Where’s Steve?
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“The only thing worse than being talked about,” said Oscar Wilde, “is not being talked about.” That has until recently applied in spades to Steve Jobs of Apple, a guy who, when I’ve interviewed him, has always asked what other people have said about him, “especially the bad stuff.”
Steve is a guy who likes being talked about. He likes it so much, in fact, that he’s adopted a strategy to encourage it. This strategy involves very carefully doling-out bits of himself to the press not in an effort to discourage coverage, really, but to ENcourage it by limiting the supply. Like everything else about Steve it is brilliant and cold.
This was the case until Steve Jobs got sick, of course, at which point he went from skillfully managing the press to just as skillfully avoiding it. I wonder why? What did he have to fear about the world knowing he’d been ill? It’s probably just an artifact of his obsessive need to control.
Whatever the reason, ever since his bout with pancreatic cancer in 2004, Steve and his Apple minions have tried valiantly to keep his health condition out of the news, citing it as a “private matter.”
Except of course it isn’t a private matter at all. Steve is the CEO of Apple, Apple is an enormous publicly-held company, and many Apple investors are onboard (or remain onboard) specifically because of their confidence in Steve as a sort of high tech rainmaker. This is a concept that over time Jobs and Apple have done absolutely nothing to discourage or dispel. And so now I (and the SEC from what I hear) believe Steve and Apple have to live with it.
Steve Jobs’ health is material to Apple and to Apple shareholders. To say that having taken a six-month leave of absence changes that would be wrong. What WOULD change that would be Jobs’ resignation, which he hasn’t yet given to the Apple board. As long as Steve is still intending to return to Apple, his health is material to the company and should be disclosed.
Whatever Apple claims about privacy and however much whining and threatening Steve does to reporters by e-mail and phone, his condition remains squarely on the table, hot and steaming and ready to be served-up, as it should be.
Maybe he wants it that way. Maybe this is just more of the same limiting supply to increase demand. It’s possible but I simply don’t know.
Now look, we’re nine paragraphs into this story and I’m finally getting to the lead, which should have been in the first graf. But by now you understand why I have to do it this way, because you don’t give out unseemly news (at least I don’t give out unseemly news) without putting it in some proper context. The eight grafs above explain why I feel it is important to say that Steve Jobs has stopped using his computer.
Huh?
Steve Jobs has stopped using his computer. He’s off curing himself of something he won’t name and in some manner we can’t know but I CAN tell you right now it doesn’t involve using his computer.
A friend of mine has for years been one of Steve Jobs’ Internet chat buddies. And as such his chat client has – again for years – shown as Steve came online each day and remained there for hours and hours as you’d expect a Silicon Valley mogul to do. And it’s a trend that continued well past Jobs’ announcement that he was taking a six-month leave of absence to get well. But then Steve started logging-on less and less. And several weeks ago he stopped logging-on at all.
Silence.
No big deal, right? He’s off the clock; Cook and Schiller are fighting for the tiller; Apple’s in good hands; who cares?
Anyone cares who actually expects Steve Jobs to return to Apple.
Maybe it’s because now he’s using a PC!! And, you know, Windows doesn’t have iChat…
Bob,
I agree with you. While people here are clamoring to point out a lack of fact checking, I doubt seriously you would do that sort of thing. Personally, I think that Steve is not coming back to Apple and that the world needs to get used to that fact. The company will do fine without him for a while and maybe they now have enough of a culture to continue without Jobs at the helm. One can hope.
Just for the record, if I knew that I there was a chance that I would be departing this world, email, internet, work and all the other tedium would take a serious backseat to my spending time with family and friends.
Until you feel like producing these so called “sources” by NAME, do the world a favor and STFU.
I guess it’s the same source that can prove that you’re a heroin user and that you have auto-immune deficiency syndrome.
You sir, are a waste of life.
Bob, when you assume, you make an ass of you and me. And here, you are assuming the worst without having more than very thin facts at best. If I was your editor, I’d have thrown your draft back in your face. You assert that Steve Jobs must be declining based on the assumption that not being as actively engaged online must mean the worst. But you present no proof to this assumption. This is anything but good journalism.
