I'm sorry, but I can't get around it any more. Over the weekend, we had a story in the reputable Wall Street Journal that Steve Jobs had a liver transplant two months ago in a hospital in Tennessee. This story got all over the Apple media - obviously - and was later confirmed by the hospital in question. All the usual questions arose about privacy, Warren Buffet had a remark about it, and so on. Let's get all these stories out of the way in one go.
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Member since:2006-03-20
And you see no problem of not being aware of the risk of applying such a plan or the probable success rate of this ? As a shareholder ?
Member since:2009-06-24
Any shareholder that doesn't, as part of their due-diligence, discover that Jobs is or could be considered a key contributor to the success of AAPL and who also doesn't appropriately weight the risk of that information, is a poor investor and an idiot.
If Jobs got hit by a truck, I bet shareholders would wonder what the hell he was doing crossing the street.
The fact remains that the burden is on the INVESTOR to weigh the risks of buying into a company like AAPL where Jobs is a key component to it's success. Just like buying a pharma stock on speculation that they'll be awarded a patent for a cancer curing drug carries a specified amount of risk, as does this.
As such, AAPL DID announce Jobs had health problems and was going to be stepping down for some time, they DID fully disclose EVERYTHING that was required for a shareholder to make an informed decision on whether to dump their shares of AAPL or not.
Case closed, Thom and Buffett are both wrong.
I created an osnews account just to post this, so hopefully someone will read it. 
Member since:2005-07-06
And you see no problem of not being aware of the risk of applying such a plan or the probable success rate of this ? As a shareholder ?
I think twm bucket is very pragmatic about it. Apple had a CEO sitting, so whether Steve Jobs had a liver transplant or was abducted by aliens is immaterial.
I think Apple would do well to decouple the perception of Steve Jobs = Apple as soon as possible. Steve Jobs is a mortal being and having the companies health be dependent on the existence of a frail human being (we are all frail) is asking for trouble. Mr. Jobs is going to die one day. Hopefully in the distant future.
If Apple can't shake the Apple = Jobs image, the death of Jobs will kill Apple. So drop your Apple stock people, because Apple is a middle aged mortal entity, which will end with an epitaph on Mr. Jobs head stone.
Member since:2008-12-29
Something no one seems to have mentioned so far, what would have happened to apple stock if it had been announced? It would have plummeted, making shareholders stocks worth a lot lot less, so it could be argued if you don't agree that it was/is a purely private matter that not mentioning it was in the best interest of the shareholders.
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The Verge pointed me to a blog post by Leap Motion - which reveals how their Kinect-like motion control works with Windows 8. "From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you'll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that's possible with multi-touch inputs - without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we'll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X." Quite cool.PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about."This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
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Member since:
2008-10-09
I own 500 shares. Steve Jobs took a medical leave and handed over the reigns of the company. I don't see the problem since he wasn't working and if he couldn't return, Apple had a plan in place.