Tag Archives | Steve Jobs

Report: Steve Jobs Returning to Apple After Liver Transplant

Posted by Harry McCracken on June 20, 2009 at 9:05 am

We’re now in late June–the timeframe when Steve Jobs said he would return to his work as Apple CEO when he announced he was going on medical leave last January. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Jobs is planning to do so–possibly part-time at first–and that he had a liver transplant about two months ago from which he’s recovering well. If true, it’s all good news. Lotsa coverage going on about all this, but I’m not a doctor or an Apple shareholder, so I’ll just rerun a photo I snapped at Macworld Expo San Francisco in 2008, when Jobs announced the MacBook Air. May I be able to take similar photos again before too terribly long…

Steve Jobs unveils the MacBook Air at Macworld Expo 2008

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Jobs Appears Set for June Return to Apple

Posted by Ed Oswald on May 27, 2009 at 1:16 pm

Steve Wozniak and Steve JobsAccording to the Wall Street Journal, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak told the paper in a conversation at the All Things Digital conference that CEO Steve Jobs sounds “healthy and energetic.”

Woz’s straight shooting about anything Apple leads me to believe that he wouldn’t be B.S.’ing us. Maybe the time off did Jobs well — after all, as sick as the iconic CEO has been at times over the years, running a company was probably not helping him get any better.

It’s been reported that Jobs has still remained active within business decisions at the company, even if it was from his home. Apple really hasn’t missed a beat since his departure in January -and it’s a good time as ever to take a break.

The economy is in the gutter, thus everyone is pulling back. Jobs famously last October joined an earnings call to quell investor worry, and said the company had plenty of cash and no debt to make it through the rough patch that was ahead.

So taking time off when nobody is about to make any risky moves was a good idea. Chances are when Jobs gets back into the swing of things towards the latter part of summer, we should start seeing the first inklings of some type of recovery.

There is a caveat to Woz’s statements: he never has asked Jobs directly how he’s feeling. But given he’s known the man for almost four decades, you’d think he would have a good read.

Here’s hoping for a speedy return for Jobs — even though he’s likely still not going to be at WWDC.

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Jobs Still Absent for WWDC

Posted by Ed Oswald on May 13, 2009 at 8:48 am

Even though Apple says that Steve Jobs will return to Apple in June, the company said on Wednesday that a “team of executives” led by marketing head Phil Schiller would give the keynote on June 8th at its Worldwide Developers Conference. While it does not directly say Jobs won’t be there, it seems to suggest that its unlikely he will play a major role.

Jobs or not, WWDC looks to be exciting. Officially, the company will be delivering a final developer release of Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard,” as well as focusing heavily on iPhone OS 3.0, set to release during the summer.

Several Mac rumor sites have also pointed to the conference keynote as an opportunity to debut a refresh to the company’s desktop and laptop lines, but of course Apple is providing no details there.

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Conflicting Reports on Jobs’ Whereabouts

Posted by Ed Oswald on January 27, 2009 at 1:03 pm

Steve Jobs With Original NanoGossip site Valleywag likely sent the Apple faithful into a near panic late Monday when it reported that ailing Apple CEO Steve Jobs had supposedly checked himself into Stanford Hospital over the weekend in anticipation of an apparent surgical procedure Monday.

It is not clear what Jobs may have been getting surgery for. However doctors–who, it must be noted, have no specific knowledge of Jobs’ condition–have speculated that he may be suffering from liver cancer, and may be in need of a transplant.

Cancer is nothing new to Jobs: he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2003, although it was not publicly disclosed until a year later. The issue of secrecy around his health has also irked investors, who argue that Apple may be running afoul of disclosure laws.

There was only one problem with the Valleywag reporting, and it comes from this line from their post:

At a party in Silicon Valley last night, a Stanford staffer who had just come from the hospital told friends, including our source, about the “extra special care” being afforded their famous patient.

That’s right: this post was based on a third-person account of what somebody said at a party.

Mike Arrington at TechCrunch, who’s also sick (but with the flu) gets a little miffed about this latest round of reports on Jobs’ health and has his own rumor–that Jobs was at his Apple office yesterday:

That kind of stuff is fine when it’s a funding rumor and the flimsiness of it is disclosed. But we’re talking about someone’s very personal life here – someone who has repeatedly requested privacy.

While I do side with those saying that Apple should be more forthcoming with Jobs’ condition, shoddy reporting is shoddy reporting. I have a single golden rule for “scoop” journalism. Anything I get must come from a direct source with exact knowledge of what they are telling me. No friend of a friend stuff.

Remember Whisper Down The Line? Remember how often things get messed up on the way? Exactly.

