Best part of Joe Nocera’s article from yesterday’s New York Times (“Apple’s Culture of Secrecy”) was, of course, the quote from Steve Jobs, the one where Nocera picks up the phone and Jobs hits him with this opening line: “This is Steve Jobs. You think I’m an arrogant [expletive] who thinks he’s above the law, and I think you’re a slime bucket who gets most of his facts wrong.”
In other words: Classy.
And just the kind of thing you’d expect from the CEO of a large, publicly traded company, right?
One thing that stuck with me was the expletive. I keep wondering, which word did he use? My picks, in no particular order, would be dick, prick, fuck or fucker. Maybe he used something bland, like bastard, but from what I’ve heard about Jobs, I doubt it.
It also struck me as classic Jobs, in that what he said was rude and obnoxious but also, oddly enough, highly perceptive. In one sentence Jobs managed to speak the essential truth about himself and Joe Nocera.
How many times do you think Jobs rehearsed that opening line before he dialed (or had Katie Cotton dial for him)? I’d say he practiced it one hundred times. And I’d say Katie was definitely on the line with him, though she probably pretended not to be. Furthermore, I’d bet a signed dollar bill that Apple recorded the phone call, just in case Nocera decided to run the stuff that Steve gave him under their “off the record” agreement.
That agreement by the way is worth a look as well. Why wouldn’t Jobs just tell Nocera on the record that ”while his health problems amounted to a good deal more than `a common bug, they weren’t life-threatening and he doesn’t have a recurrence of cancer,” as Nocera reported?
I’m always suspicious of off-the-record demands, especially in cases like this, and I’m not sure Nocera should have agreed to it. What he produces is a kind of denial that isn’t really a denial. Clearly Jobs and Apple want to get out the message that Steve is okay. They want to protect the stock. They were clearly freaked out about what Nocera might say in his column.
If Nocera had simply refused to go off the record, the burden would have remained on Jobs to get his message out and to do it openly or suffer continued hits to Apple stock. By going off the record, Nocera let himself get played by Jobs and Apple. Consider this. What if Jobs is lying? I’m not saying he is. But gods have been known to lie, especially when dealing with mere mortals. Think of how Zeus looked upon humans and you get an idea how Jobs views pretty much everyone in the world who isn’t Steve Jobs.
If Apple lies in a press release, or if its CEO lies in an on-the-record statement, the company has problems. But if everything was off the record, who’s to know? Or maybe you don’t exactly lie but you kind of hint at something and shade the conversation and lead someone to believe something even without explicitly saying that thing.
If down the road it turns out Steve was lying and someone from the SEC or some lawyer in a civil suit wants to find out what was said in that conversation, they’ll have to subpoena Joe Nocera, and the New York Times will fight that request. Even if Joe Nocera wants to tell the world what Steve Jobs told him, he can’t. He made a deal. He went off the record. Even if Steve turns out to be lying, Joe Nocera is stuck.
Thus Steve Jobs gets to protect his stock price and give Wall Street the message that he wants them to hear, and should any of this turn out not to be true, well, Steve and Apple now have Joe Nocera and the legal department of the New York Times to act as their ally and firewall.
Nice work, Joe Nocera. You’ve now become part of Apple’s PR machine.
So why did Joe Nocera agree to be Steve’s patsy? Well, there was the element of surprise. Apple PR didn’t set up the interview in advance and give him time to think about the ground rules and what the implications might be. Instead they did an ambush. Companies do this sometimes. I’ve had it happen. It’s always a sign that something’s not kosher. The CEO calls you up out of the blue and you’re knocked back on your heels, scrambling to find a pen and wondering what you should ask, and when he says he wants to talk off the record or he’ll hang up right now you think, Jeez, I’ve got the guy on the phone, I might as well let him talk, I’ve got him halfway over the gunwale and into my net, I’m not going to risk throwing him back.
So maybe that’s a factor. But Joe Nocera is a veteran. He’s a pro. He knows that the ambush call is a sure sign that something’s not right. These calls are never legit. They’re never truly an impulse call. Guys like Jobs do not just pick up a phone and call a reporter on an impulse. Ever.
Nocera also knows why guys like Jobs play the off-the-record game, and he knows that it’s the surest way to get pwned by a source. So he had to be suspicious about Jobs calling him out of the blue and then demanding to speak off-the-record. It’s one thing when someone wants to go off the record to talk about someone else — their boss, their neighbor, their colleague. If someone inside the Bush administration wants to tell you something but doesn’t want to lose their job, that’s one thing.
But people who want to set the record straight about themselves don’t go off the record. They don’t need to. They don’t want to.
So why did Nocera agree to this lousy deal? My sense is he figured that while he might not get the truth, he would at least get something, and even if it’s all bullshit it would still be the hottest story of the week and put him ahead of everyone else on this and produce the one story that everyone else would be talking about for the next few days. In which case, okay, mission accomplished.
