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Apple Disclosures About Jobs To Face SEC Review
suraj.sun writes "US regulators are examining Apple Inc.'s disclosures about Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs's health problems to ensure investors weren't misled, a person familiar with the matter said.
The Securities and Exchange Commission's review doesn't mean investigators have seen evidence of wrongdoing, the person said, declining to be identified because the inquiry isn't public. Bloomberg News reported last week that Jobs is considering a liver transplant as a result of complications after treatment for cancer, according to people who are monitoring his illness."
A corporation is bigger than just one man.
I can't read the article because it's a bad link, but why that tag? If you use apple products your automatically a dem?
a) a person's health is private matter, b) Apple is doing something really wrong when it puts all its eggs into Job's basket - no man or woman should have so much power in a company that his/her illness can cause ripples in the business world.
The story doesn't load for me. It appears to be a broken link.
If Jobs is going to have one he'd better get in line, as I hear that Larry Hagman has all available ones claimed.
Sig this!
Do they mean the way the users have been taken in by the slick packaging to imagine that the quality of the software and hardware they are buying is worthy of the price?
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aDL78iMCdOzk
(its a question mark, not a quote mark...)
copy the url, look at it, does it look 'right' to you? ;) usually its a question mark as the first delim char before the parms.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Apple Disclosures About Jobs Said to Face SEC Review (Update2)
By David Scheer and Connie Guglielmo
Jan. 21 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. regulators are examining Apple Inc.'s disclosures about Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs's health problems to ensure investors weren't misled, a person familiar with the matter said.
The Securities and Exchange Commission's review doesn't mean investigators have seen evidence of wrongdoing, the person said, declining to be identified because the inquiry isn't public. Bloomberg News reported last week that Jobs is considering a liver transplant as a result of complications after treatment for cancer, according to people who are monitoring his illness.
Investors have been pressing for information on Jobs's health since June, when he appeared noticeably thinner at an Apple event. The company's stock whipsawed this month after Jobs, who battled pancreatic cancer in 2004, said he would remain CEO while seeking a "relatively simple" treatment for a nutritional ailment. Nine days later, Jobs said he would take a five-month medical leave after learning his health issues were "more complex."
"The good news flipped by the bad news makes one wonder what Apple knew," said James Cox, a law professor at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. "It's not surprising for the SEC to come in and look afterward, given the pressure and publicity regarding their handling of a lot of cases," such as criticism of the SEC's response to Bernard Madoff's alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme.
SEC spokesman John Nester declined to comment on the Apple inquiry. Steve Dowling, a spokesman for Cupertino, California- based Apple, declined to comment.
Apple will report first-quarter earnings after the market close today, followed by a conference call at 5 p.m. New York time.
Shares Rose
Apple's shares rose 4.2 percent on Jan. 5 after Jobs said he had been diagnosed with a hormone imbalance that caused him to lose weight throughout 2008 and "that has been robbing me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy." It was the first public disclosure of Jobs's health since August 2004, when he revealed he had undergone successful surgery to remove a neuroendocrine islet cell tumor, a rare, slow-growing type of cancer that affects as many as 3,000 people in the U.S. annually.
Before today, Apple stock had dropped 8.4 percent since the company disclosed Jan. 14 that Jobs, 53, would be on medical leave through June. The shares added $1.58, or 2 percent, to $79.78 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading at 9:31 a.m. New York time.
Apple has declined to provide specifics of the illness and Jobs said he won't comment further about his health. "Why don't you guys leave me alone -- why is this important?" he said in a telephone interview with Bloomberg News on Jan. 16.
Definitive Answers'
To bring any case, the SEC would probably have to show the company tried to benefit by withholding information about an unambiguous diagnosis, said Peter Henning, a former federal prosecutor and SEC lawyer who now teaches at Wayne State University Law School in Detroit.
"It would be difficult, and certainly a new area of the law," Henning said. "You would have to pin down exactly what they knew, and with a health issue -- unlike a merger or a decline in revenue -- it's not subject to definitive answers."
Corporate governance experts say shareholder interest in Jobs is unusually high because he is considered synonymous with Apple. He returned as CEO in 1997, turning the once-unprofitable maker of Macintosh computers into a successful consumer- electronics company with the iPod media player and iPhone. Jobs established himself as the face of Apple, serving as the main pitchman at every major product announcement over the past decade while yielding little time to other top executives.