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Apple’s Likely Strategy: What Would Steve Do?

Posted by Harry McCracken on January 15, 2009 at 2:58 pm

Steve Jobs unveils the MacBook Air at Macworld Expo 2008

(Steve Jobs unveils “one more thing”–the MacBook Air–at Macworld Expo San Francisco 2008, his final Macworld keynote to date. This was one of dozens of photos I took at the event, and I never dug it out until now–that’s the classic Jobs smile for sure…)

First, a disclaimer, just in case you weren’t sure: I’m not Steve Jobs’s doctor. And I believe that all of us who aren’t responsible for his medical well-being are in no position to have an informed opinion about it–and that to deal in rumor on the topic is just plain rude. (Even the most famous CEO on the planet is entitled to some privacy.) So I’m not going to make any guesses about the present or future of the man’s health. Or say much of anything about it other than that I wish him a full and speedy recovery from the issues that so many people have speculated about in such detail based on so little hard information.

But with Jobs’ announcement yesterday that he plans to go on medical leave until the end of June, one thing is fact, not conjecture: Assuming that Jobs’ leave of absence is no shorter or longer than he expects it to be, Apple will spend slightly under half a year without the day-to-day involvement of its cofounder and CEO. That would be a major deal for any company. For an organization as symbiotic with its leader as this one, it’s extraordinary. (When Bill Gates announced he was abandoning day-to-day involvement in running Microsoft, not for half a year but forever, it was major news; nobody, however, questioned Microsoft’s viability or even expected it to be a very different place without him.)

So what impact will Steve’s temporary removal from his company have on it? His two past extended absences from Apple over the past 33 years can’t tell us too much about the next six months. The one that began in 1985 with his unwilling exodus and lasted until Apple acquired his NeXT startup in 1996 was far too long and traumatic to be comparable, and the one forced by his cancer surgery in 2004 was too short. (That second time, Jobs spent only a month out of commission and a month working part-time before returning to full duty.)

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Steve Jobs to Take Medical Leave Until June

Posted by Harry McCracken on January 14, 2009 at 2:04 pm

Just breaking now: Steve Jobs is going on medical leave from Apple until June. In a letter to Apple employees, he wrote the following:

Team,

I am sure all of you saw my letter last week sharing something very personal with the Apple community. Unfortunately, the curiosity over my personal health continues to be a distraction not only for me and my family, but everyone else at Apple as well. In addition, during the past week I have learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought.

In order to take myself out of the limelight and focus on my health, and to allow everyone at Apple to focus on delivering extraordinary products, I have decided to take a medical leave of absence until the end of June.

I have asked Tim Cook to be responsible for Apple’s day to day operations, and I know he and the rest of the executive management team will do a great job. As CEO, I plan to remain involved in major strategic decisions while I am out. Our board of directors fully supports this plan.

I look forward to seeing all of you this summer.

Steve

Apple COO Tim Cook will take charge of day-to-day affairs until Jobs’ return. This development comes a little over a week after Jobs published a public letter saying that his widely-reported-on weight loss was due to a hormone imbalance that had recently been diagnosed, and which would take him a few months to recover from.

I still don’t like writing about anyone’s personal health–especially in the absence of much in the way of facts. So I can’t think of much to say right now except that I hope Jobs recuperates quickly and completely, and that his company does okay in his absence. And I’d feel good if this latest news doesn’t set off a new flurry of rumor-mongering–although I’m not Pollyannish enough to believe that it won’t.

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12 Questions About Phil Schiller’s Macworld Expo Keynote: How My Guesses Last Week Jibed With Reality

Posted by Harry McCracken on January 6, 2009 at 4:43 pm

Phil Schiller Macworld Expo keynote imagesI say that I don’t do Apple predictions anymore, but I’m not above musing about upcoming events and expressing opinions about what could happen. Last week, I did just that for Phil Schiller’s first and last Macworld Expo San Francisco keynote, in the form of a dozen questions and attempts to answer them. Now that it’s come and gone, let’s review the questions I asked, the tentative stabs at answers I provided last week, and what actually happened.

Without any further ado…

1. Will Schiller make reference to the unique nature of his keynote?

What I guessed: Yes. But only to joke briefly at the start and break the tension, which will be oozing through the room when the keynote begins.

What happened: Nothing that I remember other than a very oblique thank-you to the audience at the start. Certainly no wacky schtick or self-effacing humor. And if he mentioned Steve Jobs at all, I’m forgetting it at the moment.

2. Will he get all defensive about Apple’s abandonment of Macworld Expo as of 2010?

What I guessed: Nope. It would be startling if he mentioned it at all.

