“Apple Inc. set off shock waves Tuesday by announcing Steve Jobs will not speak at what the company said would be its final appearance at the Macworld trade show. The news sent the company’s stock downward, and raised questions about whether Mr. Jobs had new health problems or some new products were not ready,” Justin Scheck and Nick Wingfield report for The Wall Street Journal.
“Speculation about the continued reign of Mr. Jobs — which has popped up from time to time since his 2004 treatment for cancer — underscore how closely Apple’s fashion-setting products are identified with its co-founder. There is no sign of any change in his status, but.. What if that situation does change? There is reason for optimism, based on the evolution of the team that develops Apple’s hardware, software and services, some people familiar with the company’s internal workings say. Some of them believe the group is now strong enough that, barring an exodus of top talent, the company could keep churning out innovative products without Mr. Jobs,” Scheck and Wingfield report.
“The hands-on work of Apple’s innovations depend more directly on subordinates such as Jonathan Ive, an Apple senior vice president who oversees the company’s industrial design team. His group is primarily associated with the physical look and feel of products, such as the unusually slender Macbook Air,” Scheck and Wingfield report.
“Scott Forstall, another senior vice president, leads the team responsible for the iPhone’s operating system and other software. In a sign of his growing importance at the company, Mr. Forstall was twice given the chance to speak at media and technical events earlier this year–and has shown some of the same showmanship that is Mr. Jobs’ trademark,” Scheck and Wingfield report.
There is much more in the full article, which discusses other crucial figures at Apple, here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Jersey_Trader” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: May Steve Jobs live forever and reign as Apple CEO until the end of time!
Barring that, we bring you an email missive from Apple shareholder “Joe Architect” that rather accurately and semi-concisely portrays many of the sentiments of the majority of emails that we receive from Apple shareholders lately:
1. Steve Jobs is a creative genius and therefore extremely introverted and pedantic. You take a creative mind like that and combine it with being a far-flung granola hippie (which is usually the case) and it is beyond cliché that in his view he cannot be bothered by the uncreative mechanics of business and shareholder “issues.”
2. Many people (including myself) have acknowledged his genius by making significant investments in his company, with millions tied-up in the belief that his vision should/will result in positive returns – i.e. many people have made the effort to understand the actual facts of the company and are in a sense complimenting him by investing for the right reasons.
3. Jobs seems to ignore #2, staying within his protective cocoon and not acting (when truly necessary) on behalf of the folks who have placed their trust (and $’s) in him and who help to fund his business. If AAPL was a private company and he owned it all, then he would in fact be free to go for full Howard-Hughes-ness, but that is not the case. This is a public company and he needs to start acting accordingly.
4. Most other successful CEO’s actively participate in the marketplace, making cases where needed to avert unnecessary manipulation of their company. This may all seem like a trivial game if you have $10b already in the bank, however the ongoing intentional secrecy, part-answers and non-answers, and non-specificity of motives behind decisions are simply creating havoc for the ordinary investor. Everyone knows that dropping out of Macworld Expo is going to fuel rumors that he is sick again. Why can’t he just go on CNBC and state that he is healthy? Why does it have to be “off the record” when someone finally is able to ask the question directly? All of that behavior helps no one, but the dirtbag short-sellers and hedge-fund slime who are all manipulating AAPL to make up for their blatant mistakes of investing in ACTUAL GARBAGE like DELL and RIMM.
Your thoughts?
Well, it IS annoying that Apple didn’t respond on the record to questions about Jobs’ health after announcing that he wouldn’t do the keynote at SF Macworld. Apple is a publicly traded company. If it does something that raises questions about the future of the company, it should answer the questions. These are not just empty rumors. Jobs’ keynote has been an Apple tradition for a decade. Given Jobs’ recent health issues, Apple’s PR department should have answered this question on the record.
I think Steve Jobs hates the fact that shareholders expect him to answer to them first, or to respond to what other people think he should be doing. Wall Street and most stock investors are notoriously short-sighted, only caring about the current quarter’s returns. Jobs is much more concerned about building Apple for the future, securing important technologies, and providing the best consumer experience. Those items don’t go along with satisfying shareholders’ expected ROIs or analysts’ predictions.
Enough of this shit already. I am SO over these frickin’ rumors and assumptions. Give me facts or nothing at all. There are some on Wall Street who would gladly dance on Steve Jobs’ grave. They cheer when General Motors lays off thousands. They love it when companies decline, only to allow them to short their stock. Why? Because it’s all about THEM.
This kind of crap really gets me in the mood for the holidays. And given all the movies about the Holocaust (six in all) coming out just in time for Christmas (Oops, did I say the C-word? How politically incorrect of me – I should have put Kwanzaa first), I can only wish all of you, Happy Holocaust!!
Can I sue Steve Jobs and get some of my money back from the stock drop?
