29 ms·

Steve Jobs speaks out about his health

153 points by spif 18y ago

brandnewlow 18y ago
That sound you hear? The shuffling of papers and stomping of feet as editors order their writers to "dig up everything you can" on hormone imbalances.
- jlc 18y ago
  In particular, are hormone imbalances frequently comorbid with, say, pancreatic cancer?
  - jlc 18y ago
    Or a side effect of cancer treatment . . . .
    - brandnewlow 18y ago
      Send your questions to: ask_the_explainer@yahoo.com and Slate'll get one of their assistants on it ASAP.
  - hcayless 18y ago
    Jobs doesn't have typical pancreatic cancer, or he'd almost certainly be dead by now. He has a carcinoid, some of which do pump out hormones that can cause effects like weight loss (and nausea, diarrhea, etc.). These symptoms are treatable. My father in law has a variety of this. He lost something like 70-80 pounds before they got it under control, but has been doing well for years now.
    - dcurtis 18y ago
      Also, he's a vegan which could complicate his nutritional problems.
      - wensing 18y ago
        Complicates as in ... ?
        dcurtis 18y ago
        Lots of ways. Vegans are an extreme minority. I assume most medical diets are designed for the majority of people. They probably had to formulate a special diet for him that was vegan, and it may have taken a while to find the proper mix. Also, statistical outlook data for cancers, surgeries, etc, are based on statistically average populations. Vegan people deviate that from that population, and that could mean their outlook/treatment be different. Jobs' whipple surgery drastically changed his digestive system. And because it's at least sort of rareish, I am not sure any good data exists for proper procedure on vegans who have undergone a whipple surgery. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancreaticoduodenectomy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancreaticoduodenectomy And: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veganism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veganism
        puffythefish 18y ago
        I've read that Steve Jobs is a pescetarian, which in general is much healthier than being a vegan (it is much easier to get essential nutrients such as B vitamins with fish). Here's one source: http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/Steve_Jobs_-_Personal_life/id/2097046 http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/Steve_Jobs_-_Personal_li... In the fourth paragraph: "Jobs is a pescetarian (not a vegetarian or vegan as is often claimed) — although he does not eat mammalian meat, he reportedly eats fish from time to time."
      - michaelneale 18y ago
        Yes he mentioned it was a nutritional problem, with a simple solution - chances are for years he has been depriving himself unknowingly of something important.
        ars 18y ago
        Uh, no, chances are not that. Unless you are very stupid (and I don't think he is....) you can get what you need with just about any diet.
  - thras 18y ago
    The hormone that matters most for fat is insulin. And yes, that puts things smack dab at the door of the pancreas. An insulin shot will tend to make you gain weight (like it does to type 1 diabetics). Don't know what Jobs' doctors are telling him to do.
    - ars 18y ago
      I thought he lost muscle, not fat. (Otherwise why would he say ..rob protein...)
  - lnguyen 18y ago
    Good article on Bloomberg: Steve Jobs’s Weight Loss May Have Been Spurred by Tumor Surgery (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aWiP2Bbh67Ig http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aWiP...)
- jedc 18y ago
  It sounds pretty vague to me. For being a press release about his health, it doesn't really say much. (Not that it should reveal everything, but horomone imbalance is vague.)
  - tptacek 18y ago
    The more Jobs says in public about his health --- even vaguely --- the more trouble Apple gets in as a corporation if they're caught dissembling about it. The fact that Jobs wrote anything at all about his health is an indicator that he doesn't believe he's in trouble.
    - deleted 18y ago
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- andreyf 18y ago
  According to wikipedia, "hormones are chemicals released by cells that affect cells in other parts of the body". Now, I'm not a doctor, but I think "hormone imbalance" is probably the most general thing one can say about a health problem. Kind of like my program doesn't work because the characters aren't lined up correctly...
  - ConradHex 18y ago
    Or, my favorite, "there were some zeros and ones mixed up."
allenbrunson 18y ago
wow. i think that's the first time jobs has ever tipped his hand in reaction to stories in the media. i don't know if it's just because it's so out of character for him or what, but i don't like it.
- deleted 18y ago
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- a-priori 18y ago
  I think it's sad he feels compelled to reveal this personal information.
