So who, post Steve, could best help Apple make this transition whilst maintaining its hardware prowess and innovation. Well, Eric Schmidt springs to mind. Apple's next CEO? Mmmm...