AAPL is still going to tank.
Part of Apple's success, IMHO, has been Jobs' ability to cut through bureaucracy, egos, corporate politics and industry politics to execute on a pristine vision. Perhaps it's my lack of faith in middle managers, but unless there is a clear mandate from leadership, details & priorities can morph down the chain of command. Visionary products can be diluted by others making what seem like perfectly sound trade-offs. It's the minimization of that dilution, setting of crystal-clear priorities, and making the hard trade-off decisions that has made Jobs such an effective leader at Apple.
That, and his ability to look several steps ahead of an industry - and arguably to create new industries - that has given rise to so many of Apple's disruptive innovations. Without him, I have a bad feeling Apple will become better at creating sustaining innovations than disruptive ones.
Of course, I don't work there and perhaps there are many others who can make such tough decisions and dream up industry-changing visions. I sincerely hope so. For the growth of the company, I sincerely hope so.
Every half-witted investor is already lining up to buy AAPL shares that will of course drop tomorrow in price as quarter-witted investors will be dumping them because of the Jobs' news. This will ramp up the demand and not let the price slide.
this would imply the market prices steve's value to the company > the 5% drop we saw after hours, since the 5% drop should reflect the incremental change of P(x) = 1. i'm not saying the stock won't take a huge hit tomorrow, but my bet is that it recovers in the near-to-medium term.
i am also not saying that the market is right - i wholeheartedly believe the company and its management can execute on steve's vision and has been for some time without daily guidance.
And the company is in a perfect shape there is nothing wrong with it the same goes for the future.
Of course, Andy Grove would call this the most perilous time imaginable. There have never been so many things that can go wrong.
Worst case, Cook and the executive team fail in the opposite direction as they did before, letting the company stagnate while endlessly arguing "WWSD?" among themselves.