Most Apple watchers figure very little will change at Steve Jobs’ company over the next few years. There’s plenty of product plans in the works and his executive team–with a few exceptions–looks set for the next few years.

The real question is what happens after that, when the plans that will be made without Jobs in Apple’s corner office begin to bear fruit, or languish.

The company, which has grown to become the second-most valuable in the world following Jobs’ return in 1996, has made a big part of its business the promise of the future. New products like the iPod, iPhone, and iPad have set Apple apart from being just another Silicon Valley hardware and software maker and into a taste maker.

Much of that taste has been attributed to Jobs, whose attention to detail and focus on secrecy has been the stuff of legend. A Jobs anecdote shared by Google’s Vic Gundotra yesterday noted that Jobs once called him on a Sunday morning to discuss the importance of fixing the gradient in a single letter of Google’s logo so that it would appear just right on the iPhone’s screen. Will Apple still have that obsessive attention to detail without Jobs running the show?

The first place to look is new CEO Tim Cook, a seasoned Apple veteran who served as Jobs’ day-to-day replacement when Jobs went on medical leaves in 2004, 2009, and in January of this year.

Cook’s been Apple’s chief operating officer for seven years and a fixture on financial calls, shareholders meetings, and public events. But one big difference between him and Jobs is that he’s not the showman. He’s not the one whose presentation style people have written books about, and that has people running nearly on top of each other into auditoriums to see pitch. Instead, Cook’s been a no-nonsense, methodical speaker whose presence at Apple events typically involves taking the stage to provide updates on the company’s business.

Link:
What could Apple look like three years from now? – CNET