Jobs announced today he's stepping down from day-to-day management of Apple until June while he copes with a health problem he called "more complicated than I originally thought."

The move came on the heels of months of speculation on Mr. Jobs' health, fueled by gaunt public appearances, his decision to pull out of the keynote for the MacWorld Expo last week and the company's vague admission last week that Jobs had been suffering from a "hormone imbalance."

The fear that this signaled a return of the pancreatic cancer he was treated for in 2004 reverberated among Apple faithful, shareholders and the economy of ancillary businesses built around Apple's revolutionary products and services.

Mr. Jobs led a turnaround at Apple starting when he returned in 1996, transforming it from a struggling maker of niche personal computers into a mainstream lifestyle brand that represents the best of whatever category it enters, from personal computers to phones to music players.

Along the way, the Steve Jobs and Apple brands became synonymous in a unique way in American business. Mr. Jobs is to Apple what Richard Branson is to Virgin, Jay Chiat to TBWA/Chiat/Day or perhaps Jack Welch to General Electric.

The question is, whether in the 12 years since he returned to Apple, has a culture been built there that can survive him? "The good news for the Apple brand is the one thing he has done is created an organization to deliver Apple-ness brilliantly," said Allen Adamson, managing director of the New York City office branding firm Landor Associates.

One could look at Mr. Jobs' other revolutionary company, Pixar Animation Studios, which has maintained its uniqueness after Mr. Jobs even after it was absorbed into the Walt Disney Co. Part of that was due to the Pixar creative team, led by Chief Creative Officer John Lasseter.

By most accounts, Apple has that team in place and Mr. Jobs' role is that of an editor, parsing the ideas brought to him by his team. Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook has led the company before, during Mr. Jobs' treatment for cancer; Jonathan Ive is the designer behind Apple products; and marketing director Phillip Schiller took Mr. Jobs' place delivering the keynote at the MacWorld Expo.

One way to prepare for Apple sans Mr. Jobs would be to bring some of these execs, especially Mr. Ive, who is responsible for the look and feel of the devices, to the fore.

"Certainly it would have been interesting to learn a bit more about the chief of design," said David Murphy, co-president and director of brand innovation at Minneapolis-based Barrie D'Rozario Murphy. "It would have added more depth and texture to the Apple brand because he and his teams and Steve Jobs have created some beautiful products."

For the better part of 12 years, Apple has benefited from Mr. Jobs' instincts, his ability to communicate and his iconic status. Now they're coping with the downside of having an iconic leader: Someday, they won't be around.

"Eventually all leaders leave and its incumbent upon every company to make sure that all key stakeholders understand the quality and depth of the team behind them," said Michael Kempner, CEO of Interpublic Group of Cos.' PR shop MWW Group. "Yet, we don't know who they are because they have been kept hidden for so many years."

Most believe that if Mr. Jobs' absence is indeed just six months, there might be impact to the stock, but no impact to the brand. "If anything, it stirs up more buzz about him and the company and his role at the company, maybe to the benefit of the brand, but to the detriment of the stock," said Andrew Murphy, analyst at Piper Jaffray. Mr. Murphy said Apple has had a succession plan for some time, but hasn't made it public.

But Apple will have a tougher time if Mr. Jobs' health forces him out of the company permanently. "If he were to leave it would be very complicated; Apple has the most unique, compelling, consistent voice of any company," said Alan Siegel, founder of branding firm Siegel & Gale.

"There's a underlying sense amongst some of us in the Apple community that Jobs may never return as the company's CEO, and that he's slowly saying his goodbyes," said Kasper Jade, editor of Appleinsider.com.

Apple has shown its brand can survive a product that bombs, such as Apple TV, but all eyes will be on the next few product rollouts, without Mr. Jobs. That will be the most important signal as to whether there can be an Apple without Steve Jobs. Said Mr. Adamson: "The next two or three product launches will be critical -- will they have the Jobs magic?"

Dolby is also targeting game developers to encode matrix height information into their surround-sound mixes, said Craig Eggers, Dolby’s senior manager for CE partner marketing. “We could do it in music and movie mixes, too,” he added.

Adding a vertical component to horizontal soundfields adds more realism and airiness to movie soundtracks and games, the companies contend. The technologies would elevate the sounds of hovering helicopters in games and movies, and in music videos, add more “depth, dimension and presence,” said Eggers. Rain would seem to be falling on a listener’s roof. Planes flying overhead will actually sound as if they’re flying overhead rather than through a listener sitting on the couch, said DTS marketing VP Tom Dixon.

Incorporating height information in a surround mix would enable game developers to incorporate height effects that would more precisely track visual game play than post-processing would, Dolby’s Eggers noted. DTS, however, has no plans for now to market its technology for encoding in games and other source material, said spokesman Anthony Watkins.

Dolby’s technology is Dolby Pro Logic IIz, which adds two front height channels to typical 5.1- and 7.1-channel home theater configurations to create surround systems with up to 9.1 channels. Dolby’s Eggers said IIz-equipped AV receivers will be available “very soon,” with the first arriving before CEDIA. At the show, Dolby displayed a prototype Dolby Pro Logic IIz 7.1-channel AV receiver from Onkyo.

For its part, DTS demonstrated a new technology that adds two front height and two additional horizontal-plane surround channels to create a soundfield with up to 11.1 channels. The technology, in the Neo family but as yet unnamed, can also be used to create only the two height channels. “The algorithm is ready,” and the first AVRs with the technology could appear late this year or early next, said DTS’s Dixon.