But the Nocera story doesn’t necessarily help shareholders, because, let’s remember something: We still haven’t heard Steve Jobs or anyone at Apple say, on the record, that Steve isn’t sick.
What we have heard is Apple telling the world first that Steve had a “common bug.” Now they’re walking back that lie, in baby steps. First we got a leaked story about surgery to John Markoff of the Times, and now an ambush off-the-record call to another Times columnist. Still nothing that can be attributed to Apple or for which Apple can be held responsible.
What we’ve also heard is Steve Dowling, the #2 flack at Apple, repeat the phrase, “Steve’s health is a private matter. Steve’s health is a private matter.” Dowling is a Boston native and a Red Sox fan and a former hack, which means he’s a good guy, but there he is, doing the Apple PR robot act, repeating the same sentence over and over again, something no other company does and something that irritates the shit out of reporters, which is, I think, why the Apple flacks do it.
One of the many ironies and contradictions about Apple is that while the company presents this hip, open, cool image to the world, its PR machine is the most secretive, locked-down, hard-assed and disciplined of any company in tech, including IBM. To get a sense of how weird IBM is, consider that one time, while I was waiting for an elevator with a flack at IBM headquarters in Armonk, I asked, just to pass the time, if the guy ever did any jogging. The guy gave me this panicked look and said, “Why do you want to know?”
Apple is even weirder than that. They’ve set new records for secrecy and obfuscation and arrogance among tech companies. More important, these are not amateurs. These are hardcore PR people. They know the impression they’re creating when their CEO does an ambush call and then demands to be off the record. Yet they did it.
One unfortunate effect of Apple’s secrecy and general weirdness is that nobody believes anything Apple says anymore. I’d bet the hedge fund guys who were freaking out about Steve’s health last week are still freaking out. Maybe even more so.
Another unfortunate side effect of Apple’s secrecy is the message it sends to shareholders: Yes, we want your money, and no, we won’t tell you what’s going on inside our company. It’s a pretty common attitude in the Valley. Google has it. So does Yahoo. Facebook has it too, and they’re not even public yet.
The unfortunate thing about this arrogance is that no matter how hot a company may be, eventually every company stumbles. Someday Apple will need friends among the hackery. I’m not sure it will have any.
Real Dan, I think you’re great but journalists do manipulate, trivialise, and force stories into an agenda. I’ve had conversations with journalists who’ve agreed. My own trivial experiences of dealing with the media confirm this.
The way that every business editor and tech editor in the world seems to have put out a story recently about how Real Steve should come clean about this health, without offering the merest hint of evidence that Real Steve is ill beyond his gaunt appearance at the keynote, confirms the feeling that journos are cowardly, sheep like and lazy. OK, that’s unfair and exaggerated, journos have their own problems dealing with sales, deadlines, conflicting versions of the truth and so on. But that’s not Real Steve’s problem, in the end I find it highly unsurprising Real Steve tries to get them to play his game instead of playing their game.
I’m not qualified to know if Real Steve is really ill, maybe he is. But, if Real Steve and the board of Apple feel share holders don’t need this information then that’s their call. I’m not exactly an expert on corporate law, but clearly public companies are under a legal obligation to disclose certain kinds of information to share holders about things which might affect the value of stock. Either Real Steve’s health comes into this category or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, then I don’t care that Real Steve does not want to be matey with journalists, sorry but I find that easy to understand. If Steve’s health is something that should be disclosed to share holders, then along with the board he runs the risk of legal and civil action and they are probably all being very foolish.
Apple is now under constant attack by tech journos and bloggers who want to knock it off its perch. OK, they’re doing their job. Since the return of Real Steve, Apple have done very well out of not appeasing journos, so if Real Steve doesn’t want to bother with that and only deals with the NYT on his own terms, then I guess he’s doing his job s well and doing it rather well.
The story here is about Apple’s relations with its shareholders, when journos and bloggers decide the story is really about Apple’s relations with them, then that is rather narcissistic and is their bad. I think you might just have dealt with this story better through your great sarcasm and parodies.
Real Dan, you’re still my hero for what you do, just like Real Steve is my hero as a tech designer and entrepreneur. Keep up the good work. Namaste.
Near the end of Nocera’s article, he writes: “After he hung up the phone, it occurred to me that I had just been handed, by Mr. Jobs himself, the very information he was refusing to share with the shareholders who have entrusted him with their money.”
Only “knowing” Mr. Jobs through the eyes (and word processors) of reporters, I certainly can’t dismiss your reasoning, Dan. I do believe, though, that “shareholders” probably rank right down with Joe Nocera and other slime in Steve Jobs’ world. Apple is a company with huge daily trading volumes, so the ownership is always changing with each bit of news, rumor or sector movement. It’s not like a coach of a professional sports team dealing with the ownership, which is typically committed and there for the long haul.
