Every since Steve Jobs started letting Scott Forstall, and others, help him out with Keynote presentations during Macworld, WWDC, and other presentations made by Apple to the media – I have wanted Steve to remove Scott from the line up.
Yes Scott’s presentation at WWDC of the underlying core of Mobile OS X with regards to the iPhone SDK was pretty impressive. Yes he’s obviously pretty "anal … about interface design" as Steven Sande of The Unofficial Apple Weblog recently wrote. But I still don’t think that makes him CEO material.
I don’t have any recommendations for who should be the next CEO of Apple. I’m hoping that doesn’t happen anytime in the near future (say 5 or 10 years) but I’m guessing it will. When it does, I think no matter who fills in the shoes of Steve Jobs it will be someone we’ll all be disappointed with because no one can fill the shoes of someone like Jobs. But, I really, really do not hope it is Forstall.
Scott, if you are reading this, nothing against you. I think you do a great job and are probably worth your salary (otherwise you’d probably not be at Apple). But Steve has big shoes.