According to several sources close to the situation, Apple CEO Steve Jobs–who is on a health-related leave from the company–is definitely considering an appearance at its big iPad 2 event tomorrow.

But the possibility–which would be a big sensation at the San Francisco gathering and has been subject to great speculation–is also just as definitely not confirmed as yet, stressed sources.

If he did appear, sources said, Jobs would make at least a brief appearance on stage along with other top company execs in showing off Apple’s latest version of it hugely popular tablet.

The new device reportedly has a sleeker look, as well as a camera and other improvements, changes that tech’s top showman would certainly love to tout and that his legions of fans would like to see him introduce.

But what BoomTown would like to see would be more of a focus on the iPad 2 itself, rather than armchair diagnoses of Jobs’s fitness based on any appearance he might make.

That’s no small thing, given the appalling series of photos and video that have surfaced recently, which show the Silicon Valley icon from the worst possible angle and looking quite gaunt.

As I have written before, and as you can see from the photo above taken at last year’s D: All Things Digital conference interview, it is clear Jobs has suffered due to his bout with a form of pancreatic cancer.

Due to nutritional issues, his weight has suffered, one of the key reasons Jobs seems to have taken this latest leave.

That said, in recent weeks, he has made all kinds of public appearances both at Apple’s Cupertino campus and in Silicon Valley restaurants, including a high-profile dinner with President Barack Obama. Jobs sat immediately to the left of the president.

If he decides to make another outing tomorrow, it is certainly with the knowledge that everyone will be trying to figure out his health from a stage appearance.

That’s a risk for Jobs, of course, who relishes in introducing Apple products in presentations that typically garner well-deserved accolades.

Given how innovative most of those products are, what would be a welcome change in the coverage of Jobs’s personal struggles would be to show a level of respect to him by paying more attention to what bells and whistles the iPad 2 has rather than to how his jeans are fitting.

There is no question, with its latest iteration, Apple is making sure consumers realize that it is coming out with a second, flashier version, even before other manufacturers–mostly using the new Honeycomb version of Google’s Android mobile operating system–are still scrambling to get their initial competing devices to market.

That’s the truly dramatic story to watch here, rather than needlessly rubbernecking about the struggles of one man–albeit, a very significant man–to regain his health.

It’s definitely an oldie–from a 2005 speech that Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs gave at Stanford University, after recovering from his first bout with pancreatic cancer–but a truly good one.

BoomTown posted it last time there was a hubbub around what and what was not known about his poor health in 2009.

As everyone knows now, it appears that Jobs has suffered some sort of relapse, which is causing even more debate about his medical privacy.

As I wrote then:

“So let’s slow things down, shall we, and get some much-needed perspective this speech surely has (in other words, the inevitable finger-pointing and shareholder lawsuits can wait).”

Indeed, as you wil see below.

Here’s the video of the speech, as well as the full text:

The 2005 Jobs Stanford Commencement Address:

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out okay. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned Coke bottles for the 5-cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later.

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something–your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky–I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation–the Macintosh–a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30, I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down–that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the Valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me–I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, “Toy Story,” and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything–all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure–these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up, so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying, because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.

This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma–which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called “The Whole Earth Catalog,” which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960′s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: It was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of “The Whole Earth Catalog,” and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

There had indeed been rumors about Steve Jobs’s health, after he didn’t show up at the Apple iPhone launch on Verizon Wireless in New York last week, as was expected.

And then they flared again, when the event to show off News Corp.’s new Apple iPad-only newspaper, the Daily, was postponed due to issues related to its subscription system.

This pair of non-Jobs events had caused a low-grade rumble in Silicon Valley that perhaps tech’s most iconic, gifted and charismatic CEO could be sick again.

In fact, I got a dozen calls last week from people asking me if I knew if anything was wrong, which I did not.

And while the tech echo chamber usually puts two and two together and comes up with three, this time all that gossip turned out to be quite correct.

Jobs is once again ill enough to have to take time off from his leadership role, which he called a “medical leave of absence” in an email to his staff released today.

So now, once again, the intense debate will begin about exactly what is happening with Jobs’s health, how much Apple should reveal and how much it will likely not, and how that is so very awful, because the people deserve to know.

In fact, we–the media and Wall Street and Apple users–already know plenty enough, which is: Jobs has had a persistent and very serious illness he has been fighting successfully for many years now.

But his outlook, from the moment he found out about his particular form of pancreatic cancer, has never been really good.

More to the point, his ability to bounce back several times has been both heartening and more than a little miraculous.

But, remember this: Both times he has taken time off for health reasons, Jobs has come back with fierce and game-changing innovation.

