Obviously nobody murdered Steve Jobs to cover up the 4S being only somewhat good. That's stupid. Also equally stupid, but much more plausible, is this theory:
The anouncement disappointed him so much that it killed him.
The thing about Jobs' bucket kicking is that it really is overriding analysis of what happened at that presentation, so nobody quite sees what's about to happen here. What you have to understand is that the 4S is bullshit, an incremental upgrade to a popular product that the core audience will buy, and basically unimportant. What's important is the other announcement, the one that's either going to make Apple a lasting fixture in the tech world or will kill it utterly, but either way marks the beginning of the end of the Cult of Apple.
When the 4S is released, the iPhone 3 will be free.
If the iPhone 3 and iPhone 4 were substantially different to the average person, that would be different. But as it stands, what this means is that anybody can have an iPhone. Anybody who wants one. All you have to do is say "Apple" instead of "Android" when the cute girl behind the glass counter asks you what kind of phone you want.
So what? So the truth is that the iPhone, comparatively, is kind of crappy. Nobody really buys an iPhone because they want an iPhone, they buy an iPhone because they want to HAVE an iPhone. iPhone users are richer, smarter, get laid more often, have a better sense of style, and most importantly, they belong. They belong because one way or another they PAID IN to the system - whether they got it on discount, won it, stole it, whatever, at some point an iPhone user has to have made some conscious choice to be such and put their tithe into the jar. They pledged their allegience to Steve Jobs and his United Store of Apps.
To say that Steve Jobs and L. Ron Hubbard had a lot in common is probably a little too rude, but it's not entirely off base.
Tim Cook doesn't get it, though, or more likely he doesn't care. He would rather be Bill Gates than Steve Jobs. He doesn't want the fame, he just wants to quietly take over the world. So he did away with that bullshit. Now literally anybody who wants an iPhone can have one. Will the hipsters that Apple relied on so heavily still care when Felipe the Fry Cook has the same damn thing? No, they won't. Will it still matter? Maybe, maybe not. Will Apple tank because of it? Don't know. But the point here is that the makeup of the company, and its customers, has already begun to change forever.
So there's two statements that could be made here, and one or both of them are probably true:
The Cult of Apple died with Steve Jobs.
Steve Jobs died with the Cult of Apple.
