THE US press seems ready to bury Apple's messiah Steve Jobs.
Over the weekend hacks have been ringing up every medical expert they can find to see if they can find out if Steve is going to peg it or not.
The common consensus is that Apple's messiah is not going to provide a medical miracle this time.
Reuters claims that Jobs's pancreatic cancer may have recurred even although the doctors who it found admitted they can only speculate without hard information.
The sound money is that the tumour he was treated for in 2004 could have spread to another organ or resurfaced in the pancreas.
Dr. Clay Semenkovich, an endocrinologist at Washington University in St. Louis, told Reuters Jobs "may have a new mass that's substantially altering his physiology and causing him to lose weight."
What is strange is the number of Apple fanboys who find such news offensive. They are unusually vocal about what they see as 'bad journalism' according to a large number of Web II comments at the bottom of such stories.
While there is some truth in this, as it is not the most accurate way to get a story, the reaction of the press is caused simply because Apple and Jobs are refusing to give any details about his illness.
In a normal tech company, the CEO would not be expected to give out any details. However Apple is a company which has been built entirely on its tame media publicity machine. Jobs, with his messianic image, has become the closest thing that a consumer society has to royalty. His company is propped up by that image so there are a lot of shareholders who have their fortunes tied to the health of the King.
For a long time Steve Jobs has been Apple and if it is "good night Myrtle" for Jobs, then Apple is going to be crippled for a long time - if not forever.
It is newspapers' duty to do all they can to provide information on Jobs. He is, whether he, or the company likes it or not, public property. He was made by the media and it needs to be fed even if he can't get out of bed to lay down a saucer of milk.
Once the US press would do what they were told, but Jobs' story is changing and his outfit's historically secretive attitude will not stop speculation. µ
Even if there is a new CEO on the background, the best solution is virtualize Jobs. A 3-D Speaking hologram at every Tech event, product release and quaterly earnings...thats all Investers need. Jobs anouncements of products looks like he wants to bring future, and a the same time certify product line. Unless consumers and investers see or hear Jobs, they will be reluctant to buy new stuff.
But I find such reporting "offensive" too. Let the man have his privacy in health matters PARTICULARLY if his life may be pending.......have we lost all decency?
It is Farrell who seems ready to bury Jobs with this disrespectful paparazzi-style article.
It's intrusive at best and screams for correction. You have no right to speculate on the man's health. He has the right to privacy and just because the media says that we all need to know his private health details doesn't make it so. Investors are riding Apple's successes to the bank,.......but they have no right to "insider information" concerning the health of their employees. This is part of the risk in playing the stock market. Let the man along to heal, or not. Good Luck to Jobs.
I too agree that the man is entitled to his privacy, and speculation and media interest generally causes more harm than good. However, the main point in this article is correct. Steve Jobs IS Apple to most people. The last time the company tried to operate without him they teetered on the brink of bankruptcy until MS bailed them out. Like it or not, the turnaround Jobs gave Apple now has them fused together in almost everyone's mind. You can't blame people for starting to a bit twitchy when it becomes obvious there's something wrong with the man, cos everyone knows there's a good chance Apple is doomed should he become incapacitated.
When Apple went public, the health of their CEO became business. Ask any of Apple's investors.
He's sick . . he's not sick . . he's not at MacWorld . . he will be . . who cares? Reality check: He's had two good ideas in thirty or so years that have genius (Edison had that many per single year), if you don't count his genius to marketing. Don't get me wrong, I was born with a Mac, and in Palo Alto, but sitting around doing nothing on "billions of dollars" for over a decade, all to come out with an average phone with touch screen innovations? Let the guy retire in peace and privacy, and stop pretending he alone is behind the good Apple does -- cause I bet there is far more genius in the hard working thousands of employees than a master of marketing hype in a black turtleneck and jeans. Best of health and privacy to you Steve - next generation of creative genius icons please!
As an apple investor, my only concern is that Steve gets well, for his own sake. At some point in the near or distant future, Steve will leave the company for health or other reasons, and when the stock drops because dumb investors think he IS apple, then I will buy more.