The iPhone came out after his first big bout with his illness, the iPad after the second.

Today, it’s happened a third time and I suspect much of what will be written about his diagnosis will be sheer speculation and only a little bit will be accurate reporting.

I am guessing this time too that Jobs will be as tight-lipped as ever about what he’s going through, which could be a wide range of medical issues, some more serious than others.

And that, I think, should be what everyone should let him do, because the public Steve Jobs has given his large audience more than enough since he got back after the last time he was sick.

Today, he said in the email: “I love Apple so much and hope to be back as soon as I can. In the meantime, my family and I would deeply appreciate respect for our privacy.”

I, for one, think he deserves exactly that and much more.

But, if you can’t get enough of him, until he hopefully recovers, will you settle for this tremendous onstage interview he gave to Walt Mossberg and me last year at the eighth D: All Things Digital conference?

It is vintage Jobs, as you will see:

PREVIOUSLY

• Apple Shares Down Nearly 8 Percent in Frankfurt on News of Jobs’s Medical Leave
• Citing Health, Steve Jobs Steps Away From Apple, Again
• Apple Opposes Proposal on CEO Succession Planning
• Deutsche Bank Joins the Running of the Apple Bulls
• Jobs: “I’m Vertical, Back at Apple and Loving Every Day of It”
• Apple Investors Are Wusses
• When Steve Jobs Said “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish,” He Did Not Mean This Foolish
• AAPL Sauce
• Apple’s Steve Jobs: “I Have Decided to Take a Medical Leave of Absence”
• The Entire Letter: Steve Jobs Explains His Health Problem: “Hormone Imbalance”–Predicts Recovery by Spring and Will Stay On as CEO
• Ain’t Nobody’s Business If Jobs Is or Isn’t

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110117/steve-jobs-asked-for-privacy-and-he-deserves-it-this-time/feed/ 19 http://allthingsd.com/20090619/report-steve-jobs-is-recovering-from-liver-transplant-still-coming-back-to-apple/ http://allthingsd.com/20090619/report-steve-jobs-is-recovering-from-liver-transplant-still-coming-back-to-apple/#comments Sat, 20 Jun 2009 04:02:22 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=8414

The Steve Jobs health story takes yet another twist, this time a happier one: The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Apple CEO underwent a liver transplant earlier this spring and is recovering from the operation.

Jobs, who stepped away from day-to-day management of his company in January, is still expected to return to work later this month, the Journal said.

The transplant, which the Journal says Jobs received “about two months ago,” may be related to a form of pancreatic cancer that the Apple (AAPL) CEO has been living with since 2003. In 2005, Jobs declared that he was “fine,” but the state of his health, or lack thereof, has been the subject of recurring speculation for years.

That reached a fever pitch during the past 12 months, spurred on by his unusually gaunt appearance at Apple’s 2008 Worldwide Developers Conference. Apple officials originally said Jobs was suffering from a “common bug.”

In January, following Jobs’s announcement that he was receiving treatment for a “nutritional problem” stemming from a hormonal imbalance, Bloomberg reported that he was considering a liver transplant.

Jobs’s response: “Why don’t you guys leave me alone–why is this important?”

The Journal says that Jobs, who was supposed to come back to work full-time by the end of this month, may ease into the role and that COO Tim Cook, who has been running the company day to day in his absence, may get more responsibility.

But the paper also says Jobs has been back to the company’s Cupertino, Calif., headquarters:

“During his leave, Mr. Jobs has remained involved in key aspects of the company and reviewed products and product plans from home. He has also been seen at Apple’s headquarters, according to people who have seen him there.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090619/report-steve-jobs-is-recovering-from-liver-transplant-still-coming-back-to-apple/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090121/maybe-the-feds-can-diagnose-what-ails-apple-and-steve-jobs-and-whether-it-matters-or-not/ http://allthingsd.com/20090121/maybe-the-feds-can-diagnose-what-ails-apple-and-steve-jobs-and-whether-it-matters-or-not/#comments Wed, 21 Jan 2009 10:36:27 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=8764

Early this morning, Bloomberg reported that regulators are looking into Apple’s disclosures about the health–or lack thereof–of its iconic CEO Steve Jobs.

According to the story, the Securities and Exchange Commission is conducting a review of Apple (AAPL) “to ensure investors weren’t misled, a person familiar with the matter said. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s review doesn’t mean investigators have seen evidence of wrongdoing, the person said, declining to be identified because the inquiry isn’t public.”

And while BoomTown has railed against the creepy obsession the media have had with Jobs’s health and the publishing of rumors and innuendos about it as fact without a whole lot of reporting, I hope it is true.

