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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!
He had to lose weight and do hormone therapy before all of the bionic implants could go in...
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.
I bought AAPL at $50 a few years ago, it's the only individual stock besides AMD (which I got burned on in the late 1990s) I have ever purchased. For a while there AAPL was touching $200 and my wife and I said that our stock in AAPL is going to pay for our daughter's college education someday.
With the way that AAPL has been going lately, I think she's going to have to go to a community college :/
I expect another record earnings report for Q1, so I'm grabbing as many February $95 calls as I can afford.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Would it be safe to say that there is a Jobs opening at Apple?
Or would that be Steve closing?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
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"
This is all just part of the build-up for what will be the most astounding corporate marketing stunt of all time: the death and resurrection of Steve Jobs.
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.
If he was going for six months of chemo, he wouldn't be talking about returning in six months. More like a year. I think he's taking the leave between now and the next major event, which would be WWDC.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
That's usually when WWDC happens. I think he's planning on doing that keynote.
-jcr
I don't think so. WWDC was June 9-13 last year, and Jobs' announcement specifically says "until the end of June." There will be tons of cool stuff to show off at WWDC this year, and it doesn't make sense to bet on Jobs' health improving enough to be able to do the keynote, especially if he won't be involved with operations beforehand.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
... Apple now has the thinnest, lightest CEO on the market.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
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!
"Jobs said he had a hormone deficiency that had caused him to dramatically lose weight..."
In related news...
Shareholders show that a Common Sense Deficiency(CSD) causes them to dramatically lose faith in Apple whenever the mere thought of their beloved Steve leaving in any way, shape, or form is mentioned...
And, yeah, 'teh iPhone'. Millions of emo Starbucks drinking retards posting their unboxing vids on youtube and looking for every single possible way they can somehow work their phone into their conversations to try to make it clear just how 'special' they are.
Fuck. This is totally why I hide my iPhone from view when I'm on the bus or in public in general. It was the best, cheapest option (seriously) for me to get an effective browsing/email client on the road (BBs are crazily expensive and the iPhone 3G was having a launch sale) but I'm deeply embarassed to be seen with it.
It's a great device. It does what I need it to do. I'm happy I own it. I just wish nobody else knew that I own it.
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.
He was already missed before even leaving, as recent speculation testifies.
Math is beautiful... e^(pi*i)+1=0
Inverse snob.
Oblig.:
The Dead Collector: Bring out yer dead.
[a man puts a body on the cart]
Large Man with Dead Body: Here's one.
The Dead Collector: That'll be ninepence.
Steve Jobs: I'm not dead.
The Dead Collector: What?
Large Man with Dead Body: Nothing. There's your ninepence.
Steve Jobs: I'm not dead.
The Dead Collector: 'Ere, he says he's not dead.
Large Man with Dead Body: Yes he is.
Steve Jobs: I'm not.
The Dead Collector: He isn't.
Large Man with Dead Body: Well, he will be soon, he's very ill.
Steve Jobs: I'm getting better.
Large Man with Dead Body: No you're not, you'll be stone dead in a moment.
The Dead Collector: Well, I can't take him like that. It's against regulations.
Steve Jobs: I don't want to go on the cart.
Large Man with Dead Body: Oh, don't be such a baby.
The Dead Collector: I can't take him.
Steve Jobs: I feel fine.
Large Man with Dead Body: Oh, do me a favor.
The Dead Collector: I can't.
Large Man with Dead Body: Well, can you hang around for a couple of minutes? He won't be long.
The Dead Collector: I promised I'd be at the Robinsons'. They've lost nine today.
Large Man with Dead Body: Well, when's your next round?
The Dead Collector: Thursday.
Steve Jobs: I think I'll go for a walk.
Large Man with Dead Body: You're not fooling anyone, you know. Isn't there anything you could do?
Steve Jobs: I feel happy. I feel happy.
[the Dead Collector glances up and down the street furtively, then silences Jobs with his a whack of his club]
Large Man with Dead Body: Ah, thank you very much. ...
The Dead Collector: Not at all. See you on Thursday.
Large Man with Dead Body: Right.
Too soon?
Learn to discriminate your pancreatic cancers. Adenocarcinoma has a 5% survival rate. Steve had a islet cell neuroendocrine tumor, which has a 50 to 75% 5 year survival.
do you seriously think anything has fundamentally changed in Apple's business?
Stock price doesn't have anything to do with the actual fundamentals of a company, only how those fundamentals are perceived. Like it or not, Job's absence may have an effect on stock price, even if the company is run exactly the same as it would have, were he still at the helm. Perception is reality; at least in the market.
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
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 should stop drinking at work.
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
And I'll BUY BUY BUY tomorrow... do you seriously think anything has fundamentally changed in Apple's business? It still remains to be seen.
Well, yeah, something fundamental has changed. Steve Jobs won't be there. Look at Apple's history. That makes all the difference in the world.
When the guy does die... whenever that is... it's going to be earth shattering in the tech sector, and you'll never see anything like it in this business again. Jobs is the Elvis of the computing business. When he goes, you'll see people weeping on TV. Silly or not, that's the way it will be. And the endless speculation for months (and years) will be "Can Apple survive without Steve Jobs?".