"Steve Jobs himself thinks the Steve Jobs mystique is of value -- otherwise, why not have other people introduce those products over the past 10 years?" said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, associate dea
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
According to the graph you linked to, the most major downturn in stock value related not to Steve's health, but to the following news:
Apple Inc. Executives Settle Shareholder Suits For $14 Million-Reuters
Thursday, 11 Sep 2008 01:32am EDT
Reuters reported that federal judge in San Jose has given preliminary approval to a $14 million settlement of shareholder claims over backdating of stock options against current and former Apple Inc executives, court documents showed. The current and former executives and directors, including Chief Executive Steve Jobs, agreed to the settlement. As part of the deal, Apple's liability insurer agreed to pay the Company $14 million, the court document said. The deal also includes the insuring company's payment of nearly $9 million in fees and expenses to lawyers who brought the state and federal actions that were later consolidated. U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel gave preliminary approval to the proposal and set a hearing for Oct. 31 to finalize it.
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
And they found nothing wrong.
Now with their necks on the line, they will make something up if needed to show that they are doing their jobs.
the link you posted is different; they marked that as 'update1'.
the update2 link was posted in the article - just change the ' to a ? and it works fine.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Looking at the 3 month chart they are moving almost exactly with the market and are down about 2% less then the NASDAQ composite over that time period. Over the 1 year period they are down about 12% more than the NASDAQ composite but the movements are mostly market tracking.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Probably the same reason it has the "democrats" tag: no reason at all! I've seen an article about George W. Bush tagged "democrats". Just ignore the "republicans" and "democrats" tags; they rarely make sense.
Corrected link from Bloomberg.com home page :
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=agNhSm8SjcbM&refer=home
Rush Limbaugh apparently uses a Mac.
âoeSteve Jobs himself thinks the Steve Jobs mystique is of value -- otherwise, why not have other people introduce those products over the past 10 years?â said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, associate dean of the Yale University School of Management. âoeSteve Jobs, Martha Stewart and Donald Trump have all made the boss the brand. The boss is the brand at Apple.â
Jobs set himself up to be a "Rock Star" businessman. He was always the guy at MacWorld, he was the guy that has this cult around him. What Apple needs to do is to start highlighting the designers as a group that actually come up with the ideas. I don't think Jobs was actually the one who came up with the iPod, and iWhatever they are (I'm not an Apple fanboy if you can't tell.).
I'll tell you what, Mr. SEC Investigator, you do a really good job sniffing out wrong-doing in the Mortgage Crisis (and that means severely pointing fingers at Congress) as well as demanding transparency in the oil trade business and I'll let you bitch about Apple.
Yes, the subject of this reply is tasteless. Just as tasteless as a corporation releasing personal health matters under the guise of "full disclosure" or a government agency's "review" without any evidence of malfeasance whatsoever. The truth is Mr. Jobs simply suffered a misdiagnosis which led to rampant speculation opening the door to all this insane over reaction. Let's all wish the man good health and offer support in his time of physical crisis, and maybe offer a damned apology for the burden of all this unnecessary and additional emotional baggage. He's earned better than this.
I have to side with Jobs himself, on this one. People just need to leave him alone, and stay out of this media crusade to "get to the bottom of what's ailing him".
The ONLY reason people are worked into a frenzy (and even got the SEC involved) in Apple's case is because of the intense focus on Steve Jobs as THE man behind Apple.
(My mom is friends with a guy who went through chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer, very similar to what Jobs had. Even though he was initially doing well, they discovered some of the cancer cells had metastasized to his liver, and about 4 years later, he's looking at a possible liver transplant. So *if* Bloomberg's report is accurate -- I wouldn't be surprised at all if this is the REAL story with Jobs' health right now.)
Nonetheless, it's not doing investors or the company any good to keep harping on it, and perpetuating the idea that Apple can't function without Steve in charge!
He's not going to live forever, even if it turns out this whole thing was made up as an excuse for Jobs to give himself a 6 month vacation! There has to be a "plan B", and any decent CEO has certainly given that some thought.
IMHO, Steve Jobs already served his main purpose for Apple. He rescued the company from a downward spiral, completely revamped the product line from top to bottom and turned it into one of the biggest tech success stories out there. He set Apple on a course of being a media distributor as well as a "computer company", and extended that to the cellphone marketplace too. If nobody out there can work with THAT, after it's handed to them on a silver platter? Well, I'm not sure America has any future in tech at all!
