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NY Times’ Nocera: Steve Jobs can no longer be trusted

Apple Store“Last week, when Steve Jobs announced that his recent weight loss was due to ‘a hormone imbalance,’ I got calls from reporters and others (which, I must admit, I ducked) asking me if that was the medical problem he had confessed to when he and I had had our infamous phone call last summer — the one where he called me a slime bucket and denied that he had a recurrence of cancer. The answer is no, it wasn’t,” Joe Nocera writes for The New York Times. “It was something else — which of course I still can’t disclose because the conversation was off the record.”

“I said at the time that I knew I was being spun by Mr. Jobs. But I didn’t think I was being lied to. Now, I’m not sure what to think. It is certainly possible that he had the condition he described to me last summer. It is also possible that he did, in fact, have “a hormone imbalance,” as he announced last week, as rumors swirled again about his health. And it is even possible that a few days later he discovered that his problems were ‘more complex’ — whatever that means — and that he only just realized that he needs to take a medical leave. It is possible, in other words, that he and Apple are telling the truth,” Nocera writes.

“Possible — but unlikely. Apple’s stock was hammered in after-hours trading on Thursday because, to be blunt, investors simply don’t believe Mr. Jobs. Charlie Wolf, the Apple analyst at Needham & Company, wrote a note to clients, describing Mr. Jobs’ e-mail to employees, in which he said he was taking a temporary medical leave, as ‘a can of worms.’ He added: ‘The fact that Mr. Jobs did not resign nor did the board call for his resignation suggests that he may well be telling the truth.’ The clear implication of that sentence is that most people (including, perhaps, Mr. Wolf himself) think Mr. Jobs is not telling the truth,” Nocera writes.

Nocera writes, “The most indispensable chief executive in the United States, beloved by customers and investors for his magnificent turnaround of the company he founded — and for the amazing gadgets his company produces — can no longer be trusted on the subject of whether he is healthy enough to continue running the company. “

Full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: If Steve Jobs can no longer be trusted, he ought to write for The New York Times.

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