When Steve Jobs died most people focused on the fact that he was a product visionary.
Without Jobs running the show, how would Apple produce amazing new products?
While that's certainly a concern, thinking up products isn't that hard for the brilliant executives at Apple. Lead designer Jony Ive deserves more credit for his ability to think up and design amazing gadgets.
The real challenge for Apple is making its gadgets worth buying.
To do that it has to work with a variety of partners to fill them with good content. To get that content Apple has to negotiate with companies that are wary of Apple. And this is where Jobs will be truly missed.
The famous "reality distortion field" of Jobs' didn't just apply to Apple employees, or people watching his keynotes, it also applied to the top executives in the wireless industry and music industry.
And without Jobs' reality distortion field, or his star power Apple has been struggling to land deals with cable companies to make Apple TV a reality.
Eddy Cue, the Apple executive who is in charge of negotiations with cable companies, is no Steve Jobs. Getting a meeting with Cue is not the same as getting a meeting with Jobs, who was the arguably the most important businessman since Henry Ford.
That's not to say Cue won't get deals done eventually. It's just that when Jobs died everyone worried about Apple's products. It looks like the products are going to products are going to be fine. Making those products worth owning by filling them with great content looks like it's going to be much harder without Jobs.