  - petercooper 18y ago
    This is one of the downsides to being head of a publicly traded corporation - shareholders deserve to know about things like this. If Apple were private, it wouldn't matter.
  - allenbrunson 18y ago
    a great deal of apple's strength is that they don't follow trends. if they listened to what the industry thinks, they would license osx for plain-vanilla pcs, compete against ugly low-cost hardware from their competitors, etc etc etc, until they were indistinguishable from dell or hp, and therefore completely uninteresting. apple's refusal to follow trends comes right from the top. yes, it can be construed as arrogant that jobs hasn't commented on his health before now. but that's his way. this methodology has downsides, but it keeps the company from slogging it out in the sewers with all the other commodity manufacturers. this announcement is a reaction to outside pressure, which is the opposite of what makes apple great.
    - rp 18y ago
      "a great deal of apple's strength is that they don't follow trends. if they listened to what the industry thinks, they would license osx for plain-vanilla pcs, compete against ugly low-cost hardware from their competitors, etc etc etc, until they were indistinguishable from dell or hp, and therefore completely uninteresting." They did exactly this a year before Jobs came back. In spite of Jobs's claims to the otherwise, the experiment did not last long enough to indicate whether it would have been viable in the long term. What is clear is that the clone makers where releasing computers more expandable and powerful than what Apple actually had on the market.
dejb 18y ago
It is interesting to contrast the different approaches taken by Steve Jobs and Sergey Brin with regards to information about health issues. Sergey seemed to be trying to open/crowd source his (potential) problems where as Steve has taken the closed/inhouse source approach for as long as possible. I can understand his position though and hope he makes a full recovery. But can't help thinking that if he released more details, an army of both qualified and unqualified Mac fans would have spent countless hours researching the problem and possibly come up with a solution sooner.
- DanHulton 18y ago
  You know, I think I would place more faith in a team of highly-trained and paid doctors who are intimately familiar with his situation and medical record than I would in "the crowd". Especially considering the fact that doctors keep all the embarassing little details confidential (and let's face it, being in ill-health is embarassing to most, and especially someone who takes such pride in being "a force of nature" like Jobs does).
  - Tichy 18y ago
    I think both approaches can have merits. Doctors are only human, and they are not always right.
    - likpok 18y ago
      Yes, but the human body is complicated. I would not trust a non-professional for any sort of nontrivial diagnosis. Enough people don't understand the fundamentals of medicine (look at the success of airborne and homeopathy) that crowd-sourcing is of dubious quality. You can get second opinions, but generally it's smart to stick to doctors for them.
      - dejb 18y ago
        Of course you wouldn't follow a non-profession's diagnosis withour further support or verification. But I do think that crowd sourcing would probably be able to find and identify the correct solution faster a few experts. As long as the process allows the views of those with higher levels of knowledge to predominate then it would work. In this case I believe there would be many professionals who would devote some time to look into the matter. Apart from you privacy the worst you are risking would be to waste some of your expert doctors time in considering some additional possibilities.
mikeyur 18y ago
I hope everyone is happy now and can get over it. It's sad he had to come to this. Why is it your business to know about every detail of his personal life? And don't give me this 'I'm a stockholder, I deserve to know' BS. Apple isn't going to magically fail overnight. 3%+ shift in Apple stock since this press release hit. 100% decline in Steve's dignity. My thoughts and wishes are with Steve and his family.
- Angostura 18y ago
  I don't believe Steve's dignity has been diminished one jot. I'm saddened that you think less of him. Or are you saying that that you don't think less of him, but believe that everyone else will view him has having less dignity.
  - mikeyur 18y ago
    I don't think less of him. I am just saddened that it has had to come to this. Others have already said they think less of him because of this (in this thread alone). The call for him to do this came from above him. Not from a single person above him, but the thousands of Apple fans and stockholders demanding this information. I think anyone who demanded to know every piece of Steve's life should feel ashamed for forcing a good man into this situation.
    - DLWormwood 18y ago
