Our Apple-loving pals over at CNBC have confirmed that Steve Jobs, who was away from work due to health complications, is now back working at the Cupertino company. There's been a few employees who have seen Jobs around the campus, and although there's yet to be an official announcement by Apple, this is the next best thing.Jobs has been facing health complications recently, and it was even reported that he had had a liver transplant; he has been sick for a while due to pancreatic cancer, and he stepped down from his position at Apple earlier this year (letting Tim Cook take the reigns), but he did announce that he'd be back at the end of June. This fact seems to fit in nicely with the reports of him returning. There's the question though... is he really back? Perhaps he could just be there for the day, but we'll certainly find out soon enough when Apple employees report back tomorrow. If the liver transplant news is correct, that means it's been two months since the operation; an impressive recovery if he really is back at work in Cupertino.
People have speculated that Apple will make a new product announce to mark the return of Jobs, be it in the form of a new tablet device or something completely different... or even nothing at all. Either way, Apple fans will be happy about the news, and life shall return to how it was at Cupertino.
From a human perspective, it is of course a very good thing that he is doing a little better.
Glad to see he's back up and about, though I wish the media would leave off his personal life a bit. All the reports on how his illness was progressing were a bit ... rude, heh.
Then he proceeded to turn the company around. I don't think that Apple would fail without Jobs, because now they have a very large share of the market with iTunes and a very healthy market share with the iPhone. The stockholders however have not been given a real path for a CEO upgrade.
Apple is so secretive that you don't know what's going up behind the scenes, stockholders may understand why this secrecy is needed but they certainly don't like it. It makes the stock more volatile. It takes about 30 seconds from when a news breaks to when the news is reflected in the stock price for an average company. The average companies usually are less secretive so the news items are not a big surprise.
In the case of Apple everything is a big surprise, so when it hits the stockprice it usually fluctuates more than the average stock.
The reason why stockholders get worried is that Apple has not disclosed any real alternatives for the CEO position when Jobs goes the way of the Dodo. The problem is that Jobs is not only a good judge of what the next tech thing is going to be, entering the market at the right time with some new innovation that ties the customer to his products. The iPod, for example, nothing new, just another lossy compressed music player but with an on-line store that for the first time made it affordable not to pirate music and brought compressed music to the masses without the need to understannd anything about codecs.
Add this to his excelent stage appearance and salesmanship. That dude makes everyone believe that Apple is the best thing since sliced bread, and the press reacts to this, so does the stock price. He is such a good salesman that when he dies the press will report he INVENTED DEATH.
Even though his name appears in every patent Apple has he never goes on stage and says "I invented this" he says "Apple invented this". When he goes on-stage he makes it look like a Apple and Jobs are the same thing. You don't get this from Disney, in which he is the largest single shareholder of the company (7% last I heard, Michael Eisner goes next and Roy Disney follows).
This identification of Jobs=Apple and his track record as a salesman/visioneer/CEO , that is of his own doing and the Board of Apple has let it happen is what makes the stock price so volatile to the news of Jobs health and what makes jobs so difficult to replace.
As a tech person I don't like Jobs at all, I think he is arrogant, exagerates too much on his breakthroughs and takes credit for stuff he did not do. I can't forgive him that he is still in business while Commodore Amiga is gone (Irving Gould's fault though, not Apple's).
As a stockholder, however, I love the guy, keep him there, don't let him go away.
Of course he had.....
Great news :-)
Its his health, its non of our business, its non of the shareholders business, they bought shares in Apple not in Steve Jobs being at Apple.
Apple now has a product line that is appealing to pretty much everybody, and the iPhone is another notch in their mobile device empire, if they then think of a way to connect iPods, iPhones and MacBook Airs all to services in the cloud they are onto a winner.
Apple will be fine without Steve Jobs, as they've proven within the last 6 months.
are you seriously suggesting that if Steve Ballmer had the same condition then it wouldn't be front-page news?
I imagine if you went onto a site that was solely dedicated to enthusiasts of carbonated sugary drinks, and the CEO of Coca-Cola was ill, they might discuss it.
Sorry for caring about the wellbeing of someone we've never met personally. We'll stop now.
I imagine if you went onto a site that was solely dedicated to enthusiasts of carbonated sugary drinks, and the CEO of Coca-Cola was ill, they might discuss it.
Yes im suggesting that.
If people cared they would wish him well and leave him the hell alone. All of this speculation. Its his health, its an entirely private matter, we shouldn't be discussing the why's or where's of it. Wish him well by all means, but leave it at that.
Yeah it has, thats exactly why im saying that it has nothing to do with anyone except him and his family. He is Apple's CEO but it doesn't give Apple customers or stakeholders a divine right to know of his personal life.
Wish him well as i said before, but leave him alone, instead of reporting on speculations on which procedure he might or might not have had. Im disappointed Neowin reported on a rumour, with no official confirmation. If Steve Jobs really wanted people to know, he would issue a press release.
He hasn't and probably never will. Therefore it shouldn't be commented on. Its his health, and a fundamentally private matter.
Sounds about right. Stevie's return means a shiny new product for Apple fans to buy. Talk about priorities.
I guess it's not enough that he's well enough to return to his job, no, it has to be about selling product. Another new low.
And what do you mean by Apple fans? If I buy a product from Sony or Nintendo, that doesn't make me their fans. It just means I want or need a product of theirs.
Last edited by Richardarkless on 23 Jun 2009 - 22:24
Commenting has either been disabled on this article or you are not logged in. Click here to login or register, its free!
Note: Anonymous commenting is disabled in order to keep the quality of responses to a high standard.