Like an Apple invitation to a post-holiday party, the first days of January are usually reserved for rumors, speculation and general excitement leading up to Steve Jobs’ annual keynote presentation at the San Francisco Macworld Expo. The only hitch this year? Steve won’t be there.

But even if we’ve heard the last “One more thing” from the mouth of our favorite leader, it doesn’t mean the death knell has sounded for Apple Inc. From September 16, 1985, to February 7, 1997, Steve was absent from Team Cupertino’s roster--but you wouldn’t know it by looking at these 10 creations:

Newton
The holy grail of Apple releases that never quite lived up to its own hype or potential. Then-Apple CEO John Sculley pioneered the PDA movement with the first of many breakthrough designs from Jonathan Ive. While Steve was struggling to get NeXT off the ground, Apple was busy with the creation of digital ink and mobile communication. And if Jobs hadn’t come along and killed it, who knows what might have been?

System 7
Multitasking. Drag and drop. QuickTime. AppleScript. Trash. Codenamed Big Bang, System 7 set the stage for all Mac OSes that weren’t OS X and introduced a slew of innovations over its six-year shelf life, including Windowshade, Stickies, Control Strip, Launcher and even the menu-bar clock. With colorful graphics and a refined, streamlined user interface, System 7 (which ushered in the official Mac OS moniker with version 7.6) was a Jobs-less breakthrough that you might remember by its “other” name: Windows 95.

PowerBook
Of course, Steve gave it sex appeal and flipped the Apple logo right-side up, but the PowerBook actually made its debut on John Sculley’s watch. Critically acclaimed and wildly innovative, the PowerBook buried the clunky Mac Portable once and for all, and forever changed notebook design by ditching the beige standard for deep gray and moving the keyboard closer to the screen. Quintessential Steve, without the Reality Distortion Field.

Apple Adjustable Keyboard
It may have been a little too big for some desks, but Apple’s only entrance into the short-lived ergonomic fray was also better than anything else on the market. With a hinged QWERTY console and a floating space bar to accommodate carpal tunnel-stricken Mac users, the Apple Adjustable Keyboard took its lumps for banishing the function keys to a separate number pad and didn’t make much of an impact. It may have been different in Steve’s hands, but come on people... function keys? Really?

Bong chime
You know that mellifluous sound that emanates from your Mac after every restart? Contrary to popular belief, Steve had nothing to do with it. Recorded on a Korg Wavestation by Apple programmer Jim Reekes in 1991 and immortalized in “Jurassic Park,” the modern Mac startup chime went through several incarnations until Steve re-emerged in 1997 and demanded “the good one” be used across the board. Thank heavens for small favors.

AppleShare
The gold standard for networking until Mac OS X Server, AppleShare made it (almost) easy for business to set up file and network servers on a Mac island (or country). But it wasn’t until version 3 in System 7 when AppleShare became the robust personal file and print sharer we know today. Back in 1991, AppleShare was for servers what Time Machine is for backups. Simple, reliable, effective. And Steve-free.

Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh
Built to mark the two-decade anniversary of the company (not the Mac itself), the TAM was a milestone of technological achievement fronted by then-CEO Gil Amelio. With a sleek, futuristic design featuring a slim, vertically mounted logic board, custom-made Bose sound system and leather-wrapped keyboard rests, the TAM’s $7,500 price tag made the Steve Job premium seem like a downright bargain.

Macintosh TV
Before AppleTV completed the story of the iPod, Macintosh TV penned the prologue, with a black-painted LC 500 fitted with a TV tuner card. It didn’t last long, but Macintosh TV was the original Front Row, down to the ability to switch between computer and TV screen with the stroke of a key or click of a remote. Think Steve had one in his NeXT office? We sure do.

eWorld
Way before Steve jumped in bed with Microsoft and Internet Explorer, Apple had its own online service with a lowercase “E.” Conceived as a virtual town hall with a post office, business plaza, marketplace and community center, eWorld had shades of Amazon, eBay, Gmail, Wikipedia and MySpace, and was a far, far better thing than Prodigy, AOL or NetZero. Years later, Jobs reentered the online war with Safari, but we’ll always have a soft spot for eWorld.

Power Macintosh
We can thank Steve for the mirrored drives, hinged doors and Intel bake-offs, but the Power Macintosh made its debut while Steve was still between reigns. Replacing the Quadra (another piece of non-Steve history), the Power Mac utilized the high-performance PowerPC chip and brought the Mac into the modern era.

Honorable Mention
eMate
The first Apple product dressed in translucent blue wasn’t the iMac; in all likelihood, Steve didn’t even have a hand the decision to switch to fruit-inspired enclosures. Designed as a Newton for the laptop-loving crowd, eMate was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Steve put it out to pasture in early 1998--about a year after its introduction--but was apparently enamored by its colorful case. Because that first Bondi blue iMac  looks awfully similar.