I’ve read your articles over time, and frankly, I find you to be an entertaining writer. But the gap between assumption and accuracy is vast. When I have tracked your past prognostications of what will be (case in point: your predictions of what Apple will present at major events) have been noteworthy for being spectacularly wrong time and time again.
If I were this incompetent, I would be lucky to have a job as a barista at Starbucks.
My advice: stop pontificating and give us proof. Your readers deserve better.
Calm down everyone. I am alive and well.
While I don’t doubt the Steve Jobs is alive and well (as can be expected), I doubt you are that Steve Jobs, else Cringely would have confirmed the veracity of your reply.
T’ain’t funny, McGee!
Dear Jenny,
I think I can speak for most people who will read you rant.
Put a sock in it.
Dave
Let me guess, you’re shorting Apple stock …
Ambulance chaser !
Steve Jobs’s health isn’t material to Apple shareholders – it is material, however, to dozens of vultures, parasites and ambulance chasers who hope to profit, from either page views or spurious lawsuits.
I’ve enjoyed Bob’s columns over the years (although, about Apple, he’s right about as often as Rob Enderle), but his vile glee over Steve Jobs’s illness makes me sick.
Never been to this site before, and I will never be back. I came here from an article on the appleinsider site (another site that has gone downhill in recent years). Anyway, this is complete speculative trash and clearly an attempt (which worked sadly) to get people to come to this site.
Bob,
I’ve read your articles for years and I’ve learned to accept it for what it is. Your opinion based on the facts you obtain. So be it with Steve Jobs. He has an obligation to keep shareowners informed as to his medical conditions. Since Steve won’t release the records then you have an obligation to let us know what you can find out.
Please keep up the good work.
The battery on his Mac Book Air is probably dead. Mine only stays charged for about 2 hours!
Maybe he should splurge on a Sony laptop, then he could stay connected.
My mom and sister have figured out that just because I turn off iChat that doesn’t mean I don’t have my computer on or that I am not home.
Steve Jobs might be just be playing the hermit to clear his mind to be able to think of how to implement the next big thing.
How about an investigation into insider trader or stock manipulation based on rumors of Steve Jobs’ health?
[...] the pseudononymous tech columnist Robert X. Cringley (real name, Mark Stephens) wrote a weird piece over the weekend that concludes that Jobs has [...]
While he may not be on his computer, that doesn’t mean he’s not talking to Cook and Schiller whenever he feels the need to. I think his resignation would be important but unless his health status is terminal then I don’t think it’s important.
I think the SEC was concerned that information released wasn’t misleading, rather than indicating shareholders (aka speculators) have the right to personal information. Any person on the planet could meet with a freak accident at any time – invest accordingly.
As far as the iChat – I followed a similar pattern of fewer logins followed by no logins when I took a very extended leave some years ago.
Cringely is definitely taking some heat for this article, but I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, as a devout Apple fan-boi, I think Steve Jobs is an absolute genius who not only saved Apple, but quarterbacked one of the greatest come backs in corporate history. The iPhone, which was developed and released under his watch, completely re-wrote the rules of mobile phones, including user interface, distribution, and applications. The current Apple OS is light years ahead of Vista. I hope Steve Jobs recovers, and feel that he is entitled to privacy.
On the other hand, his failure to deliver the keynote at MacWorld, and today’s announcement that he won’t attend the shareholder meeting for the first time since 1997, is indeed ominous news. Cringely’s post is simply an observation, with the reader left to consider the consequences. He didn’t release confidential patient information or any other privileged information. It’s up to the reader to decide how credible the source is, if Steve Jobs no longer uses chat (perhaps he simply turned his status to “go offline”?), and if, since perhaps he no longer uses chat, he’s on his death bed.
Bob, I’ll join the chorus: Surely it wasn’t necessary to disclose the matter of Steve Job’s discontinued iChat use? It crosses the ethical and journalistic line, adds nothing to what we know or need to know, and makes you look foolish.
I’ll say here that I’ve never understood the hatred expressed for the man who has made such a mark on our time. I can understand it coming from disgruntled employees, but as for everyone else, I think it is a huge act of projection.