      You know... I wonder if Steve should go on SNL when he's feeling better and pull a "Shatner" just to put the stockholders and rumormongers in their place... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_a_life http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_a_life
  - axod 18y ago
    The last line sounded like he was pretty peeved.
    - mikeyur 18y ago
      Not peeved, just disappointed in others :)
gcv 18y ago
I am glad that Steve remains in pretty good health. Thank goodness. I'm a little disgusted at how all this concern about the quality of Apple gadgets and the price of Apple stock trumps simple human concern for a fellow human being.
- SapphireSun 18y ago
  I heard some of Job's speeches on philosophy and it really resonated with me. I think he's a really cool guy even if he's a bit arrogant. The real value is in who he is.
  - ruby_roo 18y ago
    Wha..? Where would one go to read or hear these speeches?
    - SapphireSun 18y ago
      Jobs gave an address to Stanford university's graduating class in 2005. Here's a link to youtube if you want to watch it: www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA It was quite interesting and spoke deeply to me.
      - jim-greer 18y ago
        He covered his health in that speech, but according to this CNN piece he was pretty misleading. http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/02/news/companies/elkind_jobs.fortune/index4.htm http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/02/news/companies/elkind_jobs.f... (Scroll about 1/4 of the way down) If he's going to talk about his health, he should be more straightforward than this. I think once you're the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, your responsibilities to your shareholders mean that you need to be more forthcoming about your health than he has been.
        redrobot5050 18y ago
        No, you need to be more forthcoming with your board of directors, some of which (Al Gore) are close personal friends and can keep their mouth shut to the press if it really is a "private matter". The fact that Apple's board hadn't take any action was (to me) a clear indication that he was A-Ok. Steve might be exceptional, but the rest of the senior management has Sarbanes-Oxley to contend with -- meaning they could face jailtime for any intentional falsification or misleading statements given to the board of directors. And the board/stockholders have been extremely watchful ever since the backdating options/SEC Probe scandal a year or so back.
llimllib 18y ago
I'm glad that Steve gets "sophisticated" blood tests, I wouldn't want him having those simple ones.
- jrockway 18y ago
  I think the word "sophisticated" there is to mean something like "we're pretty sure we figured it out this time".
  - llimllib 18y ago
    which is, of course, not at all the meaning of sophisticated? Which was my point. Anyway, I just thought it was a funny word to use there, and people have been modding this comment probably more than any other comment I've made. Inverse importance/modding relationship for the win!
ivankirigin 18y ago
I really don't like the treatment of his health. It's just kind of low class that thousands of people are paying such close attention largely because they'd like to maintain the value of their stock or short at the right time. I certainly agree that Apple without Jobs isn't as good. But this treatment is morbid. The note at the end about saying more than he wanted is really sad.
- thras 18y ago
  I think that there is no way to explain this fully without invoking "the Cult of Mac." A lot of people see Steve Jobs as a visionary and important to the development of a number of products that they care deeply about. Very deeply. I don't know another consumer product like it. Further, Jobs is wasting away in front of everyone's eyes. That makes wonderful press, just like the opposite tends to do: CNN tells me that Oprah has gained her weight back. I guess I don't really judge anybody for being curious. I certainly don't judge Jobs for being jealous of his privacy. It's a human tragedy and one that we'll all face one day ourselves (those of us who aren't lucky enough to have our heart give out unexpectedly while on top of a 17-year-old mistress in a seedy hotel that is). Man is mortal and all our works perish.
- mhartl 18y ago
  The secrecy surrounding the health of superstar CEOs reminds me of the way the major sports leagues used to handle injuries. NFL teams, for example, used to be quite cagey about their players' health---a practice you could easily defend on the same grounds people use to defend CEOs like Jobs. The problem is that, propriety aside, injury information is extremely valuable, especially to gamblers, and the result was that oddsmakers went to great lengths to acquire injury information surreptitiously (by bribing trainers, etc.). Eventually, the NFL (and other leagues) decided to stop denying reality and institute formal injury reports; now all teams are (relatively) forthcoming about players' injuries. As with athletes, and like it or not, CEO health information is often quite valuable. Vilifying those who seek to ferret it out is just shooting the messenger.
