Is it even possible? Forbes does a little bit of speculating on just who might take over when Jobs takes his leave from Apple, and candidates aren't exactly jumping out of the woodwork. Jobs is about as visionary as they come -- only a guy like Steve could lead Apple from the iMac to the iPod to the iPhone, breaking records and status quo the whole time. Phil Schiller and Scott Forstall are tossed out as two names currently within Apple's ranks, but Jobs is almost as much of a company mascot as he is a CEO. As consultant Patrick Sweeney says in the article, anyone who steps into the turtleneck has to fit completely into the culture of the company, or it won't work.

And forget the day-to-day and design decisions -- who's going to stand on stage and say "boom" at WWDC and Macworld? Here at TUAW, we're pretty sure the rumors of Jobs' ill health are exaggerated; he's probably not going anywhere anytime fast. But at the same time, it's hard to imagine an Apple without him at all.

The Associated Press managed to talk to Phil Schiller, Apple's Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing, about Apple's recent announcement that hacked or unlocked iPhones might become expensive paperweights after an upcoming software update is applied to them. (The AP also quoted our very own Erica Sadun on the topic.)

Phil says that this isn't about punishing people for unlocking their iPhones, but rather that the various iPhone unlocking apps have 'caused damage to the iPhone software' and that Apple can't be help responsible for what happens to a hacked iPhone.

I'm willing to believe that Apple isn't maliciously trying to brick iPhones that have been unlocked. It is far more probable that the update might, under certain circumstances, break your hacked iPhone and Apple doesn't want to spend the time fixing the update to play nice, and they don't want to have to pay for all the broken iPhones that may result.

That's my thought, but what say you, dear TUAW readers?