Steve Jobs’ recent letter to the media and his decision to take 6 months off for health reasons has once again made all the rumors and speculations about his future and Apple’s future all the more relevant. John Gruber recently pointed to a great CNN Money profile on Tim Cook, the man Jobs once again chose as his replacement to handle the day to day operation at Apple while he his away. CNN did a great job on this article. It’s a great read if you have some time.

For better of worse, Steve Jobs *is* Apple for many people. Most of us can’t imagine what the company would be like without him and we remember what happened last time Apple fired his founder : the company went through years of hell before he came back in 1997 and returned the company to greatness.

Steve Jobs, just like Bill Gates will go down in history as one of the most important people in the history of computing. He’s done some great things for sure and I have no doubt he’ll do many more before he retires. He may not be in the best shape of his life, but as far as we know, his condition is not life threatening and until we hear otherwise, I will assume he has every intention of coming back. His prior battle with cancer in 2004 made it so that many people on the Web just assumed he was doomed and started speculating on what that meant for Apple.

Let’s give him the time he deserves to get better and the privacy any human being deserves with situations like this. Apple is lucky to have a number of very brilliant executives to handle the situation. Tim Cook is one of them, Phil Schiller is doing a great job as the “public face” of Apple while Jobs is away and younger execs like Scott Forstall (iPhone Software) are making sure Apple comes out with new and interesting products in the coming months and years.