I also think the fact that Nocera buried it at the end of the piece is rather telling. I mean, those two grafs ARE the story. The rest is vanilla blather about how important Jobs’ health is, which has been harped on by about 1000 reporters before Nocera came along. If you have this legit, once-in-a-lifetime scoop from Jobs himself that could move literally billions of dollars on the market, do you stick it after the jump? In literally the last place a reader would get to? Something tells me NYT reporters tend to put that kind of stuff in the lede. Why not this time?
I myself inserted “shithead” into the quote.
“Dowling is… a Red Sox fan… which means he’s a good guy”
I would have added “wicked good guy”.
I read the article earlier, and to me, it seemed that all it talked about was the events regarding the off-the-record conversation. And it even mentions it being off-the-record, something I’m not sure was anticipated, but since these are experienced people, it probably was anticipated that it would be mentioned in print.
So, why be afraid of the truth to hide behind “off the record” stuff? So to speculate, the truth is much more serious than even the complications from surgery as suggested and mentioned in the article. If that was the truth, why not just say it out loud? If privacy is a concern, and it’s affecting the stock price of your company, privacy should be thrown out the window at that point. So it’s a lie. It would have been better to lie and confirm it being a “common bug.” And they should have anticipated that. And if they are as good as you say they are, then they did anticipate that. So it’s the truth, a truth that doesn’t make any sense in that it’s hidden behind a shroud.
So it’s either the truth or a lie. Either way, this type of talk was probably anticipated to happen. It should have been. But if the stock price keeps dropping, they will have to go public. That should have been also anticipated, but I’m banking on it not being. A company never wants their stock price to go down. You think Citadel Broadcasting wants a stock price under 1 dollar? Of course not. You want a high stock price. And if the only thing that will keep the stock price higher is going public, then they should have done that from the beginning, because doing it later may be too late.
Dan, “PR Rule #1″ was so well written, so insightful, so spot-on, so apart from the crowd, it almost makes the loss of FSJ acceptable!
Dan,
I know you’ve been thoroughly sunk down the middle of the Tech World in ways I never could. And, I think you have a good shot at being right on the Jobs issue (I won’t hold the SCO thing against you, all 4 years of it). But, I believe you missed something important concerning the off-the-record routine. What if what Jobs told Nocera had no material impact on his state of health, but was in some way deeply private and personal? In other words, what if Jobs felt he needed to give Nocera not only the soundbite, truthful (but, maybe not the whole truth and nothing but the truth, surface wash, if you will) answer that would play well throughout MediaLand, but along with that a more graphic, invasive answer to fill in the holes so Nocera & Co. would stop digging for what’s not there? In other words, the unvarnished truth about his procedure, its side effects and long-term concerns? For example, my father is a master of this; to this day I avoid asking him any direct question related to any doctor’s visit. Just give me the short answer, and if I need more info I’ll ask. TMA and all.
Just a thought. Try it on for size, let me know what you think.
Dick
Hmmm, a journalist defending a journalist while attacking someone who wants to be “off the record”.
What a shock.
I think Dick is on to something.
The truth about post-whiple’s procedure malabsorption is that it can be pretty ugly. I think it is entirely reasonable to spare the public the details. Specifically, what if Real Steve has steatorrhea (that means he cannt absorb fat, and fat stays in one’s stool). The result is frequent, (particularly) foul bowel movements. Also, there can be fecal incontinence (because of the altered consistency of the stool). Oh, and one can lose weight and lack important vitamins and nutrients. A real picnic; except at this picnic, rather than eating food outside with friends, you have frequent, uncomfortable, and potentially embarassing trips to the can.
IF that is the case (or something similar) I say Steve should keep it to himself. I probably would, and I am probably not as much of an arrogant [expletive] as Real Steve is. The self-important journalists (present company excluded) can go hang. Shareholders and hedge fund types will have to deal. Sometimes diarrhea is just diarrhea. Oh, and I own some AAPL, so I have some money in this issue.
respectfully,
My 2 cents
Well Real Dan, what do you do about the short fund-fed media types that have turned the whole show into the Steve Jobs Death Watch? Cases in point:
Jim Cramer’s TheStreet.com which published, on the eve of the iPhone’s introduction, the Doug Kass-fueled rumor that Jobs had terminal cancer, and was going to announce his leaving Apple.
Or, even the NY Post article this last Monday before the earnings announcement that literally stated that “Apple has no succession plan in place”, when the company (and Jobs himself) have publicly stated otherwise.
It’s that reckless disregard for the truth that I think has created this issue for shareholders, not Apple. Is Apple supposed to have quarterly “Steve’s Health Updates” now, so we can all see how well he’s doing? Add in some old-style Kremlin-like film footage of Steve lifting some weights and chopping wood, so we can all see how vital and not sick he is!