Steve Jobs, like many creative geniuses, may have a neurological condition in which his brain is not wired to put social concerns first, to put it mildly. His focus is on love of the machine. Let him be himself, and appoint somebody to be the smooth talking head to calm the ruffled feathers.
As Apple products and services continue to dominate new markets, it is very important to have unique leaders stand out and be in charge of each of these divisions.
This is the part the talking heads can’t seem to get. Apple is not just Macs, iPods, iPhones, iTunes, … Apple is and is becoming MUCH MORE!
Tsunami coming with many billions in the bank and the OS X operating system to fuel it!
This knee jerk reaction from the media is probably why Steve cancelled.
Apple will be fine after Jobs – sure there will be a massive stock price drop but this will be a buying opportunity. People assume that because Apple went south when Jobs left the first time, that it will the next time.
In 1985, he left and took the best minds with him to form NeXT. I hope he stays for a long time and that his health remains good, but if the right people take over, Apple will continue to grow.
Sure they will not be Steve Jobs, but they don’t need to be. They just need to come from the same mindset on design excellence. It is even possible to get someone better – though given Apple’s performance that is hard to believe!
I’m on Job’s side on this… He has appeared publicly in the past and indicated he’s cancer-free and feels fine. What does he have to do – give monthly, weekly, daily updates?
This issue is where do you draw the line on what and how much information would be provided? Someone would always ask for more detail and this becomes too invasive. Ask yourself how you would behave in a similar situation. This is private and nobody’s business outside his family and those he wants to privately confide with.
The analysts are basically a bunch of idiots who don’t get Apple and it seems just use information like this to manipulate the stock price. There’s a lot of money being made on Apple stock playing these irrational dips and peaks.
Apple’s pulling out of MacWorld has been coming for some time and has absolutely nothing to do with Job’s health. Get over it.
Full disclosure – I own several hundred shares of Apple stock and have enough confidence in the talent at Apple that they could get along quite well without Jobs if they had to.
Yeah. What a time to drop the bomb.
I understand situations/reasons might be deeper than we know. Probably somewhere, someone holds the logic behind what the rest of us perceive as madness—but regardless, this kinda puts a real damper on the Holidays and Macworld both.
The economy already had me depressed enough. Now I’m obsessed with weighing the good points/bad points of this decision.
It’s one thing to not answer some questions about Steves health. It’s another thing to cancel MacWorld AND cancel Steves keynote, both suddenly and without much believable explanation. Steve, show yourself. How hard can that be?
So maybe Apple should start buying back shares and eventually go private, and get all the a**holes (having ridden on his coat tail) who think they know better off his back. How long would that take?
If you have invested in Apple, you have invested in THEIR vision. If you don’t like it or you want to control a company go start your own. Or go stagnate with M$.
Steve Jobs is going to die.
That is a fact.
Steve Jobs is alive.
That is a fact
Taking the long view, perhaps Apple has also determined that it is important to begin demonstrating that under the hood is not only the mind of Jobs, but a competent and creative team that will perpetuate the best characteristics of the company and its products.
Apple brings this upon themselves!
They could have announced all of this right during MacWorld where Steve Jobs would have given his last keynote presentation.
It would have all made sense and all this stupid speculation would not take place.
All the secrecy (or lack of reasoning) is now coming back to haunt them!
January 24, 2009
Mac 25th Anniversary
There may be a special announcement / show / appearance for this!
If you noticed at the last several public events Jobs has elected to step away from the sole spot light and allowed others to take the reigns like any good mentor would. Jobs step in and righted the ship for many years as Apple truly needed his guidance and vision. Apple is now on firm ground again and wants to do what other companies do, act as if they’re run by a team/group whatever. Not by one individual. These latest moves are apart of Apple’s attempt to move the company and corporate image in a direction that quite frankly makes them appear more as a company.
As for Jobs, he might be a creative crazy genius, a bit narcissistic, etc. Whatever you want to label him, but that’s Steve not Apple the company. It’s time now, after more than 10 years at the helm to allow Apple to grow up. I personally don’t think Apple should have to explain that or address Steve’s health issues any longer regarding the future of the company. It is Wall St. that as far as I can tell that needs to do some major revisions of it’s own and some answering to investors why they act the way they do…
@Jersey_Trader
Keep talking the good stuff. I’m hanging in there with my investment. This company has too much going for it, I just hope that the new SEC chief clamps down on all of this crap that goes on in Wall Street.
I think Mr. Jobs has made good decisions so far, and I see no reason to think he will not continue to do so. If people are prone to basing their decisions upon speculation without direct evidence, they’d still find something else to be upset about.