I can’t imagine how impoverished technology ( and animation) for consumers would be without the vision, aesthetic and perfectionism of Steve Jobs. I have been personally driven by people equally “monstrous”, but it was worth it because I achieved things I never would have imagined, and the ensuing products made life better for millions of people. Such taskmasters, it must be understood, become distorted personalities when they are trying to mold others, and their skills, to realize an ideal. And I am convinced that they are a good deal harder on themselves.
When reporting the facts, my journalism class specified that something was only a fact if it could be confirmed by three independent sources. If this holds true today. Most of what passes for journalism on the Internet, patently isn’t. Most of the pap being smeared out there is opinion. Most of the the so called Internet journalists should properly identify their emissions as such. That being said, Robert has actually put out quite a bit of good journalism and opinion over the years.
Let Steve Jobs recuperate – he is a treasure – has changed and improved the
quality of our lives. Heck, he’s improved the quality of my dogs lives via the ipod
and the good music I can play for them anywhere to soothe them. Rest is important
to recover. Steve is a unique man who will live on forever – in history, in our hearts,
and in our daily lives. He’s changed the world. Give him space. Be positive. Help him heal. Send him good energy, vibes, prayers and let’s rejoice when he returns.
Enough of the negativism. We are better people because of him.
i doubt he likes being talked about.
he does like emailing allot, I’ve gotten a few email from his iphone.
Ah, hope springs eternal for the amateur stock investor. In the dangerous world of markets, one has to live in reality. Hope clouds sober thinking required to be in the markets. It sure seems to me that Jobs’ health is deteriorating. If that weren’t bad enough, we are in the biggest bear market since 1929. Stocks should never be held long in bear markets.
I’ll bet the big hedge funds are doing everything they can to find out if these rumours are true. If they are true, they will be shorting the living daylights out of AAPL and will be rewarded massively if he dies. Cold? Of course. But it’s all about price discovery, and hedge fund managers don’t care happens, they just care about getting the news before others do and profiting off it.
Great reporting Bob. You’ve obviously infuriated alot of hopeful AAPL stockholders, lol.
Grow up. WTF does this matter? What other publicly traded company do people keep track of the CEO’s sick day’s and vacation time? I’m so sick of you assholes.
[...] into a chat client, has been using his computer less since taking his six-month leave of absence, according to a report by former PBS journalist Mark [...]
[...] a couple of stories that reposted another story came across my RSS reader today about the fact that Steve Jobs has not been using his computer. [...]
Should this site really exist?
does it really exist?
I have two sets of accounts for most everything – one personal and one public/work-related. This includes everything from Twitter, AIM/Yahoo/MSN/Jabber, email, you name it.
Whenever I take a vacation, etc… I start off being really good about continuing to check both sets of accounts, and then gradually check them less and less. Eventually, I decide I can stop worrying about all of that until I get back to work and stop checking them at all. This is how it goes for most people.
Besides.. he could have feeding tubes, be paralyzed from the chest down, confined to a bed, doped up on medication, whatever.. and still be able to IM just fine. You only need one working eye and a friggin THUMB to be able to IM. The “he logged on less and less” bit is a joke. Like instant messaging requires a great deal of physical exertion! What, he slowly slipped into a coma?! Because short of that, there’s nothing stopping him from getting on IM if he wants to.
He’s just not logging on his public accounts. Your friend is obviously willing to share details of conversations to bloggers.. let’s not even pretend he’s going to make it on to Steve’s personal friends lists.
I have been reading Bob Cringely for over a decade and his analysis has always been thoughtful, intelligent, and well-informed. So if he says Steve’s online presence has dropped, I’m confident he has much more to go on than what he is free to mention in a public article.
As for whether Steve has an obligation to disclose material aspects of his health, I think the answer is not black and white. Here is what I believe is a proper way to think about it.
As far as I am aware, SEC rules do not absolutely require disclosure of executive health. In that narrow sense, Steve may be entitled to some privacy on this issue. He is, however, a fiduciary of the company, and therefore required to act in the best interests of its owners, the shareholders. Since he is very publicly identified with the success of the company, and this very much through efforts of his own, his health can be presumed to be extremely material to shareholder interests.