Having recently lost a loved one to pancreatic cancer, he should have some privacy and respect and be left alone if thats what he chooses. Apple will live without him. Apple's longtime customers and employees wont let Gil Amelio near their baby ever again.
If you base your investing in a multi-billion dollar company based on any single person then you have not made a wise investment choice. Anyone could be gone tomorrow. I have no sympathy for investors who feel like they have a right to know the latest health update on Jobs. Let the man deal with his health issues as publicly or as privately as he sees fit to do so.
I think that the author of this article is a very sick individual himself who has no respect for his fellow man. You have no right to write such rubbish and i think that it would do you the world of good to think before you write. Your lack of compassion is really sickening.
"...even although" Go back to class and learn to write, please.
come out and attack anyone who writes about their "messiah"
Everything he has done with Apple since he came back has been a pittance in his financial worth. Pixar made him more than Apple will ever be worth (he is one of the largest single shareholders in Disney with Roy's blessing). He is Apple because it is what he loves to do, and though in the process he has made a lot of other people a lot of money, he hasn't done it for money. Let the man have his privacy.p
He is not public property. If you truly believe him to be, please start giving us updated and detailed medical records every time you and every other member of The Inquirer visits a doctor for any reason. Please go out of your way to make sure the rest of the press does the same. Your names appear far more often in the news than his does, so you are more apt for the title of 'public property'.
Learn English and then write your story. It is like trying to understand Yoda. My head, hurting it is.
I had the misfortune, in early 1984, to fall for Job's nonsense and bought an early Mac. He said it would be a fully open system - it was not; he said the memory upgrade would be easy, it was not; He made it appear that the wide open development era as happened with Apple would be repeated - it was not; I spent weeks trying to contact an elusive Guy Kawasaki and trying to decide if I wanted to give $15,000 for some development software. Some poor people bought Lisas's for $10,000 so that they could develop for the Mac. Meanwhile, I balked at paying $60 for a printer cable, and found a $4 equivalent elsewhere. I'm still inspired by that Ridley Scott commercial but after gettting Jobs' number I never went near an Apple again and tossed all their literature in the trash as it appeared, regularly, in my mailbox for the next several years. Big "brother"'s IBM computer became the truly open standard, cloned everywhere and was the one to bring cheap universal computing to everyone. I felt lucky to sell my early Mac for $900, several months after I had figured out that all I had for my $2500 early Macintosh was an expensive digital clock and a cute animation of Alice jumping around on a chessboard. My opinions about the Macintosh were confirmed months later when I walked into a bookstore and saw a stack of books on Macintosh Basic on clearance for $1.99 each. Jobs' "reality distortion" field apparently reflected backwards and eventually fooled him too. Poetic justice. But times change, and my bitterness at my early Mac experiences (I was out of work when I bought it and really believed I could easily develop software for it) is now tempered by the modern day Macintosh, a software and hardware powerhouse and proof positive that some dreams, if believed strongly enough, do come true.
Sure, If the press can't get it from the horse's mouth any source will do, they can then print any invention and later blame their sources for innacurracies.
I consider myself mostly opposed to the whole Apple mentality, but nonetheless I still find this article very disturbing. The bigger problem is not that the media wants to know things about this, but articles that do not show even the slightest respect towards him as a human being. In two years of reading inq. articles, this was the first (for me), that will take them along time to wash off... Learn some humility guys...
In a previous article, you said: "Apple is 90 per cent marketing and design. It has managed to convince its fanatical fanbase, against all evidence, that it is somehow good for them. It takes charisma to do that." Your alleged theme of a master salesman of snake oil, sermonizing fanatical fans, led you to using the term Messiah. And now you are pushing your superficial metaphor to introduce Golgotha. I find your writing extremely silly. You are forgetting, or probably refusing to admit, that the Macintosh computer remains a masterpiece.
The Messiah was crucified on Golgotha, not buried. You knew that, right? He was buried in the tomb of a rich man... Your headline reads like a comment on OSX from someone who has only used Windows all his life.
We've always known that Nick Farrell is a sad and embittered man, but now he reveals a new quality: lack of scruples. Go choke on your bile.
