Coop's Corner

If you're an Apple shareholder or employee, the good news is that Steve Jobs' health is not in any immediate danger.

Or so we're supposed to surmise from the cryptic note issued by Jobs early Monday on the state of his health--and the even more cryptic note put out by his employer.

At the unveiling of new MacBooks in October, Steve Jobs tersely addressed concerns about his health: "That's all we'll talk about with Steve's health today. Want to see (his blood pressure) higher? Just ask him more questions."

(Credit: James Martin/CNET News)

Here's the relevant text from Jobs' statement Monday:

As many of you know, I have been losing weight throughout 2008. The reason has been a mystery to me and my doctors. A few weeks ago, I decided that getting to the root cause of this and reversing it needed to become my #1 priority.

Fortunately, after further testing, my doctors think they have found the cause--a hormone imbalance that has been "robbing" me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy. Sophisticated blood tests have confirmed this diagnosis.

The remedy for this nutritional problem is relatively simple and straightforward, and I've already begun treatment. But, just like I didn't lose this much weight and body mass in a week or a month, my doctors expect it will take me until late this Spring to regain it. I will continue as Apple's CEO during my recovery.

OK, it's great to know that he's not facing a cancer recurrence, as some had speculated. Jobs is a tech icon and the industry would be much the poorer were he to retire from the scene. But this latest PR stunt is going to raise new questions. Not about the exact nature of Jobs' ailment but about the parsimonious way Apple has communicated with the public about the health of its CEO.

Until now, the mantra was "Steve's health is a private matter, Steve is our CEO." The impression Apple wanted to leave was that everything's just fine at the helm. That shaded the truth--and I'm being charitable here. At this point, how can you trust the official chronology offered up by Jobs and Apple? Even with Monday's statements, I can't call it communication so much as stonewalling.

True to form, Apple won't care a fig what outsiders may think. "Just keep on buying and don't bother us with the rest of it." Talk about a reality distortion field.

See also:
• Steve Jobs discloses hormone imbalance
• Health concerns force Apple's Jobs from Macworld
• Apple's last Macworld beginning of new era

Click here for more Macworld Expo coverage from CNET News.

The health of Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been a topic of concern for some months now. On Monday, with the company's Macworld show getting under way, Apple and Jobs issued statements on Jobs' health. We'll be following this breaking story throughout the day.

In October, Steve Jobs briefly addressed his state of health onstage at an Apple event.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET News)

CUPERTINO, Calif. -- It is widely recognized both inside and outside of Apple that Steve Jobs is one of the most talented and effective CEOs in the world.

As we have said before, if there ever comes a day when Steve wants to retire or for other reasons cannot continue to fulfill his duties as Apple's CEO, you will know it.

Apple is very lucky to have Steve as its leader and CEO, and he deserves our complete and unwavering support during his recuperation. He most certainly has that from Apple and its Board.

Here is a separate letter from Steve Jobs:

Dear Apple Community,

For the first time in a decade, I'm getting to spend the holiday season with my family, rather than intensely preparing for a Macworld keynote.

Unfortunately, my decision to have Phil deliver the Macworld keynote set off another flurry of rumors about my health, with some even publishing stories of me on my deathbed.

I've decided to share something very personal with the Apple community so that we can all relax and enjoy the show tomorrow.

"I will continue as Apple's CEO during my recovery."

--Steve Jobs

As many of you know, I have been losing weight throughout 2008. The reason has been a mystery to me and my doctors. A few weeks ago, I decided that getting to the root cause of this and reversing it needed to become my #1 priority.

Fortunately, after further testing, my doctors think they have found the cause -- a hormone imbalance that has been "robbing" me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy. Sophisticated blood tests have confirmed this diagnosis.

The remedy for this nutritional problem is relatively simple and straightforward, and I've already begun treatment. But, just like I didn't lose this much weight and body mass in a week or a month, my doctors expect it will take me until late this Spring to regain it. I will continue as Apple's CEO during my recovery.

I have given more than my all to Apple for the past 11 years now. I will be the first one to step up and tell our Board of Directors if I can no longer continue to fulfill my duties as Apple's CEO. I hope the Apple community will support me in my recovery and know that I will always put what is best for Apple first.

So now I've said more than I wanted to say, and all that I am going to say, about this.

Steve

See also:
• On eve of Macworld, Jobs talks health
• Now Apple's credibility really is in the balance
• Apple's last Macworld beginning of new era

Click here for more Macworld Expo coverage from CNET News.

Finishing off his column for Wednesday's edition of The New York Times, Tom Friedman offers a novel suggestion:

Somebody ought to call Steve Jobs, who doesn't need to be bribed to do innovation, and ask him if he'd like to do national service and run a car company for a year. I'd bet it wouldn't take him much longer than that to come up with the GM iCar.

No, it's not a GM

(Credit: Tesla Motors)

Friedman obviously doesn't expect General Motors to act on the idea (although Jobs did simultaneously manage both Apple and Pixar for nearly a decade). His larger point, I think, was to contrast the mindsets that prevail in Silicon Valley and Detroit. And as the political powers try to grapple with the fate of GM and the U.S. auto industry, they must be wishing there was a way to perform a gene graft.

