The resignation of Steve Jobs as Apple CEO did not come as a surprise, given his well-reported health problems and the fact COO Tim Cook has been positioned as his highly publicised replacement for some time.

The focus in much of the coverage has been about his controversial 1985 departure from a company he co-founded in 1976 and his return in 1996 where he utterly changed not just Apple, but also the consumer technology landscape over the next decade. It's ...