Jobs is man with a vision and Apple is built around his vision. Apple is still fresh and needs to make good strategical decisions to further establish itself. This wont happen if the new CEO will try to continue where Jobs left off. Why? Because 'proceed as before' will not lead to innovation. The new CEO has to be a man who will be willing to invest big in new technologies and fight for his vision.

I'm sure there are lots of good people at Apple, who can come up with great ideas, same goes for Google. The difference between the 2 is that where Google has lots of separate small projects going on, Apple delivers one big product with lots of features and that's what makes it so great. Integration and simplicity.

Apple needs a strong leader with a vision in order to be as successful as it has been in the past.