  - ivankirigin 18y ago
    Vilifying those who seek to ferret it out is just shooting the messenger. People certainly have every right to discuss what they want. I gladly exercise my right to call them out as tasteless in a public forum with my name attached to the comment. I disagree with this last bit of your comment though. My comments aren't about the messenger. I don't mind TechCrunch posting it. It is news when a CEO posts a message like this. I don't like the segment of the audience whose motivations I question who made him post it.
jyothi 18y ago
A guaranteed rise in stock price!
sabat 18y ago
OK, so he has now upped the ante. Either he's being completely truthful -- and AAPL stockholders have less to worry about -- or he's lying outright. If he's lying, people will go to jail. If Steve dies, the SEC will find others complicit in this lie and they'll do serious time.
- unalone 18y ago
  Do you really think Steve Jobs would lie about his health like this? What reason does he have? Why would he invent something like hormone deficiency? Why would he lie about being at risk of his life?
  - sabat 18y ago
    No, I don't think he would lie to this extent. That's my point. Either he's done something only a crazy person would do, or we can believe him. My point is that by coming out with specifics, he's made it easy to believe -- not just because he's being specific about what's wrong, but because if he was lying then a bunch of people would suffer horribly. (And what would be the point of that?)
  - gojomo 18y ago
    People lie^H^H^H spin all the time, Jobs included, for all sorts of reasons. They also carefully choose words and what to reveal to make statements that are unfalsifiable/defensible, but still give the wrong impression to most readers. I believe what Jobs has written here is substantially true -- the identifiable incentives for him and the company are to reveal the smallest amount of true information possible to assuage fan and investor fears. But there always remains a nonzero chance he's using his famous 'Reality Distortion Field'. So sabat's point in the grandparent post is fair. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_distortion_field http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_distortion_field
- sutro 18y ago
  Well given that the SEC gave Apple the smallest of slaps on the wrist for backdating options (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Heinen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Heinen), and given that they failed to do anything at all about Madoff despite Markopolos beating them over the head with detailed evidence about his Ponzi scheme for ten years (http://mises.org/story/3273 http://mises.org/story/3273), and given that SEC staffers seem to do little more than surf porn and run their own private businesses (http://www.soxfirst.com/50226711/sec_porn_conflicts_of_interest_and_private_businesses.php http://www.soxfirst.com/50226711/sec_porn_conflicts_of_inter...), I wouldn't hold my breath over any SEC action for something as ambiguous and comparatively trivial as this.
tlrobinson 18y ago
Gizmodo was part of the problem Steve referred to, and they're still at it trying to cover their mistake. Their "updated" article still says that Steve is not doing the keynote because of his health, yet nowhere in the letter does Steve even imply that. http://gizmodo.com/5120687/steve-jobs-health-declining-rapidly-reason-for-macworld-cancellation http://gizmodo.com/5120687/steve-jobs-health-declining-rapid...
- boucher 18y ago
  "A few weeks ago, I decided that getting to the root cause of this and reversing it needed to become my #1 priority" I'd say he is in fact implying that his decision was related to learning about his health problem.
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wizlb 18y ago
Please get well or just die soon please so we can stop reading about it. Thank you, have a nice day.
jobsisafaggot 18y ago
What can we do to aid his death along a little faster and make it a little more painful for the lying deceitful bastard? Here's hoping that he dies painfully and that Mactintosh follows soon behind. I bought a Macbook Pro. It was the biggest mistake I ever made. Doing anything creative (video editing, multi-track recording,) or anything else for that matter, is much easier and faster on a Windows or Linux-based P.C. Macintosh is all marketing and no substance. Anybody want to buy my $3,000+ paperweight MacBook pro? Anybody drink the Steve Jobs koolaid and actually think their computers and operating system are anything short of complete garbage? hmmmm ? You can buy mine in mint condition for pennies on the dollar. Get it the hell out of my life. Don't even get me started on the piece of crap the iPhone. Anybody who thinks it is revolutionary, the first of its kind or unique is clearly out of touch with reality and wireless market.