It is also entirely appropriate that the government agency charged with keeping an eye on public companies does investigate–at the very least, to get the story right.

Because if the press and blogosphere and Apple aren’t going to do it, I vote for the one with subpoena power to sort it all out and make some levelheaded determinations about the rules of the road.

(And, frankly, it is good to see the SEC more vigorous after its stunningly moribund record of late–Hello, Bernie Madoff!)

Apple’s COO and acting CEO Tim Cook, by the way, will likely be questioned about the SEC look-see, Steve Jobs’s health and more at its first-quarter conference call at 2 p.m. PST today.

Of course, the health of its business is the most important thing–sales of iPods and iPhones, new products and what Apple will do with its $25 billion cash horde.

But the focus will surely be on Jobs and now, this government inquiry.

What will be most interesting is exactly how much companies do have to reveal about the health of their leadership and whether the relative fame and brand-critical nature of that exec matters more.

For example, do leaders like Jobs or, say, Martha Stewart, have more need to discuss their health than some lesser known CEO who might have a similar problem?

And since it has been well known that Jobs suffered from a bout with pancreatic cancer and recovered, does he have to disclose it all, given that even his curable version of the illness has complications that are well documented?

And, most of all, how specific do Apple and Jobs have to be, and how frequently do they have to update, especially since a diagnosis is always a moving target?

More to the point, given that the bordering-on-crazed attention given to Jobs–who engenders so much passionate emotion–has also been off-putting and, worse, all over the map in terms of accurate information, what clarity can regulators provide?

Apple has been under increasing pressure, since Jobs revealed he had a “hormonal imbalance,” soon after which he announced that he was taking a five-month medical leave from his duties because his health problems were “more complex.”

I am less strident than others on this turn of events since having accurate health information about yourself is not quite the same as, say, details of a merger and who knew what when.

Plus it has been clear for a long time that all has not been well with Jobs, something any investor had to be aware of.

I have no inside information; nor have I talked to anyone who has treated him, but anyone who has not been on Mars for the past year could see that Jobs was not looking great, especially from his woefully haggard appearance.

As I have written:

Apple investors who have not figured Jobs’s precarious health–after a round with any kind of cancer–into their investment strategies about Apple going forward need some serious reality medication themselves.

Guess what? Jobs has been really sick and it means he is going to have a harder time with any kind of infection or complication for the rest of his life, and he will likely be more delicate than someone who has not had cancer.”

Who knows if the government will find out more, but it would be good if some of the smoke could be cleared away to see if there is some actual fire or not.

And if not, Jobs can get the peace he is seeking to try to recover his health.

As he said to Bloomberg last week: “Why don’t you guys leave me alone–why is this important?”

It would be nice to be get that answer and then, hopefully, let Jobs get on with getting well.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090121/maybe-the-feds-can-diagnose-what-ails-apple-and-steve-jobs-and-whether-it-matters-or-not/feed/ 5 http://allthingsd.com/20090106/to-err-is-human-to-live-divine-how-exactly-no-one-got-it-right-about-steve-jobs-health/ http://allthingsd.com/20090106/to-err-is-human-to-live-divine-how-exactly-no-one-got-it-right-about-steve-jobs-health/#comments Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:00:17 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=8158 [UPDATED]

You knew it was coming, of course.

Since the blogosphere couldn’t actually kill him off–deeply lazy and incredibly wrong in insinuating that Apple CEO Steve Jobs was dying imminently–it turned around yesterday and declared him a liar for not saying he had a “hormonal imbalance” sooner.

Of course, Apple (AAPL) has also played along in this bizarre game, along with its defenders, who have all tried to pretend nothing is wrong with a man who clearly looks like he has had the stuffing knocked out of him because of his long-running health issues.

Still, the worst offender, of course, was the original story in Gizmodo by Jesus Diaz last week about Jobs’s keynote pullout from Macworld, using a single source for the report that Jobs was doomed.

In it, Diaz went well over the top by using this one source as confirmation that Jobs was “declining rapidly” and “it may be even worse than we imagined” and, quoting the source directly, “Apple is choosing to remove the hype factor strategically vs. letting the hype destroy Apple when the inevitable news comes later this spring.”

That sounds pretty bad to me. Inevitable, of course, always means taxes or death and dying. As in pancreatic cancer returning. As in start cuing the pallbearers. Get Marcus Welby, M.D., stat!

As it turned out, it was also a bit of a premature diagnosis by someone not a doctor but playing one on the Web, as Jobs countered the rumors with his own news yesterday in a terse letter that ended with the back of his hand to crepe-hangers like Diaz and his specious source:

“So now I’ve said more than I wanted to say, and all that I am going to say, about this.”

So it’s done, right?