Just leave him alone! He's suffered enough, can't you all see that. Just leave the poor guy alone.
In any case, this SEC thing seems sort of silly. The SEC while it has the power to abusively coerce responses, techincally Jobs is just he CEO, not a golden child. How can his health issues be any more important than those of head of tupperware or American Toyota, who's name you don't know.
Is it because you know his name that makes his health techincally relevant? Then what about some who's names you do know, like Jack Welch, or Larry Ellison. Should they have been given annual public proctology exams since that's a high cancer risk for men their ages?
Sure the cult of Steve is an importnat phenomena to apple, but it's not a techincal criteria that I can see. It's not like Apple is somehow misrepresenting it's products or it's book value or it's liabilities to it's shareholders.
So what does the SEC have to argue here.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Bottom line, people lost money on the stock. A lot of money. Jobs' cute little comment about his blood pressure at the rollout of the worst laptops they've ever produced followed a couple weeks later by canceling his annual public appearance and then taking a leave is over-the-top. If it was a coincidence while his health was changing, then so be it. But they do need to look at it to make sure that it all wasn't done "intentionally" because, again, people lost money.
Have you taken a look at Apple's finances lately? $14 million is a drop in the bucket. As odd as it sounds, for a company of Apple's size, lawsuits dealing with amounts of money similar to that are almost routine. I don't think it had much of an effect.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
You would have gotten a +1 Insightful for that.
This is what's wrong with our country. The only thing that matters to anyone is stock price, so now the SEC needs to investigate the timing and details of a CEO health announcement??? How does that have anything to do with the long term outlook of the company. This is the most assinine thing I have ever heard.
Keep passing the open windows...
I'm just saying: there's no indication on the graph that stocks tanked more when Jobs' health concerns surfaced.
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
So, let's say Jobs needs (I guess his doctors would decide if he needed it) a liver. Where does he get it? I mean, in the U.S., the scarce organs available for transplant are decided (I think) by some medical board that determines the medical usefulness(?) of the organ to the patient. That is, will it help the patient live a substantially longer, healthier life.
I don't think that they take into consideration the person's wealth or any other measure of that person's *value* to society. So, even if billions of dollars of market capitalization are at stake and millions of customers depend on his brilliance, he may be turned down for say, a 16 year old girl who has her whole life in front of her. I could be wrong though, there may be some provision for "importance" to society. Anybody know the answer? (Of course the medical board's answer may be different from what you think it should be!)
Now, living as I do in a third world country, I can see how Jobs could easily fly here and "procure" one if he needed it. (I'm not saying that he'd take one from a living person of course, just that he would get bumped up to the front of the line). Wouldn't look too good for Apple's image to so openly go around the American system but he would save his life (and presumably Apple). I'm afraid to say that as an Apple fanboy I'd rather him do that than die.
A person's health is a private matter if it doesn't interrupt, influence or diminish the company's goals.
I help run a small company and if I'm sick, 33-50% of the company is effectively offline.
Jobs, or Apple, or both, were in the wrong in how they handled this and the INVESTORS should not suffer because the guys at the top want to keep the stock artificially inflated.
If Apple or any company or individual C level employee wants to be private, they can not be publicly funded corporation.
I'm a PC.
Not like the rest, the others. Everyone around me. I was at odds with my society and knew it early since birth. Unlike them, I did not "Think Different!"--the mantra of the Macs around me, the phrase on all the billboards in the city that served as a reminder to its citizenry. Sameness pervaded the essence of my being and no amount of self-conditioning I did could change that. Eventually, I gave up and isolated myself emotionally from society.
I gaze at the faces going by, the white earphones contrasting their black turtlenecks, connecting their ears to their pockets, their blank faces engrossed in hip Indie rock music and various garage bands. I envied them for their perfection against my flaws and my compulsive nature to expand, to burden my life with troubles instead of remaining, like them, simple and easy to deal with. The grandest of virtues, simplicity... the philosophy by our loyal benefactor Steve Jobs, who descended from the heavens, creating the Earth, the iron, the wind and the rain. Steve Jobs, who defined the parameters of existence, the one who set about the patterns of reality, the constants, the variables. He who made gravity, electromagnetic energy, and shaped atomic structures and brought forth motion. From these things, he crafted the elements, processed them, refined them, and from these things engineered Apple products through the purity of his mind. Each Apple product was individually crafted by his own hands with the programming code used to run each device having being compiled in his brain and uploaded to each device telepathically, breathing life and perfection into each and every unit.
