How has Apple managed to stay so successful over 35 years? Even with its misses (Motorola ROKR, anyone?

Oh, the humanity), no one can dispute that the company is the dominant American corporate brand, period. The hard numbers even prove this, with Apples market capitalization recently surpassing Exxon-Mobile, making it the most valuable company in the world. Of course, the news always breathlessly captures Apples characteristics: Legendary CEO. Masterful marketing. Amazing stagecraft. Sexy products. Industry renegades. Tradition breakers. Cult-like devotion. With so many positive elements involved, how can we summarize the formula to Apples brand success? We all know the saying: If you love someone, set them free. Wed argue thats sort of what Steve Jobs, Apples CEO, has done, over and over again. You cant separate Jobs and Apple they are one and the same, the brand made the man, and the man made the brand. And this ability to walk away from the big things in life is part of Jobs winning formula. Even before he founded Apple, Jobs walked away from college. He dropped out after six months at University, believing that his future and fortune were better dictated on his own terms. A bit too literally, perhaps, as Jobs next studied calligraphy intensely, and his appreciation for written fonts helped inspire their inclusion in the first Macintosh. Imagine if today you were stuck with only one font to select! After building Apples initial success, Jobs was fired by the companys board over creative and business differences. Instead of trying to win back his lost love, Jobs walked away and founded two new companies, NeXT and Pixar. The former gave us todays Macintosh operating system and the first iterations of a capable web browser; the latter continues to produce some of the bestloved animated films ever. These experiences and their ramifications continue to have a profound effect on multimedia generation and consumption. Oh, those pesky haters When the iPhone debuted, critics claimed it would fail imminently because it didnt fit current consumer preferences. But, every year since 2008, the iPhone has been by far the best-selling phone worldwide. When the iPad was released in 2010, naysayers argued that the name alone would remind people of tampons, and also declared it DOA. What idiot wants a device primarily meant for consumption, they chanted in unison? About 30 million of them, as sales figures show to date. Once again, Jobs just walked away from the critics and pushed Apple to keep churning out products. No really, he just walks away! With well-known reports of his bouts with cancer and a liver transplant, Jobs health has been a big deal for the past several years. Jobs finally relinquished control of Apple in August, leaving the day-to-day operations of the company and placing a new CEO in charge. Many speculate if the company will survive the departure of the one person so entwined with Apples brand success. Given that Jobs has spent years building a thorough contingency plan, educating corporate leadership on his vision for the companys future, and no doubt having enough blueprints to sustain the product pipeline for several years to come, the smart money is to bet on Apples continued success. So we look at this ability to walk away and see the massive impact its had on consumer taste, not to mention the industries left in the wake. Jobs single-handedly turned the music industry on

its head, has been doing so with the film industry the past few years, and certainly the television and cable industries are next in line. Who knew that turning your back on something is what brand success is all about.

Steve Jobs is not only in this pantheon of great American industrialists, Cramer said Thursday, he transcended it. "He created machines that made the impossible simple. He created machines that brought the democratization of thought to all. He created machines for which there had been no need and it turned out they were necessities," Cramer said of Jobs. "He had vision. He had brilliance. He was otherworldly." As co-founder and former CEO of Apple [AAPL 587.44 -20.90 (-3.44%) ], Jobs created an ecosystem that allowed all people to figure everything out, Cramer said. Where other companies created just a few individual products, Jobs created an entire product line that kept pushing the envelope. Where the great industrialists before him revolutionized one industry, or created a game-changing product, Jobs continued to change the game time-after-time.

"It's as if Jobs invented the wheel, the wedge, the screw, the pulley, the level and the inclined plane," Cramer explained. "We take them for granted now, like the iPod, iPhone and the iPad, but they were all invented once, too. Can you imagine if just one man invented all of them?" It's important to note that in a time, where Americans are so self-critical, Jobs was "uniquely American." To Cramer, Jobs was "the best we had."