In a normal US public company, anything that is going to affect stockholders/investors revenues HAS to be revealed. Including the health of the said companies CEO. as per usual Nick Farrell, clueless in seattle you.
Steve Jobs is a celebrity. I don't see why he should be treated different to any other celebrity just because he's a CEO instead of an actor or musician. The media should do what it usually does: finding out things about a celebrity's personal life, in this case maybe somebody should set a countdown timer to his death or something once they find out the medical information lol. That would really make those fanboys scream. Apple fanboys should just shut up and deal with it; if somebody's in the public eye this kind of thing is to be expected.
"It is newspapers' duty to do all they can to provide information...." How does speculation qualify as information?
Do you guys have any decency left? Steve Jobs is not a public property he is a National Treasure and whatever you write about him must be written with concern about him not the shareholders. They do not own share of him. And if they think that they do - they do not deserve him as CEO of the company they invest in - they deserve Mr. Madoff as their CEO.
I don't own anything made by Apple, though I also don't have an unhealthy hatred of Apple either. The company does not affect my life in the least. That said: It would be a big help if the list of articles on the Inq main page had the author's name as well as the title and date. That way, when I saw Nick's name, I could be sure not to click on that link. Currently I have to hit backspace as soon as I see his name at the top of an article since I no longer read the garbage he types and that, unfortunately, is too late as he has already gotten whatever credit/rating/etc he gets for clicks onto his articles.
I wish Jobs speedy recovery and we should all remember that there's still a higher power than us human beings. Whenever I see my neighbor or my fellow citizen in a situation like this, my best hand I can give to them is a prayer and I believe it works. I will put him in my PRAYERS and he will rise strong again.
Perhaps the Cool Duke of Cappuccino should bog a la Mark Twain to the tune of 'reports of my demise are greatly exaggerated' Deadpool anyone ?
Mr. Farrel crossed a line he shouldn't have. Paparazzi journalism of worst kind.
Where do all these people come from? They only seem to appear when a negative or critical article appears about Apple. Is there some kind of Apple activist list where the faithful are directed to defend the faith with maniacal intensity? Let's see, are there any other groups which does this, using the same language and with the same vitriolic fervour? Only the Scientologists come to mind, yet another cult based around high priced products designed to extract money from the gullible.
A Dominum factum est illud, et est mirabile in oculis notris.
... from the "journalists" who danced gleefully on the graves of Rieser's innocent victim for a cheap laugh? Hey Nick, when do we get an update on your gran's spastic colon? It might mean you have to take a day or two off to change her colostomy bag so it's clearly in the public interest.
I do not know Steve Jobs personally, but if Apples don't cut it for the cure for cancer (Computers in research) Stick to the old common plant life and try something else than apples. If anybody knows him, tell him to search online for graviola. I don't even sell it, just to make it a point this is not A-hem, won't even type it out. As for the like of Steve Jobs, I thought that he would have a kinder side than Bill Gates, but with what I saw in Pirates of Silicon Valley, the only thing that I focused on it was a woman responsible for the mouse point and click GUI (Graphic user interface). No matter how much and neatly you pile arrogance, that hatred reel it's ugly head and pounces on you, in Steve's case it's cancer. But I do not wish anybody dead, that includes Steve Job, Bill Gates and the like that's why I mentioned graviola, a life is a life.
Its hilarious how you are all flaming the author and moaning about giving jobs his privacy, yet here you all are commenting on the article all the same. I for the record am not a hypocrite cause I don't care about him or his future/health/life expectancy.
stick to the mantra "News, reviews, facts and friction". We love you for it. Golgotha is referenced because Job's is being crucified in the media while he is very ill. I hope he recovers, but if he doesn't then at least he appears to have led a most excellent life. He has succeeded through good times and bad. Apple Fanboys, this is the Gutterwatch section, can you please learn to read a bit more deeply before slagging this place off. Keep up the good work Inq guys and gals. PS I am an Inq fanboy!
... most apple fanboys are idiots. On topic: never liked the greedy man, but hope he will recover. However, if God have different plans for him, this will be the end of Apple (if MS don't decide to save them again)