Dolby chose to focus on front-height channels rather than add additional surround channels or back-height channels because “it’s easier to localize sounds in front of you,” Eggers claimed.

Both technologies could be incorporated into chips already used in low- to high-priced AVRs, both companies said. “MIPs are not an issue these days,” DTS’s Dixon said. “If a receiver has [losslessly compressed] DTS HD Master, it can do Neo X.” During CES, an AVR with DTS HD Master and Dolby TrueHD was announced by Pioneer at a suggested $299.

Many existing AVRs and home theater preamp processors already incorporate enough amplifier channels to support the technologies, both companies noted. Nine-channel AVRs often use four amplifier channels to biamplify the front left-right speakers or to drive two speaker pairs in a multiroom application. Two of those amps could be redirected to drive a pair of height speakers in a system with seven horizontal-plane channels, Dolby said. Denon offers a 9.3-channel home theater preamp processor, and Pioneer offers a 10-channel AVR. Yamaha’s flagship 11-channel AVR already supports two front height and two rear height channels using proprietary Yamaha technology.

To add height channels, the Dolby and DTS technologies identify nondirectional decorrelated sounds in the surround mix process them as left- and right-height channels. DTS’s version also adds some correlated directional information to the height channels, said senior R&D VP Paul Smith.

In an 11.1-channel DTS setup, the left and right height speakers would be placed above the left and right main speakers. The distance between a height speaker and main speaker would be the same as the distance between the main speaker and center-channel speaker, said Smith. The six surround speakers would be arrayed like this: On the right, one speaker would be placed at 90 degrees from the listener, with another at 120 degrees and the third at 150 degrees. The left-side surrounds would be likewise positioned.

Apple Inc. unveiled significant pricing and copyright changes to its iTunes Store, moves by the dominant online music seller that could spur similar action across the industry.

The changes, announced at the Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco Tuesday, include a new three-tiered pricing plan for songs, instead of the 99-cents fixed price Apple has used almost exclusively. Apple also said it will drop copy protection from all of the songs in its digital store.

The changes were announced by Apple marketing chief Philip Schiller rather than by Chief Executive Steve Jobs, who has made the keynote speech at Macworld every year since 1997. Last month, Apple said Mr. Jobs wouldn't appear at the event because the company was cutting back on trade shows and would withdraw from Macworld after this year. On Monday, Mr. Jobs disclosed he was treating a "hormonal imbalance" that caused him to lose weight.

Some of Apple's moves appear to be a response in part to shifts in the digital-music market. Growth in paid downloads slowed significantly in 2008, rising 27%, compared with a 45% increase a year earlier, according to Nielsen Co.'s SoundScan service.

New online-music rivals have also emerged, including Amazon.com Inc., which sells many songs at a cheaper price than iTunes and without copy protection, giving users more freedom with the songs they have purchased.

The Cupertino, Calif., company declined to comment on why it was making changes to its iTunes Store now beyond that it thinks "it's great for customers."

The moves by Apple could prompt others in the online music industry to also explore new ways to sell music. Apple last year surpassed Wal-Mart Stores Inc. as the world's largest music retailer. Digital-music retailers in the U.S. sold more than one billion songs in 2008. Apple said it has sold six billion songs since the iTunes Store launched in 2003.

Richard Greenfield, a media analyst at Pali Research, said that while he expected the changes to benefit consumers, it was unclear whether the moves would significantly boost sales. "The bigger issue is that the number of people buying music online is not big enough," he said.

Under Apple's new pricing plan that will take effect in April, Mr. Schiller said songs will cost 69 cents, 99 cents or $1.29. He said the "vast majority" of the songs will cost 69 cents, though people familiar with the matter said the most sought-after songs -- which generate most of the sales on the service -- will likely cost $1.29 as both Apple and the major record labels try to boost revenue growth. Wholesale prices charged by the record labels are likely to change to reflect the new price points; spokespeople for Apple and major record labels declined to discuss their agreements.

Apple also said it is dropping digital rights management, or copy protection, from eight million songs in its catalog effective immediately, and from the remaining two million in its catalog by the end of March.

Apple's DRM has made it complicated for iTunes customers to use competitors' products, like SanDisk Corp. music players or Microsoft Corp.'s Zune. Among the limits imposed by the software locks, it is difficult or impossible to play songs purchased from the iTunes Store on devices other than the iPod or iPhone.

Apple already sells songs from some record labels, including EMI Group Ltd. and many independent labels, without DRM. Now it is moving to selling everything, including the catalogs of the other three major labels -- Sony Corp.'s Sony Music Entertainment, Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group Corp. -- the same way.

Users can also pay 30 cents a song to upgrade previously purchased songs in their iTunes library to a DRM-free version.

Starting Tuesday, Apple said iPhone 3G owners will also be able to download songs from the iTunes Store via their cellular networks instead of having to connect to a wireless Internet network. The company said the price, selection and quality of the songs would be the same as they are online.

Apple also unveiled a 17-inch version of the MacBook Pro laptop computer it introduced last October. As part of the computer, Apple said it has developed a new thin and light battery that provides up to eight hours of battery life. The company also unveiled a new version of its iLife media software, which now includes GoogleInc.'s Google Maps to help organize photos by location

The presents have been unwrapped, the tree taken down. And Santa still hasn't brought you that Wii.