Except, it seems, for me, for I was not among the many. I was a PC. They were Macs. I've always been a cold, stiff person. I got by, disguising myself by keeping my non-Ipod music player safely out of sight, which I use because of my depraved nature demanding more functionality than the simple and easy-to-use Ipods have to offer... In the safety of my own home, behind locked doors, I ran a Forbidden, a contraband computer from more depraved, earlier days that was not given the love and blessing of being birthed by Steve Jobs. I dual booted, out of the great sin of curiosity-- curiosity, a shameful value of a PC, as curiosity has no place where simplicity matters most--using two of the great unutterable blasphemies-- something called "Windows Vista" and something else called "Linux." Although, as I mentioned before, although my tendency to be a PC and towards conformity has always been inherent to me, I was truly transformed when I found these old things in a hidden cache of computer parts predating The Purging. Perhaps the greatest sin of all, the single evil that, if discovered, would damn me forever, was the fact that my mouse had more than one button.
As I walked on among the Macs on the streets, passing the Starbuckses as I went along, I wondered how it all came to this. I glanced at The Holy Marks on the foreheads as the people wandered down the streets, the Bitten Apple tattooed on all our of us at birth, and wondered if, perhaps, there could be something more to life. But again, this was a PC's thought, and not, like everyone elses', a Mac's. We were to hold ourselves to the philosophy of Steve Jobs--so as his products were designed for idiots, so too were we to be idiots. But I was not a Mac--I was not an idiot. I was simply too complicated to be a worthwhile person.
Nature called. I found a nearby public iPoo--squeaky clean and shining white, things weren't all bad--and let myself go, expelling the waste that had accumulated inside me. After relieving myself and committing the overly-complicated and thus illegal act of wiping my ass (I did not flush as iPoos, designed to be idiot-proof, did not flush) I left and once again wandered the streets aimlessly, hoping to find some meaning in a world where I simply did not belong, a world where if my true nature was discovered, I would be endlessly persecuted by smug, self-righteous sons of bitches.
Ahh FOSS zealots, gotta love you guys. Without your ilk the year of the linux desktop might have already happened. Carry on spreading your ill will against anyone that doesn't march in lockstep with you. All your enemies just love seeing you piss off (and piss on) any potential allies.
I think this crosses the line. What next? Should companies publish regular updates on their CEO's blood pressure and cholesterol level so that shareholders can properly assess the odds of him popping an artery just before a crucial rights issue? Should we be told about their mother's cancer history? Heck, even if Jobs were perfectly healthy, he might wake up tomorrow and decide its time to chuck it all in and buy that armadillo ranch in Zambia that he's always dreamed of - perhaps the shareholders need to know his retirement plans in detail?
If it is your judgement that a particular firm is completely reliant on the personality of their CEO then that's really all you need to know before investing: all men are mortal.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Having said that, I'd have to admit that I'm very much opposed to disclosing information about any company at the expense of one's personal health privacy. That has the potential for setting all sorts of uncomfortable precedents at "for profit" corporations.
Let's face it, Wall Street isn't exactly a model for ethical behavior. I'd have a hard time being convinced that the SEC or shareholders should be involved in anyone's personal health at anything more than the actuarial statistics level.
A few days ago I was modded "flamebait" for saying he's dying and he knows it, because who announces that they are, in fact, healthy despite appearances.
Now we hear he needs a liver transplant. Sorry, he knew his condition, he knows he's dying. Pancreatic cancer is no joke, and the treatment is harsh.
While I do seriously feel for Mr. Jobs, I think he is being irresponsible to the employees and stock holders of Apple. Information should come sooner rather than later and as honest as possible. Maybe he's in denial, who knows, but he has a responsibility to make sure Apple continues regardless of his presence. Denying his condition is not a solution.
So, for you people who feel you need to mod me flame bait because I state my opinion which may or may not be politically correct, do what you will.
They will just clone him and harvest the liver. Or perhaps it would be better to let the clone take over.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
Because anyone would do fine as Apple's CEO...
Look at all the predictions when it comes to Apples products, and then see how many of them are actually true. Remove the people who actually just happen to guess right (they usually have other, incorrect, guesses as well), and you'll end up with precious few. And we can't be sure even they knew, but rather guessed one way or another.
