This whole nonsense bodes ill for Apple after Steve. In fact, I suspect it's a foreshadowing of how fucked up Apple will be if he ever leaves the company. App

This whole nonsense bodes ill for Apple after Steve. In fact, I suspect it's a foreshadowing of how fucked up Apple will be if he ever leaves the company. Apple+Jobs is a bit like North Korea (though more successful) -- it's whole structure is built around a single personality. There seems to be no cultural ability to properly delegate authority. If Steve had been full throttle over the last year, he would have personally vetted the first 500 apps, and carefully trained a couple lackeys to predict his innate reaction so well that they could proxy for him for 90% of the submissions (those from unknowns). Steve would have personally handled the 5 or 10% from developers deemed important enough to not completely piss off. This is how he's run the company since his return (and probably how he ran it in the first place). In my experience negotiating with Apple, it was like talking to the staff of a very famous and influential person, rather than talking to people at a company with a normal distribution of responsibility. Everyone could give you an opinion or best guess about what might transpire, but absolutely nothing could be decided one way or another without the direct involvement of Steve. I think they're in for a very rough period if/when Steve leaves. Obviously the app store has fallen off his radar or we wouldn't be seeing this kind of bullshit. It's all a factor of his personal bandwidth, which has obviously been impacted by his health.