Why aren’t you taking clowns like Cramer, Kass, and the NY Post’s Brian Garrity and Peter Lauria to task? They are still writing complete bullshit stories about Jobs and Apple, and it’s tough to know if it’s all about being in the pockets of the shorts, or maybe the Post’s problems with Jobs’ politics (hmm?).
Just asking…
Nocera is scum. The whole point of this is fund managers trying to manipulate apple for profit. By not calling Nocera out on this, you lower yourself.
Really, when did it become acceptable for “journalists” to engage in stock manipulation?
These days that job title is quickly joining lawyers and politician to mean “liars you cannot trust”.
Hell, even you’ve engaged in this kind of dishonest smear tactics back when you were bashing the “blogosphere”. (Kinda hypocritical now, isn’t it?)
No matter, this is all circuses for the masses, and since you’ve failed to rise above it, I’m going to exercise the unsubscribe finger.
Buh Bye.
“… I had just been handed, by Mr. Jobs himself, the very information he was refusing to share with the shareholders who have entrusted him with their money.”
Then sell your Apple stock. Now! Just -do- it!!!
Stop the -incessant- whining about how you can’t be sure your investment is safe!!!
Go invest in a company that will give you on-demand updates on the CEO’s health. (or any other employee you think is “critical” to the company’s future earnings)
Its called: “Voting with your wallet”. Have you heard of it?
Silver lining to this cloud: All you fooktards selling Apple will drive the price down low enough that Apple will be forced to make a statement:
- If the news is good, you’ll be able to buy-up Apple at “fire sale” prices.
- If the news is bad, you can celebrate you got out when you did.
Win – Win
Just shut-the-fuck-up, and sell your stock…
I think you hit some of the nails on the head here Dan. Yes, journalists do get manipulated and CEOs at MASSIVE corporations do get to pull some strings. But the bottom line here is that Apple/Jobs looks weak acting this way.
Dan, this is my favourite article of any you have done under this name or Fake Steve (obviously, not sue to the worrying content it addresses). It’s a really intelligent analasis and really well put, I’m glad you’ve broken free of the FSJ mould.
Though hopefully at some point in the future (when Real Steve is well), you can put on the FSJ hat now and again.
Cheers.
/rant = OFF
Dan,
I liked the article, and the aspects of journalism you covered. Not something I normally think about, unless some filthy hack is in the news for going to jail to protect sources.
“My picks, in no particular order, would be dick, prick, fuck or fucker. Maybe he used something bland, like bastard, but from what I’ve heard about Jobs, I doubt it.”
Funny how that intrigued me, as well.
“dick” just doesn’t have enough shock-value, enough -punch-, for a rehearsed opening-line. But then, I’m pretty jaded about expletives after having retired from the Navy.
“arrogant fuck” sounds harsh enough to shock someone you’ve just cold-called, but maybe they did tone it down to arrogant prick…
Maybe someday he’ll let us no. That was -before- the “off the record” part, wasn’t it??
Mike
Dear Dan,
You wasted a ton of your life force spinning this yarn. let’s return our attention to Jerry Yang or Larry Ellison or Bike Helmet Girl where the entertainment is. Please.
The skein of suppositions you weave in this long post is thinly disguised fiction and sort of creepy. What if I exploited my momentary web fame and started blogging that Dan Lyons maybe has cancer? And expostulated endlessly about the consequences of not revealing his “unfairly” privately held medical information?
Jobs is accountable to (in order of importance): his creator, himself, his family, the Board of Directors at Apple, the rabid fan base, journalists, and bloggers. You can be sure that Jobs and the Board have a succession plan. That is is not publically known matters not.
But I still love you and your attitude.
dd
“In other words: Classy.”
Your writing was a bit thick here. Steve or Joe? Are you being sarcastic? It’s not clear.
“And just the kind of thing you’d expect from the CEO of a large, publicly traded company, right?”
Yes, actually. Rather than going through their Investor Relations boobs.
“How many times do you think Jobs rehearsed that opening line before he dialed (or had Katie Cotton dial for him)?”
Zero. You’ve clearly not met Steve. He thinks and speaks such wit (of whatever causticity) in real time. But I know you didn’t mean it. You were just trying to be a snarky ass. Steve’s better at it, trust me.
“And I’d say Katie was definitely on the line with him, though she probably pretended not to be. Furthermore, I’d bet a signed dollar bill that Apple recorded the phone call, just in case Nocera decided to run the stuff that Steve gave him under their “off the record” agreement.”
Uh, probably not, that’s a crime if Steve was calling from most states (including California). I’m not interested in your autograph though.