What happened: No direct reference, but a pretty clear dig when he bragged about the number of customers who enter Apple Stores each week, said “I’m sorry,” and pointed out it was equal to a hundred Macworld Expos.

3. Will he announce anything interesting?

What I guessed: Possibly. Everybody’s assuming that nothing any more pulse-pounding than a refreshed Mac Mini will be unveiled, but I’m not so sure. Steve Jobs might be avoiding the show as much because it’ll be a downer as because there’s nothing of note to talk about. Apple clearly wants to shine more limelight on execs other than Jobs. And hey, it’s not inconceivable that even a new Mac Mini could be cool.

What happened: One Apple fan’s snoozer is another’s blockbuster. News today included the end of iTunes DRM (overdue), the new 17-inch MacBook Pro (presumably once meant to launch with its smaller counterparts and with a sealed battery that will be, ahem, controversial), iWork and iWork.com (which are niche products in the Apple world), and iLife 09 (pretty neat looking). There were more things that people reasonably hoped might be announced–new Mac Minis, new iMacs, a 32GB iPhone, a new Apple TV–than were actually unveiled.

4. Will he announce anything hugely newsworthy–on the level of the Intel transition or the iPhone?

What I guessed: Nah. Surely not. Right?

What happened: He didn’t.

5. Will he follow the Jobs keynote format?

What I guessed: No. I’d think he’d want to mix things up to avoid a point-by-point comparison. So the Jobs outline (impressive stats/minor product introduction/bigger product introduction/One More Thing/Acknowledgment of Apple staffers’ contributions/musical guest) will probably not be Schiller’s template.

What happened: It was more Jobsian than I expected, and came pretty darn close to Jobs outline I reference above.

6. Will he pause to gulp bottled water?

What I guessed: Only for yuks.

What happened: I had my head down so I could furiously liveblog for much of the event, but as far as I know, Phil remained parched. Maybe he had a Sprite backstage during one of his breaks.

8. Will he take questions from the audience?

What I guessed: No. Too dangerous.

What happened: He didn’t (but as far as I recall, Jobs never does at Macworld Expo, either–only at smaller events).

9. Will the keynote attract a Jobsian avalanche of press coverage?

What I guessed: Sort of. For one thing, the lack of Jobs is almost as newsworthy as the presence of Jobs. And expectations for Schiller and for the event in general are so low that it shouldn’t be hard to exceed them. I’m guessing that at least some pundits will decide the event wasn’t as bad as they expected it to be.

What happened: There’s certainly tons of coverage of the keynote today. So far, most of the comment on the product announcements I’ve seen has been anywhere from downbeat to extremely downbeat. I haven’t seen much discussion of Schiller as Jobs substitute, but I thought he was OK. (Actually, it wasn’t unpleasant to have a keynote that was low on reality-distortion–though he did refer to the changes at the iTunes Store as “profound.”)

10. Will there be any surprises?

What I guessed: Maybe. It’s not really in Apple’s interest for its final Macworld Expo keynote to be a completely boring downer of an event. If the company can do anything unexpected and upbeat, it might.

What happened: Schiller did treat the iTunes announcements as a “one more thing,” although he didn’t really engage in the kabuki of a real Steve Jobs one-more-thing announcement. (It was more like “Aw, you know we saved one more thing.”) But I’d say the biggest surprise was the appearance of Tony Bennett at the end. He got the kind of response from the audience they usually give Jobs, and was wonderful. (Schiller was received politely. Very, very politely.)

11. Will Apple hold its own independent “keynote” event?

What I guessed: Yes, as soon as whatever wasn’t ready for Macworld Expo is ready to go, and with Steve Jobs. As soon as in the next couple of weeks, and likely by the end of February.

What may happene: I still think this is a likely scenario, although I don’t know how Jobs’s statement that he’s going to spend the next few months reversing his weight loss plays into this.

12. Who will keynote 2010’s Macworld Expo?

What I guessed: It’s gotta be David Pogue. Definitely David Pogue. And you know, he could be great.

What may happen: I dunno. But I’m doing a post-show interview with Macworld Expo show manager Paul Kent later this week–maybe I’ll ask him.

I maintain that what I was doing last week wasn’t making predictions, so I’m not going to give myself a grade. But I will be back with further thoughts about the event…and would love to hear yours. (Thanks, by the way, to the hundreds of people who attended our live coverage today–I had fun, even if this wasn’t the keynote was a little less than historic.)

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Apple’s Brilliant Video Engineer: Anonymous No More

Posted by Harry McCracken on January 6, 2009 at 2:56 pm

My favorite moment at this year’s Macworld Expo keynote had nothing to do with any of the products that were unveiled–it was was about the unveiling of a person.

