Apple looks like they have another hit on their hands with iPad 2 and if reports of their enterprise adoption rates are accurate, we’ll only be seeing more of them in business. Now, perhaps, we see why Steve Jobs called it the most important product he’d ever worked on. But Steve Jobs is now on his third medical leave and while we all wish him well, many are considering what the future holds for Apple and its leadership.

Tim Cook is a brilliant businessman and one of the best operations men in the industry, but he’s not as charismatic as Steve Jobs. Jonathan Ive is arguably the most successful product designer in history, but he hasn’t shown general business savvy. Let’s face it, you can’t just bring Justin Bieber in to take over the Stones from Mick Jagger (Keith would likely smoke him by mistake) and you can’t just bring in anyone to run Apple. You need a titan, an icon…

So what about Larry?

We know Steve and Larry are very close personally, and Oracle was one of the first to port their database to the Mac OS (remember Oracle Card?) We know Larry has a history of doing business with friends like Scott McNealy and Mark Hurd. Could Steve Jobs be next? Could Larry take over Apple? Could Sun servers be the backend to iPads in the enterprise? Could it give Larry the domination and recognition he’s wanted for years? Could it… finally make Oracle cool?

Ellison is rumored to have offered to buy Apple back in 1997 in order to give it back to Jobs following Jobs’ ouster by the Apple board. Nothing happened then, of course, but 2011 doesn’t have to be like 1997. Unlike other acquisitions, however, Apple’s brand is far too strong to be simply subsumed. Co-branding might not work either. It certainly spared us Peopracle and Orieble in the past and would spare us Appacle now. Orapple isn’t so bad… or… Crapple? That has a certain ring to it. At least that way when my OraclePad starts to suck all the bandwidth and electricity out of my house, when it starts to slow down as I load more and more of my content data on it, when it yanks all the money from my bank account to cover licensing fees as I move from bedroom to den to living room, when it just won’t work anymore and the only answer the smart fellow at the Oracle Store tells me is to buy more blades… er, pads, Crapple certainly seems like the best name.

No, scratch that. It would never fly. Consumers won’t tolerate that kind of pricing, licensing, and obsolescence in their technology…

[Image credit: Wikimedia]