Steve Jobs' health has been an important topic of rumours ever since he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in mid-2004. He was treated successfully, and recovered from his ordeal. Ever since then, rumours of possible health problems popped up regularly, which were only ignited further by Apple's recent announcement to drop out of MacWorld San Fransisco, with Steve Jobs not delivering the famous keynote speech coming January. Gizomodo threw a whole lot of oil on the fire today by publishing information which they claim comes from a source which has always been 100% accurate.
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Member since:2007-01-13
Exactly. Apple without Jobs was a complete and utter failure - a lot like the Beatles without John Lennon. Apple may be doing well now but it came VERY close to collapse under Gil Amelio a mere decade ago.
The claim that Jobs was "cured' is nonsense. Cure is not a term used in cancer treatment. They talk about remissions or permanent remission. All pancreatic cancers have a high 5-year mortality rate.
Member since:2006-01-01
Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors, which are generally not fatal, even if they metastasize.
However, active tumors tend to produce pretty significant amounts of hormones which plays havoc with the body causing significant side effects.
So it is possible that Steve Jobs is feeling very poorly, despite the fact that he may, in fact, be in generally good health.
Member since:2008-04-10
The thing about cancer is, when you beat it, it makes a strategic retreat to regroup (unlike this season's cold, when you beat it, it's usually gone.)
Regardless of how the Jobs-less apple fared in the past, is there anyone in Apple now who could fill his shoes? Surely he would have been grooming someone to take his place, unless he subscribes to my style of thinking: "I'm surrounded by incompetent lack-wits and sycophants! Nobody can do this but ME!" I honestly think that unless he has a clear successor (probably someone young and idealistic, not an old business man), the Jobs-less Apple will plough into the ground, market-share first. Let's just hope the disillusioned masses who'll stop using Macs go to Linux instead of Windows - If Microsoft suddenly got ALL of Apple's user base, it would be a catastrophe for users in terms of the same vendor-lockin we've seen for years so far. Things could only get worse.
Member since:2005-09-10
As a counterpoint, Apple's industrial designer Jonathan Ive has created all of the products and design aesthetics that Apple is famous for.
http://www.designmuseum.org/design/jonathan-ive
And according to apple's website, their board of directors consists of the CEOs of Google, Avon, Genentec, J Crew, and Intuit, and Al Gore.
No product is created by one person. I find it tough to believe that Jobs is the only person at Apple with vision and leadership sufficient to head the excellent team they have assembled.
Member since:
2005-07-06
I really hate vultures circling with avengeance and I also hate PR stunts that try and cover up something that should be no cause for embarrassment to announce, so I do hope all of this is completely false. The latter is something I find very distatesteful and I like to keep downwind when I smell around Apple, because they do quite a bit of it. They're one of the most paranoid companies around, which is a big reason why they don't make as much money as they should. It's one of the things Steve has got wrong and has contributed to.
Say what you like though, but something is wrong. Pancreatic tumours don't have a great survival rate whatever they are and Jobs's physical appearance has definitely declined. Yes, some people say that MacWorld might be deliclining but it doesn't explain why their CEO would not give the final rousing keynote to underline what they've achieved, and MacWorld has definitely produced buzz over the years. In these YouTube times it should still be relevant.
However, the reason why they are paranoid about this is because they know Steve Jobs is effectively Apple. Every other individual or team of people who have tried to guide the company over the years have only succeeded in turning them into a rudderless software company who have turned their hardware business into a total loss with no clue how to turn it around. Only Jobs was capable of coming in and saying "We're doing this, this and this and we need to do this" - exactly as he did in the MacWorld of 1997. They did a deal with Microsoft, but they hardly needed to rely on it to survive.
Only Jobs could look at portable music players and make a huge market out of it where others had failed miserably (and still do), and only Jobs could make a success out of producing a mobile phone that didn't look like another boring, corporate Crackberry no one wanted. Other CEOs would have been spineless and clueless and would have tried to 'partner' with other hardware companies or with Microsoft to put Windows Mobile on it. That's really what is at stake here because Steve is that important. The public and media 'believes' it and will go naturally go overboard on it, and Apple knows it because it's the reality.