153 points by spif 18y ago

That sound you hear? The shuffling of papers and stomping of feet as editors order their writers to "dig up everything you can" on hormone imbalances.

jlc 18y ago
In particular, are hormone imbalances frequently comorbid with, say, pancreatic cancer?
- jlc 18y ago
  Or a side effect of cancer treatment . . . .
  - brandnewlow 18y ago
    Send your questions to: ask_the_explainer@yahoo.com and Slate'll get one of their assistants on it ASAP.
- hcayless 18y ago
  Jobs doesn't have typical pancreatic cancer, or he'd almost certainly be dead by now. He has a carcinoid, some of which do pump out hormones that can cause effects like weight loss (and nausea, diarrhea, etc.). These symptoms are treatable. My father in law has a variety of this. He lost something like 70-80 pounds before they got it under control, but has been doing well for years now.
  - dcurtis 18y ago
    Also, he's a vegan which could complicate his nutritional problems.
    - wensing 18y ago
      Complicates as in ... ?
      - dcurtis 18y ago
        Lots of ways. Vegans are an extreme minority. I assume most medical diets are designed for the majority of people. They probably had to formulate a special diet for him that was vegan, and it may have taken a while to find the proper mix. Also, statistical outlook data for cancers, surgeries, etc, are based on statistically average populations. Vegan people deviate that from that population, and that could mean their outlook/treatment be different. Jobs' whipple surgery drastically changed his digestive system. And because it's at least sort of rareish, I am not sure any good data exists for proper procedure on vegans who have undergone a whipple surgery. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancreaticoduodenectomy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancreaticoduodenectomy And: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veganism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veganism
        puffythefish 18y ago
        I've read that Steve Jobs is a pescetarian, which in general is much healthier than being a vegan (it is much easier to get essential nutrients such as B vitamins with fish). Here's one source: http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/Steve_Jobs_-_Personal_life/id/2097046 http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/Steve_Jobs_-_Personal_li... In the fourth paragraph: "Jobs is a pescetarian (not a vegetarian or vegan as is often claimed) — although he does not eat mammalian meat, he reportedly eats fish from time to time."
    - michaelneale 18y ago
      Yes he mentioned it was a nutritional problem, with a simple solution - chances are for years he has been depriving himself unknowingly of something important.
      - ars 18y ago
        Uh, no, chances are not that. Unless you are very stupid (and I don't think he is....) you can get what you need with just about any diet.
- thras 18y ago
  The hormone that matters most for fat is insulin. And yes, that puts things smack dab at the door of the pancreas. An insulin shot will tend to make you gain weight (like it does to type 1 diabetics). Don't know what Jobs' doctors are telling him to do.
  - ars 18y ago
    I thought he lost muscle, not fat. (Otherwise why would he say ..rob protein...)
- lnguyen 18y ago
  Good article on Bloomberg: Steve Jobs’s Weight Loss May Have Been Spurred by Tumor Surgery (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aWiP2Bbh67Ig http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aWiP...)
jedc 18y ago
It sounds pretty vague to me. For being a press release about his health, it doesn't really say much. (Not that it should reveal everything, but horomone imbalance is vague.)
- tptacek 18y ago
  The more Jobs says in public about his health --- even vaguely --- the more trouble Apple gets in as a corporation if they're caught dissembling about it. The fact that Jobs wrote anything at all about his health is an indicator that he doesn't believe he's in trouble.
  - deleted 18y ago
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andreyf 18y ago
According to wikipedia, "hormones are chemicals released by cells that affect cells in other parts of the body". Now, I'm not a doctor, but I think "hormone imbalance" is probably the most general thing one can say about a health problem. Kind of like my program doesn't work because the characters aren't lined up correctly...
- ConradHex 18y ago
  Or, my favorite, "there were some zeros and ones mixed up."

allenbrunson 18y ago

wow. i think that's the first time jobs has ever tipped his hand in reaction to stories in the media. i don't know if it's just because it's so out of character for him or what, but i don't like it.