But does *disclosure* of his health align with shareholder interests? Here you can imagine a range of points of view. Steve’s argument, I would suppose, is that shareholder interests are served by believing that he is fine, whether he is or not. This doesn’t serve the interests of non-owners contemplating buying the stock or shareholders who would sell the stock if they believed he was sick, but the former are not shareholders and the latter, it could be argued, constitute a minority of shares whose interest is outweighed by the a presumed majority of loyalist or at least wait-and-see shares.
That is not my own feeling about how he should behave. I’m just pointing out the argument that could be made.
For a completely different take on this, consider another large public company that is very strongly identified with its leader: Berkshire Hathaway. Chairman Warren Buffett has addressed the question of his health in each of his annual reports for years. He considers both the state of his health and the state of succession planning to be of clear and inescapable relevance to shareholder interests, and doesn’t in the least dodge the question of his dying or becoming incapacitated, and what happens to the company – and shareholders – afterwards.
My personal feeling is that this is the correct and responsible way to do it. But Buffett, more than Jobs, is the exception in this regard in present-day corporate America.
However from a purely economic rationalist point of view, there’s another way for shareholders and outside stakeholder to think about it, and it is this:
Whatever SEC rules and fidiciary responsibility make us think ought to be disclosed, the fact is that there are a very wide range of executive health disclosure policies being practiced by American corporations. The fact that this range exists and has in the main been tolerated should tell the prudent investor that they should expect nothing in this regard beyond what the present management of a given company has demonstrated to be their own policy. Berkshire investors have a reasonable expectation of candor on this topic. Apple investors, after Fortune’s disclosure of Steve’s original pancreatic cancer surgery which he concealed entirely from shareholders, should have an expectation of no candor whatsoever.
Most importantly, *these expectations should already be imputed into the stock price*. Steve’s secretiveness about his health has been widely known almost a year now, and that is plenty of time for the stock price to take it into account. Prudent Apple investors unwilling to live with the uncertainty of Steve’s health will have adjusted their holdings and buy/sell prices to take this into account.
While we can complain that there are not better and clearer disclosure requirements around executive health across the board (and I think we should), those of us holding or contemplating Apple investments at this late date really have no excuse for expecting Steve to behave differently from how he has in the past.
Reporters job is to report, I have always found Bob to be a good reporter. Not always liked or agreed with everything he has said, many have proved to be wrong, (to which Bob has often coughed up to) but many times Bob has been on the money and been the first one to bring to our attention some of the more unpalatable facts of life.
I’m sure as a good reporter, he has checked his sources, and will have to protect his sources and would not make frivolous remarks to to generate hits on his site. Most of us come here all the time regardless.
Even here in the UK there is massive concern about Steve Jobs / Apple. Many of us have been using their products for years, and base our judgement on Apple abilities and performance, but more than almost any other company the man at the top holds unprecedented sway in what we think is going to happen. His health whilst private is also of huge importance to us all. I cannot think of any other CEO that I would concern myself about in the same way. You try to name one?
There have been many frivolous commenst about why Steve is not using iChat, but its avoiding the main issue. Steve is not using iChat, Something that he has done from its inception and has hardly missed a day.
That is big news, wether you like it or not.
I wish all the best to Steve and his family through this time, and will continue to support him and Apple through the years ahead.
Don’t shoot the messenger. Keep up the good work Bob.
I’m gonna’ change the subject, if you don’t mind people, and make a prediction about the possibility of a new market trend.
If enough copies of Leopard fly off the shelf in conjunction with Dell Mini 9 netbook, instead of making those OS X’s inoperable via a software update, Apple, Inc will instead rush release it’s own touch screen netbook (forget the keyboard) that will supplant these DIY Hackintoshes. I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for Apple to license OS X or a netbook version for Dell, HP or even for XO version 2.
I’m on vacation in Honduras now. The last time I was here the only access was via a dial-up connection. If I was on a 6 month leave, I’d certainly think about doing what I’m doing. I would quite likely be off the net. I think you’re reading too much into this.
I have had two surgeries in the past 3 weeks and am now in my recovery phase. My illness is only 1/1000th as serious as Mr. Jobs. Still I am going to need a good 3 to 4 weeks to fully recover from my illness and surgeries. During the most difficult period of my treatment, I too dropped off of email and the Internet for about a week. I spent most of my time resting. When I was awake and (somewhat) alert I really wanted to spend that time with my wife and family, and not on cyberspace. We watched several movies and games together, and basically enjoyed each others company.