Several major vendors pulled back or out of Macworld, not just Apple. Does it not occur to anyone that maybe that has something to do with Jobs not wanting to do a keynote? Maybe the entire truth is in what’s already said, that they prefer to do their own thing with their own events. This is not the type of economy to continue blowing money on things that don’t give great returns. I remember a few months ago people pushing for a succession plan, well, it looks like they’re trying to make Steve Jobs less of the front man by him not doing a keynote. That has to happen someday, why not now?
See, there are just as valid bits of speculation for other reasons for what is happening. I think Apple and Steve Jobs should not waste their time responding to every half-assed, half-baked worry some analyst can dream up. With the herd mentality of the media, they could end up doing nothing but responding to the speculation du jour. I say there’s a good case to not feed that beast and tough it out.
–Ron
I find it educational to hold AAPL stock because it is subject to such intense manipulation. There is really little that Jobs can do to fix this problem. Exactly the same characteristics that gain Apple products valuable media and consumer attention make AAPL vulnerable to calculated FUD. Hedge funds in particular benefit enormously from AAPL’s volatility since this allows them to pump money out of panicky individual investors pockets and into their coffers.
And no, jtc, you can’t sue Jobs because the stock dropped yesterday. His job is to build longterm value, not to give you back your money because you bought high at 11am and sold low at 2pm. It would be nice, though, if the people doing the manipulation could be more easily held accountable.
Apple surviving? Yes because I doubt that sj has not assembled around him a solid team of brains to carry on the good work. Or do we make of him another boss bastard who does not care about his company and only plunders the coffers? Not sure this is the time and place to state this (already mentioned here but never echoed one way or the other). As a French living in France, I am shocked now as I have been for years 1) by the appalling lack of presence of Apple products in the computer stores, big and small, of my country 2)the poor even noexistent publicity of them in the media, 3) the incompetence-if not the deliberate counter productive discourse–of the sales people in charge of “selling” the Apple machines (with the exception of the iPod and iPhone). Friennds of mine have been complaining about the total disinterest of sales personnel towards Apple computers, often deprecating them and warning of enormous problems of conversion from PCs to Macs, never failing to insist on the higher cost… This is not to mention the frustration of Mac’s owners to have their machines professionnally handled by Apple France service people. Retailers are most of the time totally incapable of handling minor problems, or simply fiddle about and return a product poorly fixed. A very able and “courteous” retailer in the XIII arrondissement told me in so many words that his business suffers most from… Apple themselves. Meaning that it is suicidal in France for Apple to invest millions on an Apple superstore on the Champs Elysees with the hope of increase their sales significantly. You do not go to a RollsRoyce showroom to familiarize yourself with the idea of buying a Corolla. The computer warfare in France (in Europe in general I believe) is a street guerilla one. Aggressive publicity, aggressive signs, and a multiplication of retail stores+a better display of products in department-stores+a solid training of agents would help try to beat the competition. Any Apple France brass guy who does not get this and does not act accordingly-or who is unable to convey the message to sj– is not doing his job and should be fired. He blatantly does not know how to ply the French and merely enjoys salary and the dignity that goes with that in all countries. I bet the big guys in Paris will brag that the iPhone now going to Bouygues and SFR instead of merely Orange(France Telecoms) is their victory . They would be lying: this is a victory for Bouygues and SFR. I can provide precise examples of what I am talking about. But it seems that nobody in California cares about what their guys in Europe are doing or not doing. Sad. In the meantime PCs rule and they will for a long time to come.
Apple drops hand-grenades then shuts up SO THAT the media will talk about it (positively and negatively). It Apple clarified every issue they would not get the free press they enjoy.
There is only one thing worse than being talked about (Apple) – and that is not being talked about (PC makers).
Hippa
Has anyone heard that a person’s health is his own privacy protected under Federal Law. Too bad for shareholders but his health is his own and not the companies. Plan accordingly.
If Jobs is a great leader, he will foster leadership under him. He is a great leader. If anyone has any doubt who the next person to succeed Jobs, Phil Schiller running MacWorld is a pretty big statement who the new mouth for Apple will be. The obvious is staring at you in the face. Do dismiss it.
I think Steve is fed up with being tied to the stock market, being a public company. His mid-term goal is probably to become private again. This is the only reason that would make sense as far as not reponding to the press, not protecting shareholders (like me) and keeping as much cash as possible. Apple CFO forward guidance are so pathetic, a shareholder should be able to sue Apple for manipluating the stock (down of course after each guidance). I don’t think Steve cares about shareholders, he cares about great products, about changing the world and doesn’t need the stock market to do so now.
Once the stock price goes below $40 and Apple has amassed more cash from operations, Apple will buy most of their shares back and they will do what ever they want.
At this point, we will see unprecedented creativity, products, hobbies growing, Steve will be allowed to even die, this won’t prevent this incredible company from prospering.
Long live Apple, good health to Steve, too bad for my losses.