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a-priori 18y ago
I think it's sad he feels compelled to reveal this personal information.
- petercooper 18y ago
  This is one of the downsides to being head of a publicly traded corporation - shareholders deserve to know about things like this. If Apple were private, it wouldn't matter.
- allenbrunson 18y ago
  a great deal of apple's strength is that they don't follow trends. if they listened to what the industry thinks, they would license osx for plain-vanilla pcs, compete against ugly low-cost hardware from their competitors, etc etc etc, until they were indistinguishable from dell or hp, and therefore completely uninteresting. apple's refusal to follow trends comes right from the top. yes, it can be construed as arrogant that jobs hasn't commented on his health before now. but that's his way. this methodology has downsides, but it keeps the company from slogging it out in the sewers with all the other commodity manufacturers. this announcement is a reaction to outside pressure, which is the opposite of what makes apple great.
  - rp 18y ago
    "a great deal of apple's strength is that they don't follow trends. if they listened to what the industry thinks, they would license osx for plain-vanilla pcs, compete against ugly low-cost hardware from their competitors, etc etc etc, until they were indistinguishable from dell or hp, and therefore completely uninteresting." They did exactly this a year before Jobs came back. In spite of Jobs's claims to the otherwise, the experiment did not last long enough to indicate whether it would have been viable in the long term. What is clear is that the clone makers where releasing computers more expandable and powerful than what Apple actually had on the market.

dejb 18y ago

It is interesting to contrast the different approaches taken by Steve Jobs and Sergey Brin with regards to information about health issues. Sergey seemed to be trying to open/crowd source his (potential) problems where as Steve has taken the closed/inhouse source approach for as long as possible. I can understand his position though and hope he makes a full recovery. But can't help thinking that if he released more details, an army of both qualified and unqualified Mac fans would have spent countless hours researching the problem and possibly come up with a solution sooner.

DanHulton 18y ago
You know, I think I would place more faith in a team of highly-trained and paid doctors who are intimately familiar with his situation and medical record than I would in "the crowd". Especially considering the fact that doctors keep all the embarassing little details confidential (and let's face it, being in ill-health is embarassing to most, and especially someone who takes such pride in being "a force of nature" like Jobs does).
- Tichy 18y ago
  I think both approaches can have merits. Doctors are only human, and they are not always right.
  - likpok 18y ago
    Yes, but the human body is complicated. I would not trust a non-professional for any sort of nontrivial diagnosis. Enough people don't understand the fundamentals of medicine (look at the success of airborne and homeopathy) that crowd-sourcing is of dubious quality. You can get second opinions, but generally it's smart to stick to doctors for them.
    - dejb 18y ago
      Of course you wouldn't follow a non-profession's diagnosis withour further support or verification. But I do think that crowd sourcing would probably be able to find and identify the correct solution faster a few experts. As long as the process allows the views of those with higher levels of knowledge to predominate then it would work. In this case I believe there would be many professionals who would devote some time to look into the matter. Apart from you privacy the worst you are risking would be to waste some of your expert doctors time in considering some additional possibilities.

mikeyur 18y ago

I hope everyone is happy now and can get over it. It's sad he had to come to this. Why is it your business to know about every detail of his personal life? And don't give me this 'I'm a stockholder, I deserve to know' BS. Apple isn't going to magically fail overnight. 3%+ shift in Apple stock since this press release hit. 100% decline in Steve's dignity. My thoughts and wishes are with Steve and his family.

Angostura 18y ago
I don't believe Steve's dignity has been diminished one jot. I'm saddened that you think less of him. Or are you saying that that you don't think less of him, but believe that everyone else will view him has having less dignity.
- mikeyur 18y ago
  I don't think less of him. I am just saddened that it has had to come to this. Others have already said they think less of him because of this (in this thread alone). The call for him to do this came from above him. Not from a single person above him, but the thousands of Apple fans and stockholders demanding this information. I think anyone who demanded to know every piece of Steve's life should feel ashamed for forcing a good man into this situation.
  - DLWormwood 18y ago
    You know... I wonder if Steve should go on SNL when he's feeling better and pull a "Shatner" just to put the stockholders and rumormongers in their place... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_a_life http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_a_life
- axod 18y ago
  The last line sounded like he was pretty peeved.
  - mikeyur 18y ago
    Not peeved, just disappointed in others :)

gcv 18y ago

I am glad that Steve remains in pretty good health. Thank goodness. I'm a little disgusted at how all this concern about the quality of Apple gadgets and the price of Apple stock trumps simple human concern for a fellow human being.

