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Steve Jobs Takes Leave of Absence From Apple
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Network World: "A number of sites are reporting that Apple's CEO Steve Jobs is taking a leave of absence till June at least. Speculation over Jobs' possibly failing health has run rampant in the past few weeks. Prior to the recent MacWorld show, Jobs said he had a hormone deficiency that had caused him to dramatically lose weight. In a memo today Jobs told workers his health issues are more complex than he thought." Reader Bastian227 adds a link to this letter from Steve Jobs on Apple's website, which also says that Tim Cook will be responsible for daily operations, though Jobs will remain involved with major strategic decisions.
Love 'em or hate 'em, he's changed a lot in the tech sector. His presence will be missed.
æeee!
the market says "sell sell sell!"
Makes me glad I'm long Apple put options. Ahh, schadenfreude.
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
Yeah, well adversity does help things along - reading the millionaire next door, people who had to work for their success did much better than those who didn't. Of course, Bill Gates and Paul Allen went to the Lakeside School, so there you go.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
On a different note, this is a sad day for those owning AAPL shares - expect them to plunge even further than they have over the past year.
Well, if you didn't see this coming a mile off, you probably shouldn't be in the market at all.
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
Even with the prospect of Jobs having of an extended absence from the day-to-day at Apple I think we will see the company continue to do fine, or at least continue on their existing business path.
While leadership is a key element of business success, so is having a well balanced team of professionals driving your development/innovation teams.
I have to image Apple has this balance in their organization.
He still built up a ton of excitement around all of the Apple products. MP3 players were drab and virtually useless before the iPod - a few years later everyone had one.
Apple products have influenced design across the hardware and software landscape (for the better IMHO).
Without the iPhone, there just wouldn't be any exciting phones out right now. It changed the playing field and helped bring us the G1 and Palm Pre.
æeee!
I wish him well. As someone who had to retire at age 33 to fight cancer, I know how discouraging it is to have your body spoil what your brain wants to do. But I also found that giving up the full-time job really did improve my health and led to greater productivity in my remaining activities.
Seems like a good idea for Steve to take some time. It gives him a chance to see how well Cook handles the shop when no major new products are shipping and seems to indicate that he is at least semi-comfortable that he's got the right management to oversee day-to-day operations, and gives them a chance to fine-tune anything should he want to retire or passes away pre-maturely. As die-hard as he is, I can't imagine him doing the keynotes if he is too frail (physically) to "wow" the crowd.
Since the major aesthetic overhall in the iMac, MBP and MB lines in the past year or two, and OS X 10.6 shaping up to be a smaller update (aesthetically and technically) to 10.5 than the 10.4->10.5 jump was; it doesn't appear that there is going to be much "new business" from now to then. Maybe some hardware line updates to faster chips, and some 10.5.x updates; but nothing major. I'd imagine 10.6 won't even ship until summer; just in time for the WWDC in June.
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
I'll bet there will be no returning for Jobs. Sad news but a lesson to all. A company should never be about "A" person. None of us are eternal.
Jobs has had more than a decade with which to root out the nonperformers at Apple and replace them with performers. Performers can carry on in the boss' absence. Nonperformers cannot.
If over all that time he did nothing to replace the people who couldn't run Apple with people who could, he's not as good a CEO as we all thought.
Read my blog.
No.
If the company is sound, this will be a short term drop follwed by a recovery. If you own shares, and think AAPL is sound without Jobs, then selling makes no sense. Instead, you should be buying the discounted shares in anticipation of a recovery, which is what strong companies do.
On the other hand, if you think AAPL is not strong without Jobs, then WTF were you doing buying AAPL in the first place?
In short, you are making the same mistake all amateurs make.
And no, I'm not a pro, but this point has been emphasized enough, and proven accurate enough, that I take it as correct.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
Even healthy living can kill you I guess.
Eat more bacon, you won't live long. but at least you can have some bacon.
I don't think so.
Don't count Apple out just because Jobs is gone. He isn't the ONLY person working at Apple and he certainly isn't the once and future designer.
Sure they might not do as well but they still have Ipods, Itunes, Imacs and a lot of Fanboys and Girls.
And say what you will Apple does make some good, if expensive hardware and software.
Jobs may be more than just a figurehead but he is hardly all the company has going for it.
What is gained too lightly is esteemed too little. its an old saw but very true.
Or the corollary - "What is gained at great expense is valued too highly."
Which is the reason frats haze pledges.
On a different note, this is a sad day for those owning AAPL shares - expect them to plunge even further than they have over the past year.
Ohh and I don't know it might also be a sad day for his family. Let's get some perspective here. He has serious health issues and people seem to care more about the stock prices.
I don't suppose his frequent use of off-list pharmaceuticals and other fun-seeking drugs during his youth would have had anything to do with his poor health. While 60 isn't old, it seems like a lot of people his age who "lived too hard" are now suffering the consequences through odd early/uneven aging, hormonal issues, cancer, auto-immune diseases, and other odd things we've not seen before.
Always pisses me off when people use the argument of "'blah' diseases that we've never seen before" - all we've done is improved diagnostics so we can tell "what" is killing you, and in some cases, "why" you got it.
"MP3 players were drab and virtually useless before the iPod - a few years later everyone had one."
I've never understood why people make comments like this. The iPod was a step backwards in terms of features and such, I'm not even convinced iTunes is any easier to use than the icon I could just drag and drop my MP3s into in Windows either. The iPod was actually quite a late arrival in the MP3 market, many forget that MP3s were already becoming somewhat mainstream (we already had support in some car sound systems for example). It's certainly fair to credit the iPod as the product that took the mainstream, but not necessarily the product that acted as a catalyst for mainstream- the fact you could store thousands of tracks in the space of half a portable CD player and not need to carry media around was already a good enough catalyst. People would've bought players regardless, but it was the style and prestige factor of the iPod that got it most of those sales, as well of course as it being in the right place at the right time- arriving just as the MP3 market was already taking off.
I don't disagree that Jobs and his marketing team were excellent at creating hype and shifting units, but I'm still not convinced it's because the products are necessarily ground breaking, or even that high quality (battery problems, easily scratched screens etc.?).
Apple under Steve has been good at what designer clothes companies are good at, building a brand that people want because they feel it gives them that extra bit of prestige. People will take Armani jeans over some bog standard jeans if they have the opportunity, the bog standard ones may even wear better and be more durable, but for many, the name matters most.
I agree with you more on the iPhone though, certainly it seems to have pushed other companies into gear in some respects, but I think it's worked both ways in a way. Apple came along with a phone with not too many features but with a really nice looking UI and a much more tightly integrated experience. This has pushed other companies to follow, but on the same note, Apple has been pushed to follow the likes of Nokia with 3G, GPS and so on also when it became clear the iPhone was losing customers because of lack of said features so it has been a two way street. The underlying point though is that yes, without Apple, existing phone manufacturers wouldn't have had that much needed push.