So from 1 hacker to Steve, we wish you get better soon mate.

Just the fact that this sort of gossipy news appears everywhere dones't bother me that much (that's media for you), but I wish people would stop their silly speculations about corporate implication and just let the man rest, like he's asking for. This isn't the National Enquirer...

Hope he gets well, being sick sucks :/

I hope the best for him.

I asked her yesterday if she knew who Larry Page or Sergey Brin was, she had no idea.

A lot.

How many people that advertisers care about would be affected by new police evidence rules?

Nowhere near as many.

Seems pretty cut and dried. If advertisers pay the bills you write to the audience they're interested in.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/washington/15scotus.html?h...

The question [...] was whether the requirement established in Apprendi applied to the decision whether a defendant convicted of multiple crimes must serve consecutive or concurrent sentences if the harsher punishment required a judge to find facts not determined by the jury.

Realty check: People get sick and they rest and then they get better. That's what's happening here.

If this were undiagnosed, or a really serious condition, or life threatening, or anything like that I'd have a different opinion. But as of right now all I see is a bunch of people trying to make a really big deal out of a relatively small thing in order to drive hits/sell newspapers.

Pretty often, actually, people get sick and then die. Especially people who've had cancer. :(

Reading between the lines here, I suspect his health is in really bad shape. I hope I'm wrong, though.

More to the point he has a disease that causes depression, fatigue, hair loss, urinary tract infections, and other embarassing conditions. So it makes perfect sense for him to stay at home to recover.

Other than he had Cancer 5 years ago what lines are you reading in between that makes you think he's sicker than he says?

Anything so serious that it could cause a CEO to leave a company for six months is extremely serious.

Second this isn't a significant amount of time off. Perfectly healthy 53 year olds with millions of dollars in the bank take sabbaticals all the time.

If you're that rich, you don't go to the hospital, the hospital comes to you.

As far as "there’s always a reason" I have to ask: Have you looked at what the symptoms are for the disease he has? Fatigue, Hair Loss, Urinary Tract Infection, etc... I’d take a few months off if I were him. It doesn’t mean he’s any sicker than he says he is.

Extended weight loss isn't something that just happens. Granted with the surgery he's had, you do expect some effects as the GI system probably isn't as efficient as it once was. But given the care he's probably receiving, any minor issue should have been resolved. And for any workaholic to have to take time off means that it's probably something serious.

Even with the best care, you can only make a diagnosis based on what you know to test for. You can treat the symptoms but if the underlying cause isn't detected, the best you can do is prolong the inevitable.

Hope I'm wrong cause it's not anything I'd wish on anyone.

Oh, and I own Apple stock too

I don't want to appear callous, but people get sick all the time, and most people don't really notice or care. People notice in this case because Jobs is viewed as being critical to Apple's success, and has a track record of innovation, is a famous, wealthy guy, has affected the lives of millions, etc...

One of the good things about markets is that they can make transactions possible covering a very broad range of actors (see "I, Pencil"), some of whom might even detest each other, were they to meet in person. This, on the other hand, is one of those cases where markets come across as sort of cold and impersonal in a bad way, because the potential loss of millions of dollars has a way of focusing people's attention much more than the illness of some random person. They're two sides of the same coin.

*http://www.msf.org/

I bought some Apple in 2008 when it dipped to about $88, but dropped out around $97 when I made my target profit on it. I do think the stock price is a proxy for "How will Apple do without Jobs", which many are curious about.

On another note, might be a good idea to buy AAPL in a few days. Long-term, I think Apple will succeed, with or without Jobs at the helm, but it's sure as hell going to be down over the next few days.

You obviously weren't with us in the 90s.

//edit: Fixed the dates. Thanks for pointing it out. And yes, I did typo twice ><

The thing about Jobs is he can marshall talent in a way that really drives technical staff nuts at the time, but delights them with the results. Other boards give the technical people their heads, and then you end up with OpenDoc and Taligent. God knows who can replace that. Gassée couldn't.

Were they at Apple in the same positions as they are in today?

Yet I'm not as optimistic as you are. None of the people you mentioned have comparable salesmanship abilities, or product vision. Sure, Ive can create great designs, their engineering teams are awesome, and Cook is operationally without peer.

But who comes up with the next iPhone, or decides to simplify the product line like Steve did when he came back?

I think Apple will manage with Schiller delivering keynotes instead of Jobs. The Schillernote at MWSF wasn't bad.

80's. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs#Beginnings_of_Apple_...

Did you mean Apple couldn't set anything up, or Jobs couldn't set anything up?

I thought the reference about being forcibly removed made it obvious. Sorry for the confusion.

After several months of being sidelined at Apple, Jobs resigned on Friday, September 13, 1985. He told the board he was leaving to set up a new computer company, and that he would be taking several Apple employees from the SuperMicro division with him. He also told the board that his new company would not compete with Apple and might even consider licensing its designs back to them to market under the Macintosh brand.