“I’m always suspicious of off-the-record demands.” Of course. You’re in the main stream media. The reality is, the media blows it more often than the media would like to admit. I have had occasion to speak to members of the media for my firm many times. I’ve NEVER done so on the record, neither has anyone at our firm. There is ZERO upside. I will be happy to correct facts and invite the media to check their existing sources or point them in a direction that allows them to see they are in error, but being quoted does neither. Lazier members of the media will just run the quote as a denial from us next to the incorrect facts, rather than run matters down.
Contrary to your PR Rule #1, there are PLENTY of reasons (maybe all of them) to be telling the truth off the record. There are VERY FEW for telling the truth on the record.
Steve also has regulation FD to deal with.
In any event, you could have fact checked your post with legal a little better, Dan. But then, I suspect you had a deadline.
-ep
Steve will always have friends in the media because he’s interesting and good copy, and because he has done Great Things.
I don’t see that changing until he is no longer with us.
D
great insight, dan
i hope we get more entries like this on the blog.
Spot on, Real Dan. It’s particularly troubling that Nocera agreed to go off the record considering how much trouble the NY Times has had with anonymous sources in the past few years. It’s as if they’ve learned nothing from their Iraq-war-abetting mistakes in this area.
I suppose it was the “s-word,” but so what?
Both of you are good, responsible journalists. This is all about PR Rule #0: just spell the name right.
suppositio.us
Maybe Jobs just has something embarrassing that he doesn’t want to publicize, like maybe his nards are shrinking.
Barry asks: “Why aren’t you taking clowns like Cramer, Kass, and the NY Post’s Brian Garrity and Peter Lauria to task? They are still writing complete bullshit stories about Jobs and Apple, and it’s tough to know if it’s all about being in the pockets of the shorts, or maybe the Post’s problems with Jobs’ politics (hmm?).”
Because Lyons is also writing complete bullshit stories about Apple. Lyons is a propagandist. He is also likely a gamer/hater. He’s a Microsoft propagandist. It’s how the world is divided.
Dan:
My question is this: when did you call Joe pretending to be Steve Jobs? I mean, I wasn’t aware you did vocal impressions on top of everything else. Then again, you are a very clever man, Dan Lyons.
Also, since you apparently know Mr. Nocera, ask him this for me: What-in-the-living-shit is going on at the New York Times? Have they just given up, or are they experiencing a collective nervous break down? Fox air-brushes a few photos, and everyone at the paper just loses it? Is it the deadlines? Is Dave Pogue driving everyone at the organization to distraction? Because you’re right–things do not add up. Things are not what they seem.
But here’s where I differ with (and put all my money against, wherever possible) the spastic, king-hell-crazy internet: Steve Job’s health *isn’t* anyone else’s business. If a shareholder thinks that, the shareholder is an ass. If you’re a shareholder, worry when widgets stop going out the door. Let me put it another way. Ask yourself: Are widgets going out the door at Apple? If yes, hold on to your stock and stop being such idiot. You’ll thank me later. The whole gang at the New York Times may be shown to be liars at any moment. God knows it’s happened before.
Now if you were still doing FSJ, this could have been one of the funniest posts ever, how that jorno was reamed by good old SJ. Sickly morbid, but very, very funny.
I think SJ being ill recently explains a lot of things: little touches at the App Store that have gone unfixed, craplets getting *into* the App Store, iPhone OS 2.0 being buggy, and more. His attention is elsewhere and I think it’s showing in public ways. And it *shouldn’t* show because there should be people at Apple to take up that slack. If there’s been Delegation, it’s *not working*. And that is not good for the future of Apple.
Wiley wrote: “Also, since you apparently know Mr. Nocera, ask him this for me: What-in-the-living-shit is going on at the New York Times?”
Very good question, Wiley. The NYT used to be Apple-friendly. Now they are part of the Microsoft propaganda machine, along with Forbes, Fortune, NPR, Salon.com. and hundreds of others.
The sad thing is that the whole health issue killed one of the planet’s most beloved fake people ever, Fake Steve.
Months ago, Phillip Elmer Dewitt, whose Apple 2.0 blog is generally quite critical of Apple, did some real research and gave us a detailed description of the surgery SJ had. It explained everything, and more surgery to correct things is quite consistent.
I decided for myself that if the cancer were going to kill him it already would have. But he’s going to have nutrition issues for the rest of his life and at times will not look healthy.
What YOU’RE missing in thinking like a journalist here is the BIG story… oldest on Wall Street… shorts talking down their book.
Apple’s problem is precedent and marketing: If SJ lets the shorts force him on the record now, he is going to have to go on the record about his health every time there’s a rumor. That’s both REALLY intrusive and, frankly, a huge PR distraction that will hurt the business.
