After the death of a great leader, a loss of confidence would come as no surprise. Think Blitz-era Britain without Winston Churchill. The Colbert Report without Stephen Colbert. Even Facebook without Mark Zuckerberg.
Some leaders become so synonymous with the undertakings they lead that in their absence, those undertakings become husks, superficially resembling their former selves without any substance within.
That didn't happen to Apple. But there's no reason to think it shouldn't have.
Before Steve Jobs rejoined the company he co-founded in 1997, Apple was a Silicon Valley also-ran as the first dotcom boom began to bubble. Shares traded at $4. Pundits predicted the company's demise. Then Apple under Jobs released the iMac. The ascendancy was under way.
Even then, the company's share price didn't rise much higher than $30 before Apple split its stock, which then spent years trading in the single and low double-digits. But as the iPod began its transformative tear, Apple shares began to climb, buoyed by one Jobsian triumph after another. Over the course of the decade, Apple's success and his success became synonymous, not just among investors but in the public imagination, thanks to Jobs' showmanship at product launches.
In that context, his death a year ago today could have been expected to send Wall Street into a grief-driven frenzy of selling. Skepticism over whether Apple could remain Apple without Jobs would not have seemed unreasonable.
Instead, the opposite happened. The day after Jobs died, Apple shares closed down less than one dollar from the day before at $377.37. Yesterday, they closed at $666.80�a gain of nearly 77 percent. That's a better return than Apple delivered in 2010 or 2011. The most dramatic spike came between the beginning of this year and early April, when Apple shares post-Jobs soared more than 50 percent.
Whether Jobs deserves most of the credit for creating an irresistible momentum with can't-lose products, or for picking successors who have deftly steered the company along the course their mentor set, his loss has done little to shake confidence on Wall Street that the world's most valuable company deserves that title. Competitors' failures in the years since his death to match, let alone trump, Apple products didn't hurt either.
The misstep with maps should raise concern that Apple has become a little too smug, though CEO Tim Cook's willingness in his mea culpa to refer users to other, better apps suggests he hasn't forgotten that the user comes first. Investors have dinged Apple slightly for the error (or have just decided to take home some cash after the company shot past $700). In any case, chances are an iPad Mini release will leave all talk of maps far behind as everyone waits to see if the most substantially different product since Jobs' death still bears his mark.