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Not that I recall - the major theme that I recall is that millionaires tend to be the winners of a high risk bet - entrepreneurism. They're also people of normal taste and lifestyle, with a large difference between what they bring in and what they spend.
My original point was that, on average, people don't value what they're given, just what they have to work for.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
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.
I'm already heavily diversified. The amount I have in 401K is many times larger than the amount I have in AAPL. And AAPL has done much, much better for me over the last four years than my 401K has done. I kinda wish I'd put it all in AAPL to be honest :/
I could spend time researching and trying to figure out what would be a good stock to complement AAPL in a diversification scheme, and sell off half of my AAPL when it gets back up to $100 (which it will, I have no doubt) as you have suggested. But that just seems like too much *work* when the only company I can really say for certain that I have a sincere belief in the future of is AAPL. I'll just keep it all in AAPL. I'm still confident that when my daughter is ready to go to college in 16 years, AAPL will have done quite well for me.
Regardless of the trolling and fanboyism, I for one would like to wish him well and hope he gets better in due time. Enjoy your rest, Steve, and get well soon!
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.
...We need MORE POWER to the REALITY DISTORTION FIELD, now!
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...
Of course, you have to buy for him to be able to sell. Someone a lot smarter than you will buy from you later after Steve dies and the stock loses 9/10 of it's (nominal) value, but only if it looks like there's leadership that can allow the company continue for long enough for investors to realize they overestimated Steve's role in the company. Say 2 years from now?
Rich people think about the day after tomorrow. Now is not a good time to buy. This stock has nowhere to go but down until at least a few months after Steve is no longer with us. Even then, it will only be worth something if they pull off a successful transition.
Let me get this straight: you let the opinions of the type of people who post semiliterate anonymous screeds on Slashdot dictate when, where, and how you use a useful piece of equipment? Wow.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Your data is not relevant, and Jobs and Patrick Swayze are going throgh very different things. Jobs had/has a neuroendocrine tumor, which is much more survivable than the much more common adenocarcinoma that Swayze has, which has a 5% 5-year survival rate. Jobs basically has a completely different type of cancer than you usually think of when you hear the term pancreatic cancer.
I'm going to make a /. post next time Michael Morhaime (head of Blizzard) is hung over. Honestly, what other CEOs get this cult level of worship?
What other CEOs have personally made noticeable changes to the world?
Jobs was indirectly responsible for the IBM PC, which is what "PC compatible" computers were imitations of. IBM created the PC in response to the threat they felt from Apple.
Jobs was responsible for bringing a lot of the ideas from Xerox PARC to a mainstream market, something Xerox couldn't have done. Most people don't realize that Apple pioneered the "noun, then verb" paradigm we're all familiar with in GUIs (select an icon, then choose something to do with it); Xerox's GUI required the user to select an action first, before selecting the item upon which to perform it. This makes sense if you're used to a command line, but it's less intuitive to the masses.
After leaving Apple, Jobs created NeXT, which was the source of much of what became Mac OS X. Microsoft has been incorporating a lot of Apple's ideas into Vista and Windows 7.
Jobs bought Pixar from George Lucas, and was at the helm during the creation of the first feature film ever to be entirely computer animated. Jobs now sits on the board of directors of Disney and owns 7% of the company. RenderMan has become an industry standard.
This isn't worship; Jobs has been genuinely influential in a lot of areas. The fact that you (correctly) felt the need to add "(head of Blizzard)" after Morhaime's name is why he doesn't get this kind of attention. Sure, Blizzard has had a significant impact on computer gaming... but what else has he done?
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$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/090114/apple_jobs.html has an article on it.
Man, how I wanted to go that salt-and-red-meat-perscribing doctor! Anyway now she eats hamburgers. Everyone won.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
Even healthy living can kill you I guess.
Eat more bacon, you won't live long. but at least you can have some bacon.
Yes, but he said "folks" which automatically makes his post a trusted authority.
It does in the long term. Yeah, if you're day trading you care a lot about the latest Steve-news. If you're investing then you care much more about those actual fundamentals of the company.
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.
I just don't see that Jobs going changes the fundamentals of the company all that much. I think Apple at the current price is a great buy, and if it tanks tomorrow, it is a great buy. Time to take some money out of bonds :)
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
The iDroids dream of them.
For those unaware...
A put option is a guarantee for the holder of the put option to be able to sell something at a specified price.
So, even if the price goes down, he still gets to cash in on the sell price offered by the put option.
He could even buy new stock at the now-lowered price, and sell it at the option price.
Call options are similarly advantageous when the stock is going up.
Long means he owns a positive amount of them. (as opposed to owing someone else AAPL put options)
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
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.
No shit, but to what degree was this priced in already?
I think the market had already priced in about 80% of this news. Unless there is other, unforeseen fallout from this announcement, we're pretty close to where the stock should be. For the last year it has been a question of "when", not "if". Actually, this may be the the jump-start the stock needs; big money has been reluctant to invest in Apple until the uncertainty of Job's condition is cleared up. He should have done this six months ago.
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
To those who marked me troll.
It is a reference to the book "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep"!