When you buy AAPL, you are buying a company who knows how to keep the focus on what it is selling TODAY. I think you’re wrong about one thing–Apple shows no interest in protecting the stock price. SJ talked to the media off the record to end the distraction. There a number of things Apple could do to keep the stock price up that it refuses to do (most notably a refusal to even hint about buy backs, even when the stock was at $120.)
btw, if I’m the CEO of a tech company I have mixed feelings about the stock price. A lower stock price means new options have more upside. As for SJ himself, I don’t think the stock price is that big a deal. Pixar made him a multi-billionaire. Apple is about ego in the success of the company and its products, not about the money.
And it doesn’t make sense to say that Apple is a great company, but they should be more open. Apple’s secrecy and manipulation to get people to focus on its products is an essential part of its secret sauce. Fueling the Steve Jobs Death Watch with quarterly updates on his digestive tract isn’t compatible with that.
btw, if you’re right and I’m wrong and SJ really isn’t leading Apple at the end of the year, and the stock plummets, I will absolutely, positively be buying with both hands. The company and market position SJ has built will dominate for years after his departure.
Everybody knows how popular FakeSteve is. So the RealSteve has now been cloned. Who is the RealSteve? Who is the FakeSteve?
Dan,
Apple’s PR consists of great deal of BS. Their brand even contains a significant BS component. For non-technical hacks, Apple is a brilliant company where everything clicks. For tech. types, Apple is merely a good company. Their products suffer from “common bugs” just as often as products of others.
Apple’s CEO is no exception. His condescending view on the rest of the world is the very reason why Apple could not and still has not captured a significant market share of the PC market. It has gotten a lot better, but it is still marginal. Why? While Apple’s products have that shiny finish we want to see, Apple’s PR and condescending attitude work, well, like a (customer) repellant. If I put a laptop in a shopping cart and find out that memory upgrade will cost me a quart of blood and some money, I do not checkout. Comprende, Jobso? Then he says Apple is selling “a premium product” while at the same time offering a half-a$$ed warranty. BMW offers a comprehensive warranty, Porsche does also, Miele (Jobso’s favorite washing machine brand), so why not Apple? Why so much BS in my face, dude? Jobso?
The most important aspect of so-called digital lifestyle IS transparency of information provided. And yet, Apple insists of maintaining its Pinochet-like regime and expecting to be liked, cut slack all the time and having “just f—ing trust me” attitude (there is your expletive he used).
For disclosure, I use a zoo of equipment from various manufacturers, including Apple.
And what’s up with MacBook Air with 2GB RAM only? Every ultraportable on Earth can take 4 gigs, only apple’s advanced thinair cannot?
Why would reports about Jobso’s health be any different? You get two gigs. The rest, well, you gotta pay for (or wait) or store off the record.
For god’s sake, what do I have to do? Make a YouTube video where I scream, “Leave Steve Jobs Alone! Let him deal with his own health issues!” Is that the only thing the bozos would understand? Because I’m beginning to believe that’s the only thing the bozos would understand.
Hey Real Dan Lyons, can you explain something to me? Why the hell are hedge funds investing in Apple anyway, to such a degree that they’re worried about Real Steve Jobs’s health? I thought the purpose of the hedge fund was to flip out and kill people allow rich guys to invest in complex, risky financial instruments. Anyone can buy Apple shares, you don’t need a hedge fund to do that. It seems like it’s beside the point of being a hedge fund. I’m gonna start a hedge fund that invests in the S&P 500.
Sam G is so pathetic. It’s very simple G, you have to distinguish between: 1. Your opinion of Apple products; 2. The commercial success of Apple products. Your post shows a very sad inability to make this distinction. You don’t like the MBA, fine, but it’s a big seller for Mac. You think Macs are not as good as Apple claims, that’s an opinion, a fact is that Macs are bigger sellers, quarter by quarter in the US and globally. Recent year on year increases have been about 100%. Would a 1000% satisfy you as evidence of success? Let’s look a the other evidence: iPod is about 70% of the digital music player market, the 3G iPhone sold a million in three days. Another big factual error: you suggest tech types think Apple is just another good company and have a lower opinion than other users. Just not true. Care to provide any systematic evidence of your claim? Thought not. It’s utterly meaningless to say that techies are aware of bugs others are not, therefore Macs are not so great. The whole problem with bugs is the lost time and the anxiety caused to those who are not techies and therefore don’t want to and can’t deal with bugs. Pathetic. MBA only has 4 gb of RAM, this is just the same point recycled made by every lamo tech jouro under the sun, according to which MBA’s specs aren’t good enough. It’s the thinnest notebook available, surprise surprise some specs are sacrificed. As it’s ultraportable, it’s not expected to have the same capacities as MacBook or MBP, it’s not aimed at intensive high level use, but by all accounts it works very well for regular computing tasks, did I mention big seller? Techies don’t like Macs? When they like Windows, it’s because it creates work for them because it has more problems than Mac (IT administrators who make a living from fixing Windows are the biggest fans of Windows and a lot of the anti-Mac trolling comes from them), most I’ve met loathe and despise Vista. Some like Linux, because the aspects which make it difficult for most users seems easy to deal with for techies.
