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.
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.
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.
Missing the point. It's all about value. A broken leg is is an impediment to an athlete. A pancreatic cancer, along with its treatment, is a hurdle for a CEO.
I disagree. While I am certainly sad personally that Steve Jobs is not doing well health-wise, I think that his behavior is directly responsible for the uproar about his health.
From any number of articles that I have read, Steve has set up his company to be centered around him. As CEO, he gets involved in minute decisions regarding the design or function of a product. I've seen his management style described as "controlling" or "micromanageing" a number of times. He has created a public persona of the hipster CEO dressed in black who presents every year to throngs of amazed people, "Oh, and one more thing...".
So, when he creates himself to be a single point of failure, his health becomes a big news. He should have figured this out 4 years ago when he was trying to cure his cancer homeopathically, and his board of directors had an intervention with him to get him to go to the doctor.
Media companies have a similar systems when they work with stars. When the success of a multimillion dollar organization depends heavily a single person's performance or health, you better believe that that person's health has a very large insurance policy. And, there's a lot of tabloid interest in that person's health. Just ask Oprah.
I fully agree with you. Personally I find it not in good taste. I read a vehement comment from someone on another forum earlier about how it is Jobs duty to let his shareholders know, but frankly if he feels he's up to the job (and the board do as well) then that would be good enough for me. Look at what he has achieved at Apple and let him continue if he is. I do wish him the very best for his health - as I would anyone.
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.
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...
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.)
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.
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.
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.
Replace that with "Unless you are reasonably smart (and I think he is) you don't get what you need with certain diets."
The issue with vegetarianism is that humans are not meant to eat just vegetables. Therefore, great care must be taken to get certain nutrients which are not found often in vegetables. Protein is the big one, but there are others.
However, with a properly crafted diet (an issue that most? vegetarians run into) you should be able to get everything. (possibly with the aid of supplements).
Yeah. Have you ever seen the food schedule for someone who beat cancer? Surf and Turf. Steak and Potatoes. Salmon and Chicken. 4 or 5 meals a day once your appetite comes back.
Cancer treatments typically deplete the body of protein and lean tissue, and most doctors agree that eating meat is just the fastest/easiest way to recover.
Its possible/probable a macrobiotic diet could contain enough protein and still be 100% vegan, but if there's another "imbalance" (say GMO Soy or Legumes which contain Estrogen) that could create issues he's had to deal with during his recovery.
When I was in the UK I tried out "quorn" - I think that was how you spelled it. Basically a fungal/mushroom grown substance that is high in protein. All the vegoes I knew loved it (actually it tasted good to me), that and lots of beans/legumes.
I really don't enjoy eating meat - so once I tried vegetarianism for about 4 months. I have never been so sick in my life ! It probably was co-incidence, or could have been lack of some nutrients (or body adjusting) but it was horrible.
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.
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_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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
If Steve Jobs died tomorrow, Apple's stock would fall a gigantic amount and anyone who owns it would be totally screwed, at least in the short term. It is in Steve's best interest to at least give people a small idea of what is going on with him, so they can gauge risk. I personally think that's a sacrifice a person has to make to be a CEO.
Emphasis on the short term. Look at Apple's top team. The people at the top are all incredible. I'd guess some of them are just as anal and headstrong as Jobs himself is. If Jobs dies, Apple goes on, probably more-or-less the same as it did before. It'll just find a new evangelist, and Apple absolutely has them to offer.
This wasn't about sacrifice for the company. This isn't Jobs working a week without sleeping to get a product launched, or his leaving his own company because he thought it was going downhill. This was rumormongering. Jobs had a history of cancer, so people thought the worst; while that's partly understandable, the people who accused him needed to assume that Jobs was enough of a dick to just not tell people about a life-threatening disease for short-term growth. This continued after Jobs called that one reporter, insulted him, and then promised to tell him about his health condition off the book.
As such, it's pretty shameful that Jobs had to come out and tell everybody about the state of his health. Media types, even tech media types, care more about a dramatic narrative than they do about accurate reporting, and that showed itself here.
Jobs will go to extremes for his sense of justice. He could have stayed at Apple the first time, but he quit instead to make a new company that did what he felt he ought to do.
No, I'm not. I got a Mac about 6 months ago, and while I read things I find interesting about the company, I don't go out of my way to read biographies and the like. So from what I'd read, Jobs was demoted and he chose to quit rather than stay at his position.
You don't have to go out of your way to read biographies. In Jobs' Stanford commencement speech, discussed and linked many times here on HN, he talks about being "fired" from Apple. He also discusses it in Cringely's "Triumph of the Nerds" documentary. Given that Jobs himself publicly acknowledges that he was fired, I'd be interested to know what it is you read that claims otherwise.
But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
That I always assumed meant he left for something else, but rereading I can see that he does specifically say fired. Huh! I don't know where I got the impression that he left voluntarily, though it's one that I've had for a while now.
He can die tomorrow of any one of many causes, one of which could be cancer. But unless every stockholder is also in the life insurance business they have no way to properly gauge the risk of Jobs dying on any given day.
Trying to control stocks in the short term is for suckers and idiots, and also it is not possible. Steve Jobs will die. Any sentient being buying the stock knows that; factor it in to your purchasing decisions.
The point being if he was secretly sick and about ready to die, Apple not saying anything would amount to fraud. Of course he'll die, but there's a difference between randomly being hit by a bus and knowing about a deadly disease for a year without any disclosure. There's room for improvement for the regulation in this space, but it's a sad reality. Luckily this doesn't appear to be the case.
And if he disclosed that he was dying to the public, that would help the stock?
When Steve dies Apple's stock is going to drop no matter what and it may not recover. Whether this info is given out months before or immediately after it makes no difference.
Slow and painful or quick and painful, take your pick.
As Steve is a shareholder, if the stock price has uncertainty about his health factored in, and Steve announces his health is ok, the share price will likely rise and perform better going forward. If he is selling shares periodically to generate cash and diversify, he will get a better price.
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!
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.
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.
"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.
But Apple isn't just about powerful computers. It's about the Apple way. And for better or for worse, that means focusing on the complete package of the computer.
"Completely uninteresting" in exchange for "expandable and powerful" is not a good one for Apple to make.
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.
Well given that the SEC gave Apple the smallest of slaps on the wrist for backdating options (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), 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_inter...), I wouldn't hold my breath over any SEC action for something as ambiguous and comparatively trivial as this.
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?
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.
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?)
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.