Uh oh

Pancreatic cancer + "hormone imbalance" + 6 months leave = spending final days with family. I called it first!
 
He's right though.

Many forums have something in the rules or FAQ about posting and thread titles. Posting a title which amounts to 'look at this' is poor, especially in this case where someone's health is the topic.
 
bigredshark said:
But, hypothetically, how would apple do without him in your minds?
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It really would be anyone's guess. People seem to fall into the trap of thinking Steve designs every little bit of every product that ships out of Apple, when it obviously isn't the case.

It's perhaps his methods and strive for perfection that would be missed more than anything. Both Gates' and Jobs' working methods and intolerance of poor quality are well known throughout the industry.

Personally I think the company would be fine. Steve Jobs' keynotes are brilliant, in my opinion. If that goes missing it would definitely be a bad thing but the company is a bit of a joke when you consider how the market fluctuates when any sort of rumour comes along, credibility or not.

What they should have done, or what I would have done is made this announcement before MacWorld. Then at MacWorld, given people the things they wanted to see - I'm talking Mac Mini updates, iMac updates, Cinema Displays and all the other small bits and pieces that were eagerly anticipated.

Essentially what has happened here is we've had a pretty poor showing at MacWorld (in my opinion), now Jobs' has taken a leave and there's very little for the company to currently be excited about. Snow Leopard is about as exciting as Apple will get in the next couple of months (barring a miracle) and that really isn't enough for investors.
 
bigredshark said:
But, hypothetically, how would apple do without him in your minds?
Click to expand...
Well like any company they made the mistake of making one guy be (or appear to be) instrumental to its vision.

I don't believe that Steve Jobs - like Bill Gates - was directing traffic on the shop floor (to mangle two horrible sales-speak terms), the various departments in Apple are I'm sure autonomous and have creative control over everything they do. The key difference really is that whilst Microsoft made a point of not making Gates out to be anything more than he actually was (i.e. anyone at that level in a corporation is really just overseeing things in very broad terms), Apple went the other way and made it appear as if Jobs was the one who was coming up with all the various designs and that he was instrumental in driving Apple forward.

That sort of tactic pays dividends when the going is good, but when something like this happens it will affect them a lot more than if the same had happened to Gates. In that respect they're pretty much the architect of their own downfall, so to speak.

I think Apple will be essentially the same without Jobs - I don't believe that he was making all of the key decisions, and certainly he has a team around him that know the gameplan, share his vision, etc. That being said the worse his illness gets the worse I expect their share price will be affected.

EDIT: Doh, tried to post this about 10 times earlier but forum was broken.
 
I also tried posting earlier, but the hamsters were on strike :mad:

Anyway.. I think this will damage Apple for many die-hards, but I honestly don't believe Apple needs Steve so much as they did in the 90's.

The "Spotlight turns to notebooks" event in 2008 demonstrated this when Apple had all the different execs on stage. It used to be Steve, and Steve alone but that event really seemed like Apple were trialling the best person to take over the public speaking.

Now, whilst I don't think any 1 person could replace Steve (Jonathon Ive has an amazing vision for the products, but I can't see him being a CEO) I truly believe they'll get on with running the company as a team. Perhaps having more multi-speaker segments at their show; WWDC.

I don't disagree (double negative, ouch!) with having 1 figurehead for the public speaking but perhaps this is Apple's best opportunity to implement the succession plan. Tim Cook was the natural choice here, but it remains to be seen if he'll become the eventual fulltime successor.

The market has clearly spoken with a big drop in share price. I just hope they can see past the Steve-is-everything attitude, and see Apple for what it could be without him. That's not a snipe at Steve... I truly hope he gets better, but if it's a return of the cancer then it's not going to be a nice year for them, and totally understand why he's pulled out of the limelight if he suspects it could be that.
 
To play devils advocate a little, there are a lot of stories about how Jobs gets obsessed with tiny details of products and has huge input into the design process. I think that could hurt when he's not around to draw the line between technical and design innovation.

Then again he's reputedly a hard man to get on with at times, who's convinced he's right on all matters.

Who knows, I doubt it's serious anyway...
 
likwid said:
He's right though.

Many forums have something in the rules or FAQ about posting and thread titles. Posting a title which amounts to 'look at this' is poor, especially in this case where someone's health is the topic.
Click to expand...

Actually, it was just my thoughts on his health.

I didn't make a joke, my feeling was, Uh Oh, he's ill.
 
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