Off the record, on the record. What does it matter? We’re repelling down the side of Nocera’s apartment tonight at midnight. For a little……………chat. PS Real Dan, thanks for the loaner of the night vision goggles.
I would think that the Apple Inc. Board of Directors have a contingency plan should something happen to Steve Jobs, or other key personnel. It is more than Steve’s health that is a concern, it is an airplane crash, an auto accident, any number of unexpected things that can kill a person.
Wiley said: “If you’re a shareholder, worry when widgets stop going out the door. Let me put it another way. Ask yourself: Are widgets going out the door at Apple?”
Shareholders (ones who know what they’re doing, anyway–and day traders aren’t shareholders) don’t invest based on what’s going out the door today. They’re in it for what’s going to be going out the door over the next few years. You sell stock when you lose faith in the future of the company. And Steve Jobs’ health has a lot to do with the future of Apple.
pwned? Really?
You actually used the word “pwned” in a piece of your own journalism, and not in the context of quoting some game-addicted loser? That’s so sad. You should probably go sit in the corner and think about what you’ve done.
I would bet good money that Joe shorted Apple before starting earlier reporting on Jobs’ health.
Interesting article and (mostly) interesting comments. I also believe that Steve didn’t just get a wild hair up his ass and call Nocera, but it seems reasonable to think that the tone and wording were his. That’s like the persona he wishes to show. About his health, it might not be 100% but it evidently is good enough that the shareholders don’t need to know any more than his machine tells them.
And why did he give Nocera the scoop that launched a million hits? He hates his guts along with the rest of those twits who’re just parroting the trash the hedges are putting out so they’ll stay above water with their naked puts.
SSteve says:
“Shareholders (ones who know what they’re doing, anyway–and day traders aren’t shareholders) don’t invest based on what’s going out the door today. They’re in it for what’s going to be going out the door over the next few years. You sell stock when you lose faith in the future of the company. And Steve Jobs’ health has a lot to do with the future of Apple.”
So Apple today *has no inkling* as to what products are in the pipeline
“in the next few years.” With due respect, your implication that Apple (And yes, Steve himself) doesn’t plan ahead shows that perhaps you shouldn’t be an investor in Apple anyway. If you “lose faith in the future of the company” that should be based on a real knowledge of the company, not on the *perception* that Steve Jobs does everything at Apple, Inc. That’s why I’d suggest forbearance. This company is working well today. You’re not a day trader? Show yourself wiser, bud.
@ Istanbul iTard
Your moniker is very revealing. If you did not get my post, keep reading until you get it. Here is the gist of it: investors and a large number of consumers are tired of Apple’s condescending ways. Yes, one million iPhones was sold. To teenagers. Big deal. Three million twinkies were sold to teenagers at the same time.
If Apple thinks that Enterprise market (and that is who is watching Jobso now) will tolerate Apple’s “f— you” attitude, they are in for a rude awakening.
And yes, I am not buying that Apple makes premium products. Why should I “buy” anything else they are hawking through the press? Or off the record?
*
1 point by mattmaroon 0 minutes ago | link | edit | delete
“One of the many ironies and contradictions about Apple is that while the company presents this hip, open, cool image to the world”
Really? I’ll give you hip and cool, but open? There’s nothing open at all about Apple. Their OS has to be hacked to work on hardware they didn’t sell. They’ve done more to advance DRM than anyone. They’ve taken tremendous advantage of open source communities while giving nearly nothing back. They’ve sued people for blogging about upcoming products ahead of time. They hid Jobs’s cancer (and nutjob idea of fighting it by eating carrots) until it was over.
Open is the last word that any literate human would ever associate with Apple.
Oh for [expletive]‘s sake…
I really don’t care whether Steve Jobs has the bubonic plague or a bad rash. There are thousands of other employees at Apple besides Steve, and they put as much or more work into Apple’s products than he does. This whole belief that Steve is the soul of the company is analyst-driven BS.
When Steve eventually dies, yes, Apple will suffer … mostly at the hands of “analysts” who will predict doom & gloom for the company and send its stock tanking … not because Steve was the only one there capable of doing a good job.
His health is a PRIVATE MATTER, irregardless of whether he’s the head of Apple or of a lemonade stand. Is he breathing? On two feet? In full control of his mental faculties and able to form reasonable responses to questions? Yes? Then that’s where your interest in his health should end.
and one more for the road:
Take a step back before Steve got sick. Just how “open” was he about his private life back then? Did he interview with the media a lot? Invite everyone back to Casa de Steve for mojitos and tales of the early days at Apple? Talk about his family life much?
