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Does Apple's Steve Jobs have cancer again?
- deathbyzen 18y agoMaybe he got the fat stressed out of him a-la Peter Jackson after the LOTR movies.
- redorb 18y agowould be the baddest mother fucker with cancer I know.
- pmjordan 18y agoOr maybe he's just getting older?
- greyman 18y agoWhether true or not, IMHO this is not appropriate to publish or discuss publicly. It is his private matter and only tabloids would publicize that for their own gain.
- dangoldin 18y agoI can see both arguments. If you are a shareholder you are entitled to know anything that may impact your earnings. There are certain conditions people should be aware of, I am not too sure cancer is one of them. Imagine a politician was schizophrenic, wouldn't you want to know that before you voted for him?
- hugh 18y agoHe's not a politician and we don't have the opportunity to vote for him, so that's not much of an analogy. There are laws about how much a publicly-traded company needs to disclose, and I'm pretty sure that the health of its CEO isn't on the list. On the other hand, since it is kinda important to the future of the company and the industry, I can't see any point in making it a taboo topic for the rest of us to discuss.
- dangoldin 18y agoIf you are a shareholder you do get the opportunity to vote for him. I'm not familiar with the laws, just playing devil's advocate here. CEOs come and go so one should ideally be investing in the company, unfortunately that is not the case.
- byrneseyeview 18y agoThe principle public companies adhere to is that they should disclose anything 'material', meaning anything that, if it were widely known, would affect the stock price. Perhaps there are investors out there who think Apple would be worth $162 billion run by Gil Amelio or whoever, but I'm not one of them.
- jonknee 18y agoThe health of the CEO definitely has impacts on the company, especially so in Apple's case. The health of Apple is directly related to Jobs, much more so than any other large company I can think of. There was an article (can't remember where) about his first bout with cancer and the struggle he had to stay on the up and up with the SEC. Basically it's his private matter up until it would be likely to affect his performance. It's kind of a grey area, but keeping things disclosed is much better for the company. It's pretty depressing, but you'd have all sorts of insider trading problems with only a few people knowing you're sick. The people who would know (nurses, doctors, etc) would probably be fairly under the radar as far as that's concerned too.
- pg 18y agoI agree. It was an asshole move to write such a story. There's no actual news here. And despite all their high-sounding justifications for writing it (which make up about half the text), it's pretty clear what their motives are. Incidentally, according to the software I wrote to warn if the quality of stories on the front page goes down, this is the lowest scoring story ever to get this high on the front page.
- sant0sk1 18y agoPerhaps you could publish a list of similar stories that don't deserve front page status and display them to users when they create an account. Or arm the top 100 users with a -1 button and let them offset the tendency to front page bad (or non) stories.
- tokipin 18y agoor perhaps only being able to downvote a story once it reaches X points, so it doesn't get downvoted to hell but doesn't stay up too long either
- icey 18y agoPersonally, I think if you blocked fromedome's blog spamming, the overall quality of submissions would probably go up by a measurable amount.
- dangoldin 18y agoI have a sneaking suspicion that "fromedome" is actually "Dan Frommer" from Alley Insider. The names are just too similar but I have no way of either proving or disproving it.
- icey 18y agoI assume that's who it is as well; given every submission is to a Dan Frommer article. Which is why I'm saying he's just a blog spammer. Well, that along with the fact that he's never even bothered to comment once here.
- Monkeyget 18y agoApparently the reality distortion field is radioactive.
- edw519 18y agoI agree that his health is a personal matter. Is this multi-billion dollar company overly dependent on one individual? If not, then his health is not an issue. If so, then the real issue isn't his health. The real issue is the backup/succession plan. I have seen 100 million dollar companies paralyzed by the heart attack of one individual. Apple stockholders do deserve to know that that can't happen here.
- noonespecial 18y agoWell said. I will now predict the future. Steve Jobs will die. So will everyone else. Apple is a company that is very clearly in need of an world class succession plan. It needs to be public and it needs to be endorsed by Steve himself while he is still seen as healthy and in control. Apple needs it more than most because of Steve's rock star status. If Jobs has to step down before this is in place, I don't think Apple will do very well, both when it comes to stock value and product lines.
- swombat 18y agoI will now predict the future. Steve Jobs will die. Holy shit! That can't happen! Maybe if I buy an iPhone it won't happen!
- noonespecial 18y agoEvery time someone unlocks an iPhone, a little part of the Steve dies. :)
- mechanical_fish 18y agoApple is a company that is very clearly in need of an world class succession plan. It needs to be public... You do realize that, on the day Apple announces such a plan, there will be a massive panic sell and the stock price will crash. Everyone will assume that the public announcement of such a plan is a signal that Jobs is eyeing the door -- the guy isn't obligated to run Apple for the rest of his life and he certainly doesn't need the money. If I were Apple I would create a world-class succession plan, inform the chosen successors and the board, and then lock the plan in that vault where they've been keeping the iPhone 3G.
- ComputerGuru 18y agoThank God ValleyWag is banned, because their article on the matter is obscenely light-hearted about the matter. I pray Jobs is OK, cancer is no joke :-(
- jrockway 18y agoWhile we're joking about Jobs... I hope his cancer treatment has the following conditions: * can only be used in 5 locations * requires a two-year contract * only available in 6 countries
- flupkear 18y agoWhat amaze me about this article and comments here is that the only reason it is important this guy cancer is because it'll affect the stock prices.
- davidw 18y agoI think you can take it as a given that everyone hopes he's ok.
- delano 18y agoOh, Apple's Steve Jobs. For a second I thought they were talking about the other one.
- bprater 18y agoIt would be a huge loss to ever lose this man. He's an epic visionary and every moment he's on the ground with us, he's changing the playing field, often for our own benefit, especially us hackers.
- LPTS 18y agoGoogle the guy who wrote the article. Hes a fucktard. Its called manipulating stock prices. That is all. No its not. There is a manipulation technique here, the same kind of shit politicians pull, where if you are considering the question, the propagandist wins.
- swombat 18y agohttp://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/10/apple-in-parallel-turning-the-pc-world-upside-down/ http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/10/apple-in-parallel-t... From this photo, Steve Jobs sure looks healthy. Move on, nothing to see.
- mpc 18y agoWow, just because he's not overweight it's assumed that he has an advanced case of cancer? He's probably a lot healthier than a lot of CEOs, most of which are old and overweight (and therefore at a much higher risk for all kinds of health problems). No one is writing articles about them and how shareholders should be concerned.