“Steve Jobs’ absence from the public eye is prompting questions about the Apple CEO’s status, management effectiveness and health,” Brian X. Chen reports for Wired. “So far, the company has done little to provide substantive answers to those questions.”
“The mystery behind the lack of a Stevenote is leading some to speculate that Apple is getting ready to dethrone him, that Jobs has lost some of his typically ironclad control or that his health is failing,” Chen reports. “‘The company can be a little more open about what’s happening with Steve Jobs,’ said Vijay Rakesh, a ThinkPanmure analyst. ‘It’d help everybody put some uncertainty to rest.'”
“Whether he is sick or not, analysts and investors are justified in wanting to know the state of Jobs’ health and position at Apple,” Chen reports. “Several Apple employees contacted by Wired.com have reported that they haven’t seen Jobs since the company announced the CEO would not appear for a Macworld keynote. Jobs generally isn’t very visible in public, but the employees said they haven’t seen him on campus recently, either.”
“Apple’s typical vagueness is leading some analysts to believe Jobs will soon leave Apple because his health issues are returning,” Chen reports. “Rakesh said he believes Apple isn’t preparing to simply give Jobs the boot. He said it’s more likely that Apple has developed a new executive team, which will gradually transition Jobs out of his role as CEO.”
Chen reports, “Similarly, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster on Wednesday distributed a note saying his firm believes Apple is getting ready to shift management roles. ‘Yielding this year’s Macworld keynote to Phil Schiller, along with the participation of Tim Cook and Phil Schiller at the October event is, in our view, a clear message that a leadership shift is underway,’ Munster said.”
Full article here.
I have no idea where Steve is. I dealt with pancreatic cancer 9 years ago. I had surgery and all has been well. About 6 months ago my weight started dropping, I had no energy and basically looked like hell. When I saw that picture of Jobs a month or so ago I thought to myself that his cancer was back. He just don’t look good.
My cancer has returned and I can’t whoop it this time but I’ll try and have fun for the next few months. I’m 55 and my life has been one hell of a ride !! Good luck Jobs.
The media, corportate, industry and analysts vultures are ready to swoop down on Jobs, hoping for juicy returns, while not giving a damn of course, in petto, for the success and the future of Apple, even less so for the personal ordeal of Steve. Watch the stocks go up and down and the grin on the faces of the soothsayers. Another American nightmare.Disgusting.
The sad thing is that if nothing is going on – no sickness, no upheaval, no uprising, no technological meltdown – then Apple is stuck between a rock and a hard place. If there’s nothing to say and they say nothing then the media say, “What’s wrong?” If there’s nothing going on and they say as such, then the press will say, “What are they covering up?” I’m not saying there is or isn’t anything happening – who knows? That’s the crux of the problem. Speculation is assumption in disguise and we know what assumption does to you and me.
Wouldn’t it have been smarter if Jobs would have announced he was not attending MacWorld?
All he had to do was put out a simple statement saying his reasons for not attending.
Instead Apple creates the drama behind all this that is not needed.
The media, analysts and bloggers all, is filled with a sickness.
We’re talking about a bad kind of sickness, like complete psychopathy. Think about it: adolescence, addiction, perversion, and even criminality. There’s a bunch of people who think so highly of themselves as to believe they can manipulate Steve Jobs.
These fools are not about to manipulate Steve Jobs. Maybe some do manage to manipulate Apple stock, for their own personal gain thus these writers appear to make their living by perverting. These sick people don’t understand ethics and likely wouldn’t understand a law until they spend some time in lockdown.
If Apple’s stock is being manipulated, then the stockholders, not Apple, should address that matter in a court of law. But it’s a pity the psychopathy prevalent is not more easily addressed within the law.
Jobs personal health is his own business. He has his own purposes, too, and they are far above the fray being presented by this sick media we now suffer. Note here: it’s the media that’s sick, not Jobs.
Changing the world is not ordinarily an easy task. Yet Jobs is accomplishing this sort of act, he along with those he’s selected to work with over the years. He’s changing the way we work and play everyday, and by we I mean just about everybody in the world. Who else among us can claim such accomplishments?
When a person like Jobs moves in the way he does, it’s best to simply get out of his way. The people at Apple learned this some time ago.
We have to admit Jobs is not likely to be bullet-proof but what if he dies? 20 billion dollars? I believe our government has dumped far more than that amount into Citibank several times by now with far more expected to come. Not to worry about Steve’s sudden demise, our government cannot afford to let Apple die.
Apple represents American technology’s salient increasingly, and there is no sound reason to suggest this capacity will not continue into the near future. Heck, it appears as if IBM is scared crap-less of losing its technology lead these days. (IBM needs to get out of the way, in my opinion.)
Neither the Mac, the iPod, nor the iPhone came about overnight. Each took years of developmental work. (It’s hard to compete against products so thoroughly developed in this manner.) These days, though, perverts want to try manipulating a new insanely great product each quarter, certainly at each and every MacWorld conference. Pure adolescence.
Apple is doing enough, to the extent of causing cultural shifts these days. Selah.
And leave Jobs to his own business.
This is ridiculous. Will someone please bitchslap Brian Chen for his amateurish reporting and complete speculation? Phillip Elmer-DeWitt filed a similar story for Forbes. Of interest however is that in the reader responses to that article, a reader wrote the following, and I quote:
“Hello. My name is Zu Jin and I work at a japanese restaurant and Steve Jobs is one of our costumers.