At last year’s Macworld Expo keynote, Steve Jobs waxed rhapsodic about the Apple engineer who had gone on vacation to the Cayman Islands, shot video, and had trouble editing it–and who then invented the all-new, simpler iMovie as a result. He couldn’t have spoken more highly about the guy, but he never mentioned his name. I pinged an Apple contact to ask who this brilliant Apple employee was, and got a prompt and polite note back saying that they wouldn’t disclose his name.

After I wrote about this experience and said that I thought Apple should give its developers some glory–as it did in the early days of the Mac–I got an e-mail from someone who said that the iMovie inventor was surely Randy Ubillos, one of the creators of Adobe Premiere. My correspondent provided some pretty compelling evidence. But I decided not to identify Ubillos as Jobs’ video engineer–not because  I was afraid of ticking off Apple but simply because I had no idea if Ubillos wanted to be identified, and didn’t want to invade his privacy or cause trouble for him.

Today, Phil Schiller devoted a meaningful chunk of his Macworld Expo keynote to an ugrade to Ubillos’s version of iMovie that brings back some of the powerful features that folks missed, and adds some interesting extras like the ability to create animated maps. (Let’s face it: Ubillos may be enormously talented but iMovie 08 received a mixed reception at best, a fact Schiller pretty much politely acknowledged today.) But Schiller, who demoed iPhoto himself, didn’t show off iMovie 09–instead, he brought Ubillos onstage. The software’s creator got to do the demo and receive the applause.

Steve Jobs has often compared computer scientists to artists–and it was a delight to see one such artist get some credit today. May some of this colleagues come into the spotlight at future Apple product launches…

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Stevenote? Here’s Your Stevenote. Or, More Specifically, Your Woznote.

Posted by Harry McCracken on January 6, 2009 at 1:15 pm

Steve Wozniak and Steve JobsCall Steve Wozniak the anti-Steve Jobs. He’s far nerdier than Jobs ever was; he’s not a polished presenter; he has a zillion passions beyond Apple (Segway Polo, anyone?); and nobody’s ever going to spend any time worrying that he’s looking gaunt. But Woz was at least as important to Apple’s success in the 1970s and early 1980s as Jobs, and therefore hugely important to Apple as it exists today–since there might never have been an Apple that existed for more than a year or two if it weren’t for the genius of Woz’s Apple II design.

And even though Steve Jobs skipped this year’s Macworld Expo, Steve Wozniak didn’t. He did a demo of the Modbook, the modified touch-screen Mac tablet which is manufactured by Axiotron, a company whose board he recently joined. Woz’s demo of the Modbook was preceded by 20 minutes of presentation by Axiotron’s CEO, who gave a straightforward walkthrough of the product assisted by PowerPoint (er, Keynote) slides and who seemed to have problems with the booth’s amplification system. But Axiotron shoulda reversed things and put Woz onstage first, since his geeky glee in the Modbook was a far more potent sales tool than anything a CEO could say. And even if he’d had audio troubles (he didn’t) you would have been able to tell how much he liked the thing.

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A Letter From Steve Jobs

Posted by Harry McCracken on January 5, 2009 at 7:02 am

As I’ve said before, I’m neither a doctor nor an Apple shareholder, and there are few things more personal than one’s health. So I don’t like talking about Steve Jobs’ physical condition–especially when the only thing there is to write about is gossip. In fact, I don’t think I’ve written a single post that was principally about the subject.

But now Jobs has published a letter to the Apple community, and it addresses months of rumor about his weight loss and recent scuttlebutt that he opted out of giving tomorrow’s Macworld Expo keynote because he was too sick:

As many of you know, I have been losing weight throughout 2008. The reason has been a mystery to me and my doctors. A few weeks ago, I decided that getting to the root cause of this and reversing it needed to become my #1 priority.

Fortunately, after further testing, my doctors think they have found the cause—a hormone imbalance that has been “robbing” me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy. Sophisticated blood tests have confirmed this diagnosis.

The remedy for this nutritional problem is relatively simple and straightforward, and I’ve already begun treatment. But, just like I didn’t lose this much weight and body mass in a week or a month, my doctors expect it will take me until late this Spring to regain it. I will continue as Apple’s CEO during my recovery.

I hope that the letter–which seems to acknowledge obliquely that he bowed out of Macworld Expo at least in part to concentrate on his health–stifles further rumors rather than spawning a flurry of new ones. Aren’t you glad that your weight isn’t the subject of an avalanche of speculation–some of it by people who apparently thought they knew more about Steve Jobs’ health than the man himself did?

[UPDATE: Here’s a letter from Apple’s board of directors, saying, bascially, that it’ll tell the world if Jobs is unable to serve as CEO.]

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