Anyone who has dealt with a serious illness probably knows EXACTLY what Mr. Jobs is doing right now. It is pretty obvious. It is time to leave the man alone, let him rest and spend quality time with his family.
[...] However Steve Jobs has been unusually quite which is very unusual for him. One person who know Steve Jobs from the very early days, Bob Cringely adds: [...]
[...] „Ein Freund von mir ist seit Jahren auf Steve Jobs Internet Chat Buddie-Liste. Jahre lang ist Steve Jobs immer online gekommen und Stunden lang online geblieben, so wie man es von einem Silicon Valley Mogul erwarten würde. Auch als Jobs mitteilte, er werde sich eine sechs monatige Auszeit zur Genesung nehmen, blieb es noch lange so. Aber auf einmal loggte er sich weniger und weniger ein. Und seit einigen Wochen gar nicht mehr.“ Finden können Sie das hier: http://www.cringely.com/2009/02/wheres-steve/ [...]
[...] CEO von Apple zur
Happy Birthday, Steve!!
Perhaps it is just me but I’ve always viewed Mr. Cringely and his commentary as more about entertainment and less about news. Does any of what he said actually matter in the situation with Steve Jobs and Apple? Did he really say anything in the first place or just hint and imply? Sure, slap him around for going for the attention a sensitive topic would bring instead of doing something productive – but then remember he is in the business of publishing content for entertainment.
Thanks Bob for the insight.
there sure is a lot of angst over this issue, as your comments attest.
I just saw a picture of the actor, can’t remember his name who was in the movie Dirty Dancing. He has the same cancer and is close to death and he look just like Steve.
Skin and bones weighs 95 lbs. I feel terrible about it and I hate to say what I’m thinking so I won’t.
i can’t think of a single public figure whose health has elicited this kind of reaction. it’s hard to pick which is more unexpected: the vocal, even violent, calls for privacy, or the sappy outpourings of sympathy. it’s humane and all, but why steve jobs? he’s not a saint, people. he’s a corporate executive. i’ll never figure it out.
Changing subject again …
Apple, Inc just banked another $$$$$. I wouldn’t expect a dividend or even something mundane as a stock buyback. They could :
1.) get in the car business and buy Chrysler and fire smelly Nardelli. Six Sigma doesn’t really work outside of GE, does it folks? Drop all the cartoon cars, and every other car line and introduce two new lines of affordable cool quiet cars that use that new capacitor and set up all those new fuel charging stations around the nation.
2.) grab Sony, foreclose on Michael Jackson and finally own The Beatles catalog (a lifelong ambition, for Jobs,too!)
3.) buy Flash from Adobe (but don’t buy Adobe).
4.) invent the next generation search engine that finds and organizes and customizes EVERYTHING on the web for every user.
5.) sit on the cash until the Depression is over.
i dont know what to say… would i believe in something like this or just wait for something new…
tsktsktsktsk…
LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!!!
Wow! This topic is really interesting. But it always came to the bottom line and the most important of it all… where’s Steve anyway?
megan fox is a guy? wtf
What a bunch of self righteous prigs, all standing in their glass boxes throwing stones!
[...] Where’s Steve?Steve Jobs has logged off. It’s actually sort of spooky when you say it that way. [...]
[...] but there’s a nugget of Apple (AAPL) news in Robert X. Cringely’s latest column, “Where’s Steve?,” published [...]
[...] about health Dzhobsa, including reports that the leader has ceased to use their computers. This states column Kringleya Robert (Robert X. Cringley). According to his data, Dzhobs does not appear in the [...]
I know I am not the first to say this. And I know there is judicial precedence against what I am about to say. But person’s personal health is protected by law. And that protection should not exclude anybody.
Ownership in a public company is ownership in the company. If you feel that it is too risky to be involved in a company micromanaged by a single individual, then don’t. A single individual in good health can die.
Mr. Jobs is too young to be battling the illnesses he is. That is unfortunate for him. I feel bad for him as I would anybody else. Go put your money in something less risky. You have a choice.