So, why, should I give a damn about what the same people are guessing regarding Steve Jobs? The man owes me nothing and I will leave him alone regarding all personal issues.
All the lying "journalists" on the other hand...
There is a more pressing and immediate question: Can a matching donor be found in time to make the transplant effective? Once the match is found, then the next question is whether any other patients are compatible with it and could be saved by it. Only then does the question come down to "who gets it?"
A lot of transplant patients die waiting for a donor. That's not necessarily because anyone was "ahead of them in line." It's at least as likely that none of the (regrettably few) organs donated during their lifetimes matched their needs.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
What business is it of an investor or anyone other then his immediate family about his personal health? The answer is no ones and now someone had the brain child to want to start an investigation into whether there were any "misleading" information. I could see this if he were say "The President of the United States" but not the CEO of Apple!!! Leave the man alone and if you want to sell of your shares of Apple because of news of speculation of his health then feel free to do so. But don't try to hold the company liable for withholding information. They should and should from here out tell anyone who inquires to read the HIPA regulations. Sorry but this sort of stuff just borders insanity IMHO. Apple will go on even if Steve leaves.
"We're not lying, just very very optimistic!"
Well, isn't that rich. We are in an economic crisis which was caused, in part, by the SEC being deliberately asleep-at-the-wheel. Now they are going to redeem themselves by appeasing a bunch of whiners who wouldn't be satisfied if Steve Jobs published all of his health records online.
Investors and would-be investors know absolutely everything they need to know. Steve Jobs had cancer and, as such, will likely die at an age lower than the national average. He is sick again. So sick that he's taking six months off work.
That's all you need to know.
If you currently own stock and think that the loss of Steve Jobs as CEO will cause the stock price to drop, you should sell your shares now. If you believe Apple will continue thrive without him, then you should hold your position.
If you are not a current stockholder, you should decide which of the above you believe and invest your money accordingly.
That's it.
If you feel you need to know more about the Steve Jobs' health, you are f*#%ing soulless ghoul.
Replacing a CEO and naming a CEO has to be considered insider knowledge by the SEC rules.
So its not just APPL, but any company who uses replacement of the CEO to purposely manipulate stock price. Say the board of directors are going to fire a CEO but if they with hold that knowledge from the public, then that raises some problems.
Same thing here except its about health issues.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Bloomberg DID NOT say that Jobs is considering a liver transplant. They quoted some doctor in Georgia, WHO HAS NEVER SEEND JOBS, as saying that its POSSIBLE for cases like Jobs' to lead to a liver transplant. Come on people!!! Is this the era of "who cares about truth... let me spew every possibility known to man without any proof" journalism??? If this is the new standard in journalism... they've relegated themselves to tabloid writers.
"We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost."
You know had Dubya not raped science, Jobs could have now just eaten a pill and grown a new liver inside him or something. Bigger penises for all of us too..
What an idiotic thing to say.
This story is complete bullshit. The implication's that SEC rules have been broken is bullshit. The Bloomberg story that is referred to has already been widely debunked as complete and utter bullshit. Using a person's health as an investment talking point is bullshit ... you have no idea what the state of his health is, you have no idea how that will affect the state of his health in the future, and further, you have no idea what the effect on Apple would be no matter what the outcome.
What makes this even worse is that any self-respecting nerd knows full well that Mr. Jobs above all other people in the tech industry has imbued his company with its own self-sustaining and unique culture. He could announce that he is taking up sailing like most billionaires and no longer has time to work at Apple and there will still be people at Apple trying to figure out how to remove more buttons from all of their products. There would still be customers because there will still be creative people who need fonts that work and color management you can rely on and a full pro audio subsystem, and Web developers who want to run Apache/PHP/Photoshop, and there would still be poseurs who buy only for the logo and teh shiny. In other words, you have to be truly ignorant of computing to think that Steve Jobs has been sitting in a room at Apple drawing up MacBook Airs on a napkin and that the whole thing would grind to a halt without him.
Plus, Apple has a huge lead in 21st century computing that everyone would love to have. Google, Nokia, Palm, and Blackberry all use Apple's WebKit as their Web rendering engine ... MPEG-4 is a standardization of Apple's QuickTime format ... the iPod has 75% market share. Right now many people outside Apple are just beginning to use stuff that Apple has been expert at for years. It is obvious they are the only organization with the technology and expertise to do a proper tablet, which is just an iPod touch HD. All that is required is to complete the resolution-independent user interface, which Mac OS X has had in developer preview mode since 2004.
