The IT Nerd

Ever since the launch of the iPhone 3G at the World Wide Developers Conference in June, there have been lots of chatter on the Internet and elsewhere about the health of Steve Jobs. The speculation was that based on his appearance at the World Wide Developers Conference, his pancreatic cancer (which was first diagnosed in 2004) had returned. The speculation came to a head when his health became an issue on the Q3 conference call a few days ago when Citigroup asked about it. Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer responded with this:

“Steve loves Apple, serves at the pleasure of the board, and has no plans of leaving Apple. Steve’s health is a private matter.”

Henry Blodget however said that this answer is not acceptable:

“Steve Jobs is arguably Apple’s single most valuable asset. If he’s seriously ill, shareholders have every right to know this. The definition of “material information,” after all, is information that the average investor would consider important in making an investment decision–and it’s hard to see how an Apple investor would not consider Steve’s health material.”

Here’s the bottom line folks. I totally understand that few companies are tied to their CEO the way Apple is. After all, Jobs brought Apple back from the grave and is making them a big player in the personal computing (not to mention phones, music players, etc) market. So his ability to run that company is of great interest to investors and Apple Fanbois everywhere. However, this has turned into a circus that I would expect to see on Entertainment Tonight. It is tastless, and is none of our business. Apple shouldn’t have to provide status updates on his health unless his health impairs his ablity to run Apple. Investors and analysts have no right to ask for this info. Fanbois shouldn’t spend time sweating about it.

Let’s just leave Steve Jobs alone to do what he does best. Please.

UPDATE: This story talks about the effect of “The Steve’s” health on Apple’s share price.

This entry was posted on July 23, 2008 at 9:12 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Apple, Steve Jobs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.