Steve Jobs stepped down permanently as CEO of Apple last week, hardly a surprise in light of his health problems, but the end of a hi-tech era nonetheless. The tributes, memories and analysis flooded in, combined with a few ungenerous comments that he should really have ended the uncertainty over his future role a year earlier. There is no doubt that Jobs has made a huge impact on, and contribution to, the market, and has been the only personal computer player to succeed so convincingly in reshaping his firm around mobility. But the test of the strength of Apple, as opposed to the mystique of its leader, will lie in its ability to prove at last that it can maintain…