Google’s Andy Rubin on Apple After Steve Jobs

What will become of Apple without Steve Jobs, its charismatic founder? Might it lose its way or its edge following Jobs’s death?

Google mobile kingpin Andy Rubin doesn’t think so.

During a Wednesday evening interview at AsiaD, Rubin, a former Apple employee, said he was confident that Apple will remain the innovator it has always been, even without its co-founder’s day-to-day leadership.

“Will Apple lose step with Steve’s passing? I don’t think so,” said Rubin. “The DNA in the people walking the halls at Apple is a very powerful combination of the arts and computer science, and I don’t think that’s changed with Steve’s passing. That combination of creativity and computer science, it’s still there. … Obviously, Steve had a big role at Apple and I think he gave guidance to a lot of the employees, but now it’s time for some of the other guys to kind of step up and demonstrate that they can do the creative plus computer science.”