SapphireSun 18y ago
I heard some of Job's speeches on philosophy and it really resonated with me. I think he's a really cool guy even if he's a bit arrogant. The real value is in who he is.
- ruby_roo 18y ago
  Wha..? Where would one go to read or hear these speeches?
  - SapphireSun 18y ago
    Jobs gave an address to Stanford university's graduating class in 2005. Here's a link to youtube if you want to watch it: www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA It was quite interesting and spoke deeply to me.
    - jim-greer 18y ago
      He covered his health in that speech, but according to this CNN piece he was pretty misleading. http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/02/news/companies/elkind_jobs.fortune/index4.htm http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/02/news/companies/elkind_jobs.f... (Scroll about 1/4 of the way down) If he's going to talk about his health, he should be more straightforward than this. I think once you're the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, your responsibilities to your shareholders mean that you need to be more forthcoming about your health than he has been.
      - redrobot5050 18y ago
        No, you need to be more forthcoming with your board of directors, some of which (Al Gore) are close personal friends and can keep their mouth shut to the press if it really is a "private matter". The fact that Apple's board hadn't take any action was (to me) a clear indication that he was A-Ok. Steve might be exceptional, but the rest of the senior management has Sarbanes-Oxley to contend with -- meaning they could face jailtime for any intentional falsification or misleading statements given to the board of directors. And the board/stockholders have been extremely watchful ever since the backdating options/SEC Probe scandal a year or so back.

llimllib 18y ago

I'm glad that Steve gets "sophisticated" blood tests, I wouldn't want him having those simple ones.

jrockway 18y ago
I think the word "sophisticated" there is to mean something like "we're pretty sure we figured it out this time".
- llimllib 18y ago
  which is, of course, not at all the meaning of sophisticated? Which was my point. Anyway, I just thought it was a funny word to use there, and people have been modding this comment probably more than any other comment I've made. Inverse importance/modding relationship for the win!

ivankirigin 18y ago

I really don't like the treatment of his health. It's just kind of low class that thousands of people are paying such close attention largely because they'd like to maintain the value of their stock or short at the right time. I certainly agree that Apple without Jobs isn't as good. But this treatment is morbid. The note at the end about saying more than he wanted is really sad.

thras 18y ago
I think that there is no way to explain this fully without invoking "the Cult of Mac." A lot of people see Steve Jobs as a visionary and important to the development of a number of products that they care deeply about. Very deeply. I don't know another consumer product like it. Further, Jobs is wasting away in front of everyone's eyes. That makes wonderful press, just like the opposite tends to do: CNN tells me that Oprah has gained her weight back. I guess I don't really judge anybody for being curious. I certainly don't judge Jobs for being jealous of his privacy. It's a human tragedy and one that we'll all face one day ourselves (those of us who aren't lucky enough to have our heart give out unexpectedly while on top of a 17-year-old mistress in a seedy hotel that is). Man is mortal and all our works perish.
mhartl 18y ago
The secrecy surrounding the health of superstar CEOs reminds me of the way the major sports leagues used to handle injuries. NFL teams, for example, used to be quite cagey about their players' health---a practice you could easily defend on the same grounds people use to defend CEOs like Jobs. The problem is that, propriety aside, injury information is extremely valuable, especially to gamblers, and the result was that oddsmakers went to great lengths to acquire injury information surreptitiously (by bribing trainers, etc.). Eventually, the NFL (and other leagues) decided to stop denying reality and institute formal injury reports; now all teams are (relatively) forthcoming about players' injuries. As with athletes, and like it or not, CEO health information is often quite valuable. Vilifying those who seek to ferret it out is just shooting the messenger.
- ivankirigin 18y ago
  Vilifying those who seek to ferret it out is just shooting the messenger. People certainly have every right to discuss what they want. I gladly exercise my right to call them out as tasteless in a public forum with my name attached to the comment. I disagree with this last bit of your comment though. My comments aren't about the messenger. I don't mind TechCrunch posting it. It is news when a CEO posts a message like this. I don't like the segment of the audience whose motivations I question who made him post it.