I'm kind of sick of facts
Fixed that for you. Facts:
1. Apple was the first to use a micro hard drive.
2. Everything else was either a tiny flash memory player (64 megs) or used a heavy desktop drive.
3. Apple used 400 Mbps Firewire when everyone else used 11 Mbps USB 1.1.
4. They had a good hardware/software interface.
As to point #4, I remember a nice Penny Arcade strip from way back (which unfortunately I can't find right now) where Jonathan asks Tycho how well Musicmatch staked up against iTunes. It went something like this:
Tycho: Imagine iTunes as a fresh orange, glistening with morning dew...
Johnathan: Okay...."
Tycho: And Musicmatch is a bag filled with dog poop.
Johnathan: Yuck! Dog poop isn't even food!
Tycho: Exactly.
mp3 players might have been drab before the iPod, but they were certainly far from useless.
Are you forgetting that Apple was the first to use a 5 gig micro hard drive? Everything else was either tiny flash memory (64-256 megs) or heavy desktop hard drives. And Apple used 400 Mpbs Firewire when everything else used 11 Mpbs USB 1.1.
You can argue the iPod was priced high, or that it's nothing special now. You can't argue that it wasn't revolutionary when it came out.
Well news like this an easy chance for investors to sell short for a bit of profit taking. So will be seeing ups and down as the another 10% gets priced in.
"Call us when the New age is old enough to drink" Beck
Apple makes a nice product but it's for the sheep of the world who blindly follow Apple and limit their demands to only that which Apple says they should have!
I dunno about that one. I hate apple, but I have an ipod classic ever since my Neuros II went tits-up. It matched on all my criteria.
1. Plays MP3s: Check.
2. Can use standard 1/8" stereo headphones: Check
3. Works in Mass Storage mode OR works with linux: Check
4. Costs less than $2/GB: Check.
5. Wasn't from Creative. (Too many bad experiences with Nomads to buy another one)
Honestly, it was the only hard drive-based player (#4) that met #3. And I looked. Boy did I look.
Bullshit, before the iphone was a twinkle in Steve's eye we had Palm and WindowsMobile doing a lot of things you cant do today with an iphone. Tethering, copy and paste, downloading any app you like, *gasp* running software you wrote, choosing whatever wireless company you want to go with, outlook syncing, voip, etc.
Useless mp3 players? Perhaps useless as a fashion accessory, but I had an mp3 player before the ipod was even released. Worked fine, thanks for asking.
>Of course that is all it is but they are selling like hot-cakes
Yes we must all judge things by popularity. Good idea! The best phone: the iphone. The best artistic endeavor in human history: the reality show. The best food: McDonalds. The best country: india.
I think you can see where Im going with this.
Which is better known by the Movie title, an post-movie release book re-release title of: Blade Runner.
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
Smoking doesn't guarantee lung cancer either. That doesn't mean it's unrelated.
The details are trivial and useless; The reasons, as always, purely human ones.
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.
try: Food (Even in a severe depression we still have to eat)
if you're concerned with longevity and business models, Consider:
There are many others. Do not get lulled into laissez-faire attitudes toward investment. You have to diversify outside of 'sexy' industry groups. When everyone heads for the exits the fundamentally sound companies get hammered, right along with the 'pretenders' and it is sad, brutal and devastating for a lot of people when that happens.
If I sound harsh, I'm sorry, but life and some of its lessons are far harsher than anything I could come up with. And no matter who you are, I don't like seeing people get hurt. I watched some very intelligent people as their retirement nest eggs got decimated, several times. It is not something I would wish on anyone.
My first mp3 player, which is still kicking around in drawer or a closeted box, was a Creative Nomad II MG. $250 for 64 mb and $100 for a 128 mb mmc card -- $350 total. For that, I got a player with controls that were so awkwardly placed on the sides that even after a year of steady use, I had to actually look at it to change songs -- it was ridiculously easy to delete songs instead of skip them. The screen was extra small too.
Several years later I picked up a refurbed ipod for half the price with 15 gb of storage and controls I could use without looking at them. I recently got an 80 gb model, refurb, for half the price of my Creative, and the controls are even better than my old 15 gb model -- as long as I'm not searching through my library, I can control it "eyes-free" effortlessly and without thinking about it. Now, I'm sure most players don't have controls as dreadful as my Creative, but the fact the ipod is easy to use is not some kind of reality distortion event. The ipod is objectively better designed because I can adjust the volume and skip songs without looking at it. With the Nomad, anytime you pressed a button without looking I risked random outcomes up to and including song deletion. Reality distortion would be thinking that the Nomad was better than an ipod.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
"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.
Dude, you can't spell out your cool obscure reference to an awesome book just because someone modded you troll, that ruins it. You just have to trust in the idea that there are cool people on /. who will get your hip shit and mod you up just to stick it to the less nerdy mods. You'll just have to live with the mod-kipple, for some day all moderations will be filled with kipple, and we'll be consumed by it.
Translation: you're a Kool Aid drinking anti-Apple fanboy, a breed vastly more common than the Apple fanboy. Apple could cure cancer and legalize pot, and you'd still find something to bitch about.