According to various rumours, Steve Jobs would make a surprise appearance during last week’s keynote address at the WWDC, marking the end of his sick leave. While that rumour turned out to be false, Apple has now confirmed that Jobs will return to Apple at the end of June.
An Apple spokesman confirmed the news to Times Online. “We look forward to Steve returning to Apple at the end of June,” the spokesman said. Steve Jobs has been on a sick leave for about six months due to a hormone imbalance, because of which he could not fulfil his duties as CEO of Apple. Tim Cook took over as interim CEO for the time being.
With Steve Jobs on sick leave, the company more or less had the opportunity to show the world how apple would function without Jobs around. The charismatic CEO has played a crucial role in turning the company around from near-bankruptcy in the late ’90s, and many wondered if apple wasn’t too centred around Jobs to be able to function without him.
The past six months indicate that Apple can function without Jobs, but at the same time, we’re just talking six months here, and six months during which, according to Apple, Jobs was still involved in all major decisions. Still, our favourite punching bags the analysts think Apple will perform just fine without Jobs at the helm. “I would not for a moment think that the innovation and drive that Apple has would be lost without him,” said Carolina Milanesi, research director for mobile devices for Gartner.
We at OSNews are happy Jobs is in good health again, and that he’ll be able to return to duty later this month. I prefer keynotes delivered with his smugness instead of Schiller’s.
That’s a joke.
The smugness is strong with that one.
( I think Apples smug cloud rivals that of all the Prius drivers and George Clooneys.)
JK
Hey! My wife drives a prius! But I counteract that with my F-150.
It’s funny how Steve’s Microsoft bashing would make me smile, but I find Schiller and crew a bit irritating when they try it.
ppl like him or don’t, but he’s been doing a lot of great things and its good to know hes in good health again
As much as I care about Steve Jobs as a fellow human being and hope that he has recovered – I do think that there is an air of hyperbole regarding Steve Jobs and the ‘mystic’ on what he actually does in the larger business process. People tend to forget that there are thousands of Apple employee’s who make decisions, design products, and look at the market. There are whole processes setup – and it is the processes which Steve Jobs has setup and it would take a fool to undo what has been setup.
I’ve had a look through at what Steve did when he first arrived back to Apple – and what he did was hardly revolutionary. He stream lined the product lines, simplified the product portfolio, refocused the R&D on real products and not pie in the sky ideas, and stream lined the building of products. Couple that with getting good designers to let their creative juices flowing – and you have the right ingredients for success.
Edited 2009-06-15 14:35 UTC
The talent isn’t lost on Steve. In fact, it’s his expectations of his Managing staff to find talent that targets his vision which helps make Apple continue to be a leader instead of a follower in the industry.
It’s just amazing that it’s “revolutionary” but look at how many compaines fail to do just that??
It sure sounds easy enough, but the problem is that you need somebody like a Steve Jobs to cut thru the red tape, and just make it so.
Companies fail to do it because they use the same incestuous circle of management who are regurgitated around and around and around each business. This circle of management rarely gets new new blood injected – so you have the same mediocre people being voted in, and each taking care of each other rather than promoting those whom would deliver the best value for the shareholders. Welcome to the ‘old boys network’ – where if you’re a complete failure you can still get a job on a fortune 500 company.
So many managers at these companies are so bad at times – they actually make me look good. If you’re so talentless and lacking in leadership that you make me look good then I think there are some issues far beyond just basic management skills. There is this idiotic idea that ‘anyone can be a manager – just train them’ to which I say bullcrap. There are those who merely managers of resources and then there are those who stand out from the flock because they’re more than just managers, they’re leaders.
The best example of this is Microsoft; people keep pointing to the continuous profit rises but that doesn’t prove anything – heck, Telecom New Zealand has continuous profit rises but it is a natural monopoly; you would have to deliberately go out of your way to actually make a loss. What Microsoft does and the management they employ hardly involves any talent. Steve Ballmer is about the most uninspiring person who has ever graced gods green earth and the layers of management further down are so myopic and navel glazing you’d swear that the only exposure many of them have to the IT industry is running a Windows computer – and it shows.
Back to Steve Jobs, everything he did – I would have done; the only exception is that I wouldn’t have done the Cube, the Mac mini would have been slightly different (something like a small pizza box) or the MacBook Air; I would have bought back the 12inch Pro Laptop instead. The rest are just a natural evolution of many if the original ideas. Keep Mac OS X going forward etc.
