Steve speaks, and the world halts.

At 6:42 this morning, in a half-conscious stupor, I checked my Twitter feed. My eyes jerked open at the headlines:

Steve Jobs resigns as CEO of Apple.

Though the general public has known of his ailing health condition for some time now and expected the scenario to unfold like so, I don’t believe anyone was exactly prepared for the actual announcement when it actually happened. In disbelief, I even double-checked my sources to verify that it wasn’t just some lame, sick joke.

After reality finally sank in, the instinctual reaction that followed snapped me to the realization that I’ve seriously been working in finance for too long. At the wake of a pivotal moment in tech history, I wondered,

Did Jobs specifically choose to leave at this moment because he sees something that most people don’t: that is, that Apple has hit its peak and, with the weakened global economy, will probably never again be able to maintain the same top line growth that it has been consistently pushing for the past several years now?

To be fair, Jobs is a phenomenal leader and I’m sure his health, above anything else, was the main determining factor behind his resignation. If you want my financial opinion, investors will panic and sell off their AAPL shares (naturally), but in the short-to-medium term I don’t see Jobs’ absence as a major loss to the company’s success. The iPhone 5 and iPad 3 are still scheduled to roll out later this year–of course consumers will eat that up–and Apple still has the same workforce of talented, creative, design-savvy executives, engineers and developers that Jobs helped recruit and attract during his stint as CEO. In the long term, however, it is tough to say–although my sentiments are more bearish. If the Apple momentum fades, the company could lose some of its top talent to competitors, and then… well, it’s all downhill from there. I just haven’t heard word of anyone at Apple–or in the world, for that matter–with Jobs’ charisma and vision. He was, essentially, the driving force behind the company’s formidable success.

(Edit: To counter my predictions, I came across this extremely compelling and convincing piece in The Harvard Business Review that argues that Jobs has so successfully and seamlessly reworked the Apple culture that the company doesn’t even need him anymore–similar to what Pixar is today. Thoughts? Feel free to comment below!)

But if you want my human opinion, Jobs is a visionary genius and his resignation is felt two-fold: we mourn that the tech world must bid farewell to one of the most pivotal eras of its history, and yet we look ahead in anticipation and wonder. In fact, now that I’m done talking finance, I get to get into the real good stuff–the sentimental, tear-jerking cheese-ball Steve Jobs quotes. The Wall Street Journal was great enough to compile an entire collection of them dating back to the 80′s, and I ate it up. 

One particular piece made me literally tear right in my office cubicle (it was lunch break, and thank goodness my coworkers take naps at lunch.) It was Jobs’ Stanford commencement speech, delivered on June 12, 2005. In an emotional high, I even e-mailed the piece to my friends, because I think Jobs’ words embody the truth that our generation needs to hear and live out. I urge everyone to read the entire speech before I close with this nugget of wisdom from the man himself:

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

The markets are tough, the future seems hazy, but may nothing stop us from staying hungry and foolish.

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