Steve Jobs Medical Problems

How do you equate him keeping his personal life out of the media with ignoring medical problems?

Certainly Jobs isn't well, but there's no factual evidence indicating he hasn't been trying to get medical help for his condition all along. We don't really know what his attitude towards his health is (although as a vegetarian, he's certainly conscious of it) - we only know what his attitude towards his own privacy is.

Part of Jobs' business strategy to rebuilding apple was to sell himself as the face of Apple. He's his own corporate pitchman, kind of like Walt Disney or Lee Iacocca with Chrysler back in the day. If he wanted to be a recluse like Howard Hughes then he shouldn't have held all those carefully choreographed keynotes where the world held on his every utterance of "merely mortal". From the moment he became that figurehead he really should have expected the public and the shareholders to treat his welfare as almost synonymous with the fate of the company.

People now firmly believe, rightly or wrongly, that the only thing holding up the company is Steve Jobs. They probably think a million turtelneck-clad Steve Jobs' are running the assembly line for iPods and iPhones in China like the scene in Being John Malkovich where he goes inside his own head and EVERYONE is Malcovich. This is the monster that he's created, IMHO.

mos6507, on Mon Jun 22, 2009 12:46 PM, said:

But that still doesn't answer my question - how does any of that indicate that he's ignoring his own medical problems?

mos6507, on Mon Jun 22, 2009 12:46 PM, said:

Steve has always been the showman at Apple. That's nothing new. It's part of his personality to be a modern-day huckster (and a very good one, at that). But it was up to the masses to either buy into it, or just think he was some self-absorbed windbag and ignore him. So while he certainly put on the show, there was no guarantee anyone was going to pay any attention. A lot of Steve becoming the face of Apple is due to the Apple loyalists who bought into what he said, and a media that was fascinated with a CEO that didn't come off as some sort of incoherent nincompoop.

I think Steve's absence from Apple has changed some attitudes towards Jobs' indispensability. The company has been rolling along, updating and improving its products, getting very good press in the process, and its stock has actually gone up. The reason for this, is that Jobs was able to do something this time around that he didn't when he was originally at Apple: put very smart, very loyal people in place that he could trust with his baby, that would keep the company going in the right direction. I think this was the lesson he learned when he was ousted from Apple, and from his time at Pixar. He had to trust the people at Pixar, because filmmaking was something he had zero experience with. He learned to have faith in their abilities, because he recognized their expertise. The only reason Jobs would have ever let Pixar be bought by Disney, was if Pixar would continue on under the same creative leadership that had made it the success it had been before. He trusted those people, and didn't let the company go until he was assured that its (and his) legacy would be kept safe.

Since his return to Apple, while Steve is probably still the same egomaniac he's always been, he's also very much aware that Apple's success is the result of the people who work for him. He's very carefully selected the hierarchy at Apple to be a reflection of him (unlike the first time around), so that he wouldn't have to fight to make the company do what he wanted it to, but also so that if he did leave it again, it would be in safe hands, and he wouldn't have to watch it nearly be destroyed as it was the first time around.

If you watch the last couple of keynotes Steve did, you'll see a lot more inclusion of other key people at Apple, and even since his return as CEO, a lot more acknowledgement of the people designing the products (especially in videos introducing those products). So I think while he's definitely the face of the company and wants to be (and Apple is unique in that it needs to have a face), he's not assuming he's always going to be its only face.

I hope Steve is around a long time. But I think he's put the people in place to keep Apple on the right track. I think that was the first thing he did when he got back in '97.

He hasn't been gone that long. Time will tell if the excitement will continue with Apple. People were somewhat underwhelmed at their "brick" laptop project, and they weren't really that wowed by the ultra-thin laptop before it. There are still many products people are clamoring for from Apple that they have yet to deliver. They do the usual bashing of the product niche or segment until they finally do it anyway (retconning away any prior denials). Time is ripe for some kind of tablet/netbook and it's long long LOOONG overdue for an entry level tower Mac, an ideal product for this economic climate. So Apple can not in any way shape or form rest on its laurels.

I think the media has come to expect technological miracles from Apple too frequently. Apple has already managed to completely change three entire industries: personal computers (more than once), portable music players (and for that matter, music distribution), and cellular phones. You can't do that with every new product revision. Apple is certainly responsible for a lot of its own hype, but the media and public are responsible for feeding into it.

That said, I doubt Apple is resting on their laurels in any regard. I'd love to get a look inside their labs and see what products have been in development just because they thought it'd be cool to try them out.

If you ever get the chance, grab a copy of AppleDesign. This is a pretty amazing book of Apple prototypes, concepts and mockups dating from the early days of Apple until about the time Steve returned to the company (one of the prototypes shown ended up being the eMate). Some of the stuff in there is pretty forward-thinking (and in some cases, downright bizarre). But it showed that even during the years of Steve's absence, Apple never stopped thinking. After all, as a technology company, innovation should be their bread and butter. (As opposed to say, Dell, Microsoft, Palm, or other companies who exist by playing follow-the-leader).