Jobs was joined by former Apple employees Bud Tribble, George Crow, Rich Page, Susan Barnes, Susan Kare, and Dan'l Lewin

Mind explaining it in some words of your own instead of jumping around the bush?

Wasn't NeXT set up by Steve Jobs in 1985, around the time he was removed from Apple?

Honest question for you: Were you nitpicking for the hell of it, or honestly confused as to what I meant?

In '08 - Jobs will be sorely missed. The WWJD (What would Jobs Do?) question will be asked around apple for years to come

Why don't Schiller, Ive or Cook deliver the keynote address?

Furthermore - the things that have made Apple so incredible aren't entirely from Jobs. Schiller handles marketing. Ive designs the things. There are tons of people working at Apple who make the magic happen. Steve embodies those things, yes, but his one greatest achievement was his creation of Apple itself. He made the company that's capable of succeeding in every field it enters, whether music or retail or telephones. That company will outlast him.

Apple's thing is all-in-one machines that are sexy. Always has been. Phones, MP3s players, maybe TVs & that whole market really moved towards Apple's pre-existing strategies. The 90s were about being able to afford to put a computer on each desk. They were never as good at that.

Certainly I hope Jobs gets well, but if he doesn't, I think the key for Apple will be picking a successor who cares about the same things he cares about.

But I think things like how their strategy interacted with the timing, stages of maturity in markets, technology & such, they played a role.

At the moment, Apple has a range of potential, growing or existing product classes that they are ideally positioned to take advantage of: netbooks, tablets, whatever else becomes the next computer.The only worry is spreading too thin.

What I am saying is that the world really did come back to them to an extent. It's not just Ninja leadership & it's hard to tell what is responsible for what exactly.

I'm sure we all wish you a speedy recovery and many years of health!

http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/01/selling-apple-a.html

My take is that it will have a good couple of days of news cycle, but ultimately isn't that important to anyone but Steve Jobs, his family, and friends.[1]

The key of Jobs at Apple is that he demonstrated a "different way". The Scully years were about performing business: perform incremental improvement, manage costs, and earn a return on investment. The return of Jobs was the proposition that the company could [also|instead] succeed by fostering a reputation for quality of user experience and changing the product landscape to make new opportunities[2]. That proposition is now proven, there is a generation of leaders (and lead) in the company that know this and believe it.

They should get along just fine.

What they will lose is the "star power" of Jobs and all the easy copy that media companies could generate based on that. That will hurt, less media coverage is not good, particularly since Apple is going to suffer though a massive salvo of easy FUD articles.

[1] if he has a family, he may just have an antiseptic white ceramic dwelling staffed by obedient Eve clones for all I know.

[2] also, break some eggs if you are making an omelette.

Clever of them to wait until after the closing bell, but man oh man, that stock is going to plummet tomorrow, I imagine.

Hope he's all right...

edit: 7pts * 889M shares, what is a man worth?

Nasdaq stock index futures fell as much as 16 points. Apple shares were halted in after-hours.

Imagine you're a millionaire hundreds of times over. You get a sickness that makes you tired, causes your hair to fall out and results in you not necessarily being able to control your bladder. Wouldn't you take a few months off?

Don't see anything on the Apple pr site yet ~ http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/01/ So it's unconfirmed.

Thats what I'm looking for, Apple confirmation.

Email isn't the most reliable medium and the WSJ owner is Rupert Murdoch.

This story didn't run on the (partisan) WSJ editorial page. It ran on the front page. It's obviously true.

Calm down.

I posted the article very early and only the WSJ & CNBC reporting breaking news. No other confirmation. This isn't about politics, it's exercising skepticism until the news is confirmed by a number of sources.

/edit: to expand: Mainly saying this because it's not the first time Jobs has stepped down due to health reasons.

Selling put verticals would work too as it limits your risk.

Actually selling puts is going to depend on what the implied volatility looks like on the open.

Of course I'll be on my blog and stocktwits talking about it at 935 tomorow.

In retrospect Jobs' hormone explanation for his weight loss looks like self-delusion. But I wanted to believe, too.

Hope everyone on HN is doing OK.

Of course, 6 months may not be long enough to really tell. There's also the possibility that he really is dying and they're hiding it, or he simply plans to permanently retire, and they're just "easing" investors into the idea of an Apple without Steve Jobs. I hope neither is the case, especially the former.

It's not shocking that a 53-year-old man would suffer a health crisis requiring a 5-month reprieve from work. He's a cancer survivor (and cancer treatment side effects often persist for years) with a hormonal imbalance. It sounds like he's doing the smart thing.

Part of why I think this is major news is that, unfortunately, a lot of people have health crises that merit or require half-year career breaks. I've seen a lot of people work through illnesses that really deserved time off, especially when I worked on a trading floor. It sucks that most people can't take breaks when they need to; in his case, it leads to a billion-dollar drop in his company's market cap.

And one more thing ;-)