He was here just this week and he lokks fine as usual.
Just to let you know.”
“Posted By Zu Jin, SF. California : December 19, 2008 8:56 am”
Will somebody please give this a rest? The media is treating Steve Jobs like a hunted dog. When they find him, what will they do? Beat him to death with long sticks?
Enough already! And that goes to MDN too, for helping to fan the flames of hysteria.
Apple is not a one man operation. As much as I admire Jobs and his forward vision, their is a lot of talent that makes things happen. I think at this point Apple needs to finally show the world that this in fact the case and what better way then to pull back form Steve announcing everything.
The man’s on VACATION at Christmastime with his family for the first time in years because he CAN (no Macworld prep). THAT’S why the employees haven’t seem around campus. OR he’s off in the Apple Jet closing some major deal somewhere, AGAIN explaining why the employees haven’t seen him around.
Why does he have to be in some hospital ICU just because he hasn’t been around recently?
Have you seen what his wife looks like? I’d be on vacation somewhere with her, too!
Peace.
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Olmecmystic
Steve is in Detroit! He is giving seminars to the Big Three executives on how to properly run a business. Do we really need a Cavalier AND a Sunfire? A Chevy truck AND a GMC truck…etc., etc… Time to bring the product lines down to a few choices like Toyota and compete with them. I’m all for unions, but, do assembly workers really need to make $60 and hour???
MW: leaders, as in the Big Three leaders need to talk to Steve!
The BIG three auto companies are crashing and need $ 50,000,000,000 dollars bailout and all these idiots can talk about is a successful company.
Tis the season………..:-(
Just a thought,
en
I just saw John Sculley at 1 Infinite Loop.
….what a surprise no comment about your post – the ACTUAL reality of pancreatic cancer, they can’t even bear to accept it as a possibility – utter PSYCHO OBSESSIVE CULTISTS!
Well, its a bit difficult when U R puking up blood 24/7, isn’t it?
LOOK at ALL the indenial LOOSERS above SQUIRMING as their reason for existence is about to be snuffed out. It doesn’t MATTER that you don’t know were all these other people you name are – they are HIGHLY UNLIKELY to to have an such an extremely rare PROGNOSIS FROM HELL LIKE JOBS – that “believing too much in his decisions outside his knowledge base” Jobs was a vegan (anything but a balanced diet nutrient wise) is EXACTLY why the chances of you seeing him again are the same as seeing the REAL Santa Clause.
You can lie to each other to deny to yourselves – but as more + more time passes and it becomes more + more likely he will never be seen again the increasing stress of being indenial will mind – f*ck you CRAZY……
I’m just thankful that the SJ speculation gives us all a break from the incessant Mats Sundin headlines.
Paul MacCartney is dead. He was replaced in the Beatles in 1964 by a double who happened to be reasonably talented.
Even his wife and kids didnt know.
Steve Jobs has discovered the truth and has been kidnapped by the record company until he agrees to:
(A) pay them $5 a track on iTunes, and,
(B) never tell a soul about Paul.
Steve is holding out for $1.25 and negotiations continue, as we speak.
He’s with Waldo!
@ John:
All the best John. Glad you’ve had a great life, and I hope you have as much fun as you possibly can in the time you have left.
I too can’t believe nobody commented on your post.
Would it really be a bad thing? I mean seriously people. I think Steve is a great guy and all but he won’t be around forever.
Steve had greatly successful cancer surgery a few years ago that even under the best conditions only have him at max 5-10 years life expectancy after said surgery.
Perhaps Steve even decided then that he’d spend the next five years building Apple back-up and getting the fervor going and then phase himself out and spend his, estimated, last five enjoying life and being with his family. Really, even if he never had cancer he’d never be around forever. Companies, especially ones like Apple with a devoted followings, stand to be around munch longer than their CEO’s and founders.
It is in the consumers AND Apple’s best interest to stabilize themselves around a more flexible management structure than just one built around one person; no matter how great or charismatic.
That doesn’t mean that Apple can’t hire and keep good talent or a management team that focuses on good design, engineering, and reliability.
Apple actually has the luxury of having hired more than just Steve Jobs. Jonathon Ive is a slam dunk designer and has hired a team with an equal talent base. Phil seems to be an excellent marketing man and Tim Cook (Perhaps the most ‘silent’ member of the ‘top team’; and who has a degree from Auburn University, my own Alma mater…..War Eagle!) seems to be an excellent every-day management man. And I’m sure the rest are equally well qualified.
Point is a Apple may have actually been planning this stuff ages ago, and if it hasn’t, than they should have been.
Now timing…that’s another thing. Apple is on the cusp of really starting to give a wide range of people options other than Windows and really push the age of computers into another period of golden innovation.
Apple really could help the whole industry offer the promise of Operating natural cross-platform applications through the web and locally through interpretable POSIX complaint OS’s (OSX, Unix, and Linux). An age where personally owned information is king and proprietary file formats and programs are a thing of the past. Where user interfaces focus on your readily available fingers, eyes, ears, and voice not clunky mice and keyboards.
I really think Apple is the right company to pull these things off. They are poised at just the right size (not to big, but not so small they have no sway), they have the talent, they seem to (at times) have the vision, and they already even have some of the technology. They just need NOT alienate consumers before they can accomplish it. Pulling out of trade shows while simultaneously positioning a management team change over does not inspire confidence or loyalty.