Funny, because I can’t remember reading much about the Personal Life of Steve. Ever.
So now the media is harassing the guy because he doesn’t want to talk about his health concerns? How do you think Steve (being Steve) is going to react?
In the book Apple Confidential 2.0 there is more than one quote from Jobs referring to himself as an “arrogant fuck”, so I think this may have been the missing expletive.
Wow. What a great read. Now I can suddenly see the direction Dan’s writing should take to stay as relevant as the fake diary was.
That, and also the possibility of FSJ return should the off-the-record bs be true and he hasn’t got cancer again.
In any case, I will get my dose of brilliant, relevant tech (or, more generally, business) writing.
Thanks Dan, you rock!
P.s. Don’t ever go back to that Google guy with the russian name. That was your darkest hour.
1.)Don’t be too surprised this week (or somewhere in the middle of August, when everybody is on vacation), Apple announces a massive stock buyback, tantamount to driving speculation that Apple maybe taking itself private.
2.)If Jobs isn’t sick or dying and is perfectly healthy, what would be the objective to cast fear, uncertainty and doubt about his well-being? To gauge the market’s reaction towards Apple after his eventual departure. Meanwhile, he’s probabling finalizing his plans for when he actually does walk away (and leaving the door open enough, in case he decides to come back), sculpting his succession team in his image, yada, yada, yada, setting things up so the company survives when he steps down and the market doesn’t panic and allow Apple to get swallowed up and destroyed by some prick like Carl Icahn or Kirk Kerkorian.
3.)If Jobs is deathly ill, there is almost certainly one member of the team who is going to panic and blab, and not to the New York Times or Wall Street Journal. Something tabloidy or bloggish. I lay odds if Steve is at or near death’s door, TMZ,Huffington Post, god help us all, Scobleizer or one of the UK daily rags will break the story, instead of trad MSM outlets.
4.)If I see Jobs while I’m eclipse watching this week, I swear, I’ll leave him alone. I’m not iJustine or Blue Velvet or any other cyberstalker. I’ll merely bask in his Jobsness and consider myself privileged to have been in his presence for a micro-eternity during this mutual cosmic event.
Dan,
I think your dead wrong on this. It is perfectly acceptable for Mr. Jobs to insist upon being off the record. The details of his health are not material to Apple’s success. Whether or not his health is affecting his ability to lead the company is material. That question can be answered with a yes or a no. Apple & Steve say no. What grounds do we have to argue with that – all the googobs of information they’ve divulged up until now? Get real! The fact that Apple doesn’t readily volunteer info about themselves and what they are doing is no reason to believe that they are a bunch of liars. If anything, they are consistent, and no one gives them credit for that.
SamG
I got the point of your post which I read several times before posting myself. I just couldn’t be bothered to respond to every lame complaint. If you think Jobs is handling the situation badly and is acting against share holder interests, sell your stock. It’s call the market economy, or capitalism, have you heard of it? You take a risk when you invest and you pull out if you think you investment is going to lose value.
Istanbul iTard, a bit of self-mockery there. Yes I’m a big fan, but I can see the funny side and the danger of losing objectivity. That’s why I remind myself through the moniker. Maybe it’s because I’m British, we value laughing at ourself, as you might have noticed if you watch any Hugh Grant films, have you heard of him? Self-deprecatory humour, have you heard of it? If I say so myself, my criticisms of you were based on respect for the facts and for logic, not fanboyisness.
Not a teenager and my friends who have an iPhone or are trying to get one, include a director of a tax consultancy in London, an executive in the public sector who also runs a family firm, and a well know philosophy professor in a famous London college.
Your post includes the idea that Apple is unsuccessful (just weird in itself) because it exaggerates the value of its products, Right, so the get-a-mac adverts should make PC a real cool dude and should send the message that a Mac is as good as a PC but probably not better, and that would lead Apple’s stock upwards? How weird is that.
Dump your stock and take your lamo trolling elsewhere.
SamG,
you get a lot of flack but I think what you said is reasonable. Jobs would like to offer quality like Porsche, BMW, or Miele, but his problem is that for profit margin he has his stuff built in China. So, he would be taking too many risks giving out guarantees like those three famous German brands you mentioned.
You’re also dead-on about the upgrade prices in the Apple store. But, if you would know the average Apple fanturd that I do know, you would do the very same to them. I had several guys telling me that the RAM Upgrades and harddisks etc. are especially made for Apple products and only they will guarantee perfect compatibility and speed. Sigh.
See, when the majority of your customer base are morons with lots of money, you don’t cater to the few in-the-know guys who also like your brand.
Actually, having that kind of customer base is probably the one any company should go for.
Great article. Cold-blooded as ever. I hope we keep getting more of these… really good Dan. I miss FSJ… and RDL makes me feel a little better. Good Stuff.
Moshe, nice to see you back in action. Hