What Apple loses without Steve

-- Eric Auchard is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own --

By Eric Auchard

LONDON (Reuters) - "There''s probably no God" runs the slogan of an advertising campaign humanists are running on buses across Britain. But if the supreme being has his doubters, few question the importance of Steve Jobs to Apple Inc.

In a letter to employees on Wednesday, the Apple co-founder said he would take himself "out of the limelight" for six months after learning in the past week that his still vaguely defined "health issues" are "more complex than I originally thought."

While Jobs paints his absence as a temporary medical leave -- he retains the Apple CEO title even as he steps aside -- his departure leaves a spiritual void at a company most people think of as inseparable from the man.

The miraculous career of the prophet of the personal computer revolution, the self-made billionaire known for a career of second acts, draws frequent religious parallels: one biography of him is entitled "The Second Coming of Steve Jobs."

In the 33 years since he co-founded Apple, Jobs has attracted the fervent devotion of his followers -- the Mac faithful, and more recently, iPod and iPhone fanatics. To them, Steve is a secular messiah; to his detractors, a cult-leader.

Apple''s unmatched record of hit products has only been achieved under the famously tyrannical leadership of Jobs, whose obsession with sleek design and the hard to define "cool" factor of his gadgets is unique in the corporate world. Again and again, it is this aesthetic, and Jobs'' commercial success exploiting it, that have distinguished Apple products from so many copycat competitors.

On some level, anyone who has ever admired an Apple product harbors a little bit of the "design Nazi" in his soul. Managers who have endured Jobs'' withering demands to create nothing but "insanely great" products may have absorbed this.

But is culture enough to overcome a vacuum of leadership? Much as Microsoft Corp has become a smaller place since Bill Gates has wound down his role at the software giant and Apple adversary, Jobs can only be sorely missed.

How far can a company, its executives, engineers and salespeople go on the mantra, "What would Steve Jobs think?"

To be sure Tim Cook, Apple''s chief operating officer, is taking over Jobs'' daily responsibilities and Jobs said he will retain strategic oversight of the company''s direction while on leave. The pipeline of product innovation looks well-stocked.

If it''s a question of the man being bigger than the company, then Apple, which popularized the personal computer, the personal digital assistant and the handheld music player and is staking its claim on reinventing the mobile phone and, perhaps even, eventually, the television, is in big trouble.

CONTEMPLATING THE UNTHINKABLE

Inside Apple, the delicacy of Jobs'' planned absence was summed up in the innocuous headline given the company''s most dramatic announcement in years: The bombshell press release was simply entitled: "Apple Media Advisory."

As if the only interested audience were baying reporters.  Continued...