Schillermania!

At yesterday’s iPhone Roadmap event held in Apple’s Town Hall on Campus, Phil Schiller delivered the goods on the future of the iPhone in business. Steve started and bookended the event, but left Phil and Scott Forstall to deliver the majority of the goods.

A closer look at Phil’s iPhone Calendar shown during the presentation also reveals that he routinely schedules time to think up new Apple rumors. Clearly there are no limits to the wizardry of his marketing strategies and even Apple fanboy bloggers are merely pawns in his game of puppetry. How’s that for a mixed-metaphor?

In reference to yesterday’s discussion of future Apple leadership, Phil once again demonstrated his competency and comfort announcing new products. No need to worry about the other guest host; Scott Forstall is only ever brought out in front of the geeky developer crowd and just doesn’t have the laugh to be the top dog. We’re all better off with him working with the smart people anyhow.

Phil’s sense of humor was sprinkled liberally throughout his piece: he cracked jokes about older generation phones in reference to BlackBerries, amongst other quips. His best joke was when he dead-panned to that everyone should just “take our word for it, it works” before actually demoing Exchange syncing. What a ham.

CNN Money has a nice interview with Steve Jobs in relation to Fortune Magazine having named Apple the Most Admired Company of 2008. The fifth topic in this interview is on the question of who would take over after Steve.

Obviously we think Phil is the most likely exec to inherit the throne. He’s certainly earned it and has the most MacWorld experience. Tim Cook is a wily and talented charmer, but his wizardry lies in operations and not the public persona nor product design areas. Joswiak is nothing but a yes man, Bertrand way too crazy-eyed, Ives too private. Retail Veep Ron Johnson is actually probably the best man for the job, but it might be nice to just seem them all share power post-Jobs in acknowledgement that no one man could fill those shoes. I don’t think any outsiders would stand a chance at the top in a company like this one.