I’m also flabbergasted by the number of managers who never actually use their own products. Sun Microsystems being the prime example of clueless noddy’s running the company who have never actually used their own products! most of not having the slightest clue as to delivering a coherent product line up that hooks into each other to deliver a solution to a customer that is easily manageable and scalable. Most of them never actually getting their own personal laptop or desktop and running OpenSolaris on it to see the limitations and where money needs to invested – heck, there is no hands on management willing to say, “this is my vision for OpenSolaris”. Every time I hear about the development process inside Sun it sounds like people running around bumping into each other in a vain hope of maybe getting from one end of the building to another.
Oh well, I guess this is a more of a vent than an appeal to getting things fixed because I know that once Sun is bought out, like so many companies, the mediocre will continue; just as the the manager from the New Zealand-Australia got in contact with me via my email address but never replied to the list of issues I had; I don’t see anything improving now. Sun has their own reality distortion field and I don’t see anyone turning it off anytime soon.
I couldn’t agree anymore. If I were more alert I’d write something more… cohesive, but you’ve done a stellar job just summing up what is wrong with … well IT anyways for the last 30+ years.
It’s just nice that SUN opened up Solaris before it’s demise… At least one SYSV got out alive.
As much as I have loved to see the opening up of Solaris, things aren’t improving. There are still things missing because there has been no consideration in actually pushing forward the development of a fully liberated Solaris – replacing the closed binaries with open source replacements. Its been over 2 years and these components still haven’t been replaced – really shows how much commitment Sun has to developing Solaris further instead of just dumping it onto the internet.
OpenSolaris has been lipstick on a pig rather than Sun actually enthusiastically picking up the ball and running with it. There is no leadership within Sun to turn OpenSolaris into an end to end product for enterprise customers. Their development tools as abysmal when compared to what the alternative platforms being offered – how can you take JavaFX as a serious contender when it supports but one video format, the development tools are abysmal and no effort is made to improve any time soon.
Lets not get started with their horrible server middleware which is a hodge-podge of spaghetti with no uniform way of managing, deploying or supporting their software; suddenly after a decade of knowing the flaws with the system they finally start this project called ‘panels’ which is riddled from top to bottom with Java making it a bloated, slow and pointless front end that yields an experience worse than death.
What Sun needs is a Steve Jobs – but you try getting a job at Sun Microsystems; its next to impossible; clueless HR department riddled people who would rather reneg their responsibility when it comes to hiring so they outsource it to another clueless layer of recruiters who never actually get back to those who submit their CV for a position. So things aren’t going to improve.
As Apple keeps powering head with Steve Jobs at the help with the grooming of his successor to replace him in the future – Sun keeps going further down the toilet as they keep embracing the cauldron of mediocrity that exists within Sun.
Edited 2009-06-16 07:48 UTC
They thought the new Virtual would be ready by WWDC, but ran into some last minute bugs ugs ugs ugs ugs (Thwonk!) bugs.
But it should be ready for sure by Jul 1.
Edited 2009-06-15 16:37 UTC
Jobs Headroom?
It’s good to know Jobs is feeling better.
I’m not an Apple fanboy but I am very impressed with Jobs’s product vision. He turned Apple around after several other high powered CEO’s could not. He has orchestrated several impressive product lines, where other better equipped companies did not. He revolutionized cell phone use when others did not. I do hope he lives long enough to complete the video viewing revolution.
“We look forward to Steve returning to Apple at the end of June.â€
That’s the same nearly-exact phrase they’ve been giving reporters since January!
http://apple20.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/06/13/steve-jobs-health-s…
Confirmation (particularly with Apple’s legendary secrecy) will be when Steve Jobs actually shows up to work and surprises everyone.
If only Jobs would return to the rest of the economy too
This is good news for Apple and Apple consumers (not the fruit) that Jobs is back. No one person is ever responsible for success or failure of a company, the CEO’s job is to make sure that he/she chooses the best team of people for the job. Steve has been a success in bringing about the best with his team of people, CEO do not have to code or design, they need leadership and vision Steve Jobs has plenty of those. I have not seen many CEOs in the computer world who are so passionate about the products they are selling, I think that’s the reason why Steve chooses to do the demos himself. Good luck Steve and Welcome back.
Maybe he changed his mind after the rumors, since it wouldn’t be much of a surprise appearance anymore.
Edited 2009-06-16 19:14 UTC