jyothi 18y ago

A guaranteed rise in stock price!

sabat 18y ago

OK, so he has now upped the ante. Either he's being completely truthful -- and AAPL stockholders have less to worry about -- or he's lying outright. If he's lying, people will go to jail. If Steve dies, the SEC will find others complicit in this lie and they'll do serious time.

unalone 18y ago
Do you really think Steve Jobs would lie about his health like this? What reason does he have? Why would he invent something like hormone deficiency? Why would he lie about being at risk of his life?
- sabat 18y ago
  No, I don't think he would lie to this extent. That's my point. Either he's done something only a crazy person would do, or we can believe him. My point is that by coming out with specifics, he's made it easy to believe -- not just because he's being specific about what's wrong, but because if he was lying then a bunch of people would suffer horribly. (And what would be the point of that?)
- gojomo 18y ago
  People lie^H^H^H spin all the time, Jobs included, for all sorts of reasons. They also carefully choose words and what to reveal to make statements that are unfalsifiable/defensible, but still give the wrong impression to most readers. I believe what Jobs has written here is substantially true -- the identifiable incentives for him and the company are to reveal the smallest amount of true information possible to assuage fan and investor fears. But there always remains a nonzero chance he's using his famous 'Reality Distortion Field'. So sabat's point in the grandparent post is fair. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_distortion_field http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_distortion_field
sutro 18y ago
Well given that the SEC gave Apple the smallest of slaps on the wrist for backdating options (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Heinen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Heinen), and given that they failed to do anything at all about Madoff despite Markopolos beating them over the head with detailed evidence about his Ponzi scheme for ten years (http://mises.org/story/3273 http://mises.org/story/3273), and given that SEC staffers seem to do little more than surf porn and run their own private businesses (http://www.soxfirst.com/50226711/sec_porn_conflicts_of_interest_and_private_businesses.php http://www.soxfirst.com/50226711/sec_porn_conflicts_of_inter...), I wouldn't hold my breath over any SEC action for something as ambiguous and comparatively trivial as this.

tlrobinson 18y ago

Gizmodo was part of the problem Steve referred to, and they're still at it trying to cover their mistake. Their "updated" article still says that Steve is not doing the keynote because of his health, yet nowhere in the letter does Steve even imply that. http://gizmodo.com/5120687/steve-jobs-health-declining-rapidly-reason-for-macworld-cancellation http://gizmodo.com/5120687/steve-jobs-health-declining-rapid...

boucher 18y ago
"A few weeks ago, I decided that getting to the root cause of this and reversing it needed to become my #1 priority" I'd say he is in fact implying that his decision was related to learning about his health problem.

deleted 18y ago

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wizlb 18y ago

Please get well or just die soon please so we can stop reading about it. Thank you, have a nice day.

jobsisafaggot 18y ago

What can we do to aid his death along a little faster and make it a little more painful for the lying deceitful bastard? Here's hoping that he dies painfully and that Mactintosh follows soon behind. I bought a Macbook Pro. It was the biggest mistake I ever made. Doing anything creative (video editing, multi-track recording,) or anything else for that matter, is much easier and faster on a Windows or Linux-based P.C. Macintosh is all marketing and no substance. Anybody want to buy my $3,000+ paperweight MacBook pro? Anybody drink the Steve Jobs koolaid and actually think their computers and operating system are anything short of complete garbage? hmmmm ? You can buy mine in mint condition for pennies on the dollar. Get it the hell out of my life. Don't even get me started on the piece of crap the iPhone. Anybody who thinks it is revolutionary, the first of its kind or unique is clearly out of touch with reality and wireless market.