The smart investor is buying Apple stock right now. They are so undervalued because investors don't understand how to read the subscription accounting that is done for the iPhone.
They seem to have a serious condition of having their head up their ass.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
The SEC are right on top of things, like that Bernie Madoff thing. Yep, they're crack investigators who make sure the investor is protected from evil shenanigans.
What a great rebuttal.
As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields.
Jobs, "I want to go to the hospital now please".
Apple Exec, "Shut up you're feeling fine".
Paramedic, "We got a call from some one named Steve Jobs?"
Apple Exec, "No Steve Jobs here".
Jobs, "I feel sick".
Apple Exec, "You feel fine."
Paramedic, "Are you sure he's not sick?"
Apple Exec, "He keeps complaining about his liver, he's a drinker, wink wink nudge nudge."
Jobs, "I'm dying."
Apple Exec, "You're not dying the stock report doesn't come out for a week."
Paramedic, "Sure I shouldn't take a look?"
Apple Exec, "Just a hang over. I'll give him a couple of aspirin and he'll be right as rain."
Jobs, "I can see a light."
Apple Exec, "Don't you dare go into the light until after the board meeting."
Jobs falls over dead.
Paramedic, "He looks dead to me?"
Apple Exec, "Naw he's just resting. 10,000 volts and he'll be fine. Happens all the time."
MPEG-4 is a standardization of Apple's QuickTime format
From Apple's MPEG-4 page:
I hope you did more research for the rest of the 'facts' in your post.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
I'll be looking forward to that class action lawsuit that will take 5 years to put together and eventually result in a check for $0.02 that will cost more to mail than it's worth. The ultimate winner: USPS.
The rebuttal matched the quality of the point, sadly.
Webkit comes from KHTML.
MPEG-4 is a "group effort". Patent holders include Apple, Philips, Mitsubishi, Samsung, Sharp, France Telecom, and SUN, in the US and other countries.
As to the 75% iPod figure -- only if you remove cell phones with mp3 capability from consideration... I would say that it's arguable that someone like Nokia may be the #1 leader in portable media players.
Just sayin' -- careful with your backing examples. The world IS larger than Apple.
Apple means polish, and, in the eyes of MANY, Steve Jobs embodies the qualities needed to keep that polish shiny. Apple IS "teh shiny". Now, I have had issues with Apple in the (distant) past, but I just bought my wife (turning in Geek badge now) an iPhone, and will be getting a "Mac Mini" soon to run teh shiny iTunes on.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
So your point, along with many above and below, is that since SEC was inactive in the past it should just give up regulating and watching? This is nonsense. That is like saying, that since OJ Simpson got off due to a LAPD foul up that LAPD should stop investigating crimes and collecting evidence. Its a government body, I expect them to investigate everything, as my tax money funds their operation.
However going towards the health issue at hand. The problem is that as a shareholder, you are entitled to information which steers the company's stock price. Health wouldn't be at question at a company such as Microsoft, since it is not so heavily influenced and guided by a single man. Meaning if Paul Allen were to die from cancer, tomorrow, than there is a known plan of secession. Just as there was while Gates was in the company. Apple is heavily ego-centric (I loath Apple and Microsoft equally, I prefer my companies Canonical in nature ;) ), meaning that Apple is de-facto Job's Company Inc. He has full impact on day-to-day operations all the way towards broad company focus. Further Apple keeps any contingency plans (i.e. who takes over if Steve dies tomorrow) as a trade secret. And simply informs its shareholders, that it knowns what its doing and that it has a plan.
Another way to look at it is to think of Apple as Cuba, and the shareholders are the citizens. Once Fidel (er Jobs) dies, than the nit-wit brother takes helm (much like Sculley in the past) and without a focused direction drives the whole country into the ground. Now as a citizen of Cuba you would feel entitled to know what is going on, because unlike Cuba, you have the decision of leaving the island if you do not feel that its course is sound.
Paul Allen = Steve Ballmer (CEO) my apologies to the Ballmer family for playing down their role.
Bernie Maddoff was reviewed by these guys
And they found nothing wrong
So it's OK to shoplift since the other guy is a bank robber?
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
He's a pretty strict vegan, no?
Madoff makes off with billions under the SECs watch and they decide to review Apple's protection of Jobs health. Bet that cost a pretty nickel, huh?