In his piece, Friedman approvingly cites a column in The Wall Street Journal by Paul Ingrassia, who used to run that paper's Detroit bureau. It deserves quotation in length:

"In return for any direct government aid," he wrote, "the board and the management (of GM) should go. Shareholders should lose their paltry remaining equity. And a government-appointed receiver--someone hard-nosed and nonpolitical--should have broad power to revamp GM with a viable business plan and return it to a private operation as soon as possible. That will mean tearing up existing contracts with unions, dealers and suppliers, closing some operations and selling others and downsizing the company...Giving GM a blank check--which the company and the United Auto Workers union badly want, and which Washington will be tempted to grant--would be an enormous mistake."

So on and so forth. But as important as all this is, these are process questions to get GM through the near term. However, the salvation--not just for GM but the entire American auto industry--depends upon the sort of innovation that has helped the technology business thrive through several economic cycles.

Without putting Jobs on a special pedestal, he embodies a textbook example of how creativity can rescue a near-moribund operation. After Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he did not hesitate to pull the plug on dead-end projects like the Newton, or ruffle feathers by cutting off the Mac clone makers. At the same time, he infused Apple with a design aesthetic that manifested itself in the development of products such as the iMac, the Mac OSX, the iPod, and the iPhone. None of this was preordained; it was the result of innovative thinking and fast execution.

Now contrast Apple's experience with that of GM. That company let itself get addicted to churning out hulking gas guzzlers because that's where the easy money came from. Energy was relatively cheap and management's thinking was that "green" was the purview of left-wing pansies who ran San Francisco. (GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz, who is on record dismissing the potential of hybrid autos, also was quoted saying that global warming was "a total crock of [expletive deleted].")

Maybe it's our particular infatuation with Apple and its mercurial co-founder, or maybe it's simply a by-product of the times we live in, where seemingly nothing is out of bounds for public discussion. Whatever the reason, I surely can't be the only person reacting to the "Is Steve having a cancer relapse" rumor with a fix of frustration and disgust.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET News.com)

Truth be told, I did wonder whether Jobs had suffered a relapse when I saw his interview with CNBC yesterday. He looked thin, even gaunt. But last time I checked, neither Apple nor its CEO had issued a health alert.

Unfortunately for Apple, people remember that the company's board failed to immediately disclose Jobs' original cancer diagnosis. (Fortune Magazine reported that the board held onto the news for nine months before disclosing it to shareholders.) So now the rumor mill is churning out speculation aplenty--just in case.

Yesterday, Valleywag speculated about Jobs' health and this morning Henry Blodget is running his mouth.

"Many readers will consider this post inappropriate," Blodget began. He should have taken that advice to heart and stopped right there.

Sideline diagnoses aren't worth much, and I don't buy this nonsense that the public has any special rights here. If Jobs no longer can carry out the function of a CEO, he should turn over the reins to a successor. Until then, it's a private matter for Jobs and his family.

Enough already. It's beyond bad form.

I once asked Steve Jobs why Apple was so indifferent toward corporate customers. At the time, big companies were in the beginning stages of one of their periodic PC upgrade cycles, leaving Dell virtually alone to clean up.

So, didn't it make sense to more aggressively pursue that business? Jobs froze me with one of those looks.

Steve Jobs: Consumers rule but how seriously is he thinking about Corporate America?

(Credit: Dan Farber/CNET News.com)

That's not an interesting market, he said. Next question.

Silly me.

Of course, Jobs was entirely right. IT has since become a predictably cyclical business, while the real sizzle in tech turned out to be in the consumer space. Besides, Apple's been able to win over increasing numbers of corporate converts without doing much--let alone paying for an expensive sales force to knock on corporate America's doors. (Last year, its enterprise share grew threefold to 4.2 percent, according to Forrester. However, the uptake was largely confined to enthusiasts and small work groups.)

Jobs' pursuit of the consumer assumed that computers would become media terminals in millions of homes. Not overnight, but over the course of years. It was a wise hunch. In the early part of the decade, the computer industry was at a point where home networking technologies were still limited and consumers were only then starting to move video content from Internet-connected devices to televisions in sizable numbers.

Now we're witnessing a interesting confluence of events. Apple's plying its consumer expertise to take the iPhone into the corporate marketplace. At the same time, Research in Motion is adopting the opposite tack with its product line. (RIM is reportedly working on an iPhone killer although details are still sketchy.

Just as Jobs has been deliberate about the business market, Research in Motion's co-CEO Jim Balsillie is taking his time targeting consumers. The indirect hints about RIM coming after Apple make for tantalizing speculation. But the real spadework is taking place on RIM's flank, where Balsillie is deepening the company's alliances with enterprise partners. That's why he's at the Sapphire conference in Orlando, Fla., this week, talking up a deal to run SAP's CRM application natively. Larry Dignan at our sister site ZDNet literally ran into Balsillie at the conference, where he pressed him about what's next:

Balsillie said one path would be to expand into adjacent SAP applications for direct store delivery, salesforce automation, and human resources. Another path would be to go after analytics and embedded business intelligence. Balsillie said he's leaning toward the latter, but noted that "it's just my opinion" and he would have to consult with developers, product managers and other key people inside RIM and SAP.

That network of relationships with enterprise vendors will come in handy if RIM decides to more directly confront Apple. When Jobs gives his WWDC keynote in early June, he is expected to unveil new iPhone models. Maybe he'll also have more to say about any new friends he's made in the corporate world.

Times change and who knows? He may have concluded that it's become a more "interesting" business.