Sadly, no, it is not.

Not satisfied to be utterly wrong about relaying on a rotten source and posting it with a screaming headline and declaring someone on death’s door and then finding that perhaps he had a breath or two still in him–remind me never to tell Nick Denton I am feeling nauseous or I will be on my way to the morgue pronto–Gizmodo tried to twist its original story into a shape even the the malleable corpse in “Weekend at Bernies” could not get into, and got it wrong a second time yesterday.

Under the new title, “Steve Jobs Skips Macworld Because of His Health,” the new post started: “Looks like our source was partly right: Jobs’ condition was the a reason for his Macworld no-show.”

Except Jobs did not ever say that in his letter, except to note: “A few weeks ago, I decided that getting to the root cause of this and reversing it needed to become my #1 priority.”

Does the mean he quit Macworld because of that alone?

I have no idea and neither does Gizmodo, which seems to still have done no actual reporting on this issue it makes such a big deal of. Instead, the post whips up implied guilt without a shred of real reporting.

It could be true, it could be false. But Diaz does not help us, except to just ask us to take his say-so. It’s profoundly simplistic and reeks of an agenda.

More importantly, here’s the problem with portraying the Macworld withdrawal as so cut and dried: At all corporations I have ever covered, big decisions are nearly always a complex mix of emotion and business and chaos.

To wit: It is well known Apple hates Macworld, and having to introduce a fabulous new product at a weird time too.

My guess–and that is all it is–as to what seems plausible: Apple had no wow products to show. Execs have wanted out for a while. Jobs felt lousy and wanted to try to get better. A confluence of events seems more likely than one big Apple plot.

But it did not stop Gizmodo from declaring it so, by egregiously reading into Jobs’s letter, as if it were tea leaves and Diaz was that wacky divination professor from “Harry Potter.”

As Hermione Granger said of her: Rubbish.

Then, worse, Diaz goes for the full pretzel, noting about the Jobs letter:

“What does this mean? First and foremost, that his health is not declining rapidly now, as our source affirmed. Thank god for that. Like I said in the original article, I hoped our source was wrong about this point, and they were. The source’s information was probably from earlier in the year.”

What? Earlier this year? Probably? This is a whole new kind of backpedaling.

Actually, when you boil it down to the really important issue, it was posting the information about Jobs being on his deathbed that was wrong, and no amount of fobbing off blame on the source can fix that.

All this could have been solved if Apple were more forthcoming, of course, but this is akin to wishing for a miracle cure.

Apple should be, obviously, although the company is also well-known for its secretive behavior, which continues to surprise people covering it, despite it being business as usual for almost its entire history.

And, as the Gizmodo follow piece does correctly point out, the Jobs-Is-Fine-and-Dandy reporting done by CNBC’s Jim Goldman (and clearly fed by Apple) also went too far in the other direction and oddly ignored the obvious signs of some kind of health issue.

And Goldman’s own claim later that he was sort-of right was just as silly. Neither he or Diaz seems to be.

Jobs is not well as Goldman claimed, but neither is he dying as Diaz said (Sorry, Jesus, I mean your source said, although you talked to that source, used the info, typed it in and let it fly.)

Now, as the professional mourners disperse, it remains to be seen how much longer this will go on. My guess is for a while, since the obsession with Jobs’s health seems infinite in its creepiness.

(I know the drill, it’s only mentioned constantly because it is all about Jobs’s value to the stock, and that is the reason for the intense attention still, even though even Martians have gotten the message about his troubled pancreas. Right.)

But here is one thing I do know for sure: In a letter he was forced to write, Jobs seem to have declared yesterday firmly that he still has a life.

Now, everyone else should get a life too and move on.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090106/to-err-is-human-to-live-divine-how-exactly-no-one-got-it-right-about-steve-jobs-health/feed/ 6 http://allthingsd.com/20080731/apple-ceos-silence-says-more-than-his-pr-team/ http://allthingsd.com/20080731/apple-ceos-silence-says-more-than-his-pr-team/#comments Thu, 31 Jul 2008 09:17:07 +0000 Therese Poletti http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=2197 Phew. Apple Inc.’s iconic Chief Executive Steve Jobs does not have a recurrence of the pancreatic cancer he successfully battled four years ago.

At least that is what investors learned by reading the New York Times, in an odd culmination of events that started last week, after Apple (AAPL) reported its second-quarter earnings and an analyst gently asked about Jobs’s health on the conference call.

Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer’s reply that Jobs “has no plans to leave Apple” and that his “health is a private matter” did nothing to assuage investors’ fears that the legendary CEO could be ill again, based on his gaunt appearance at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June and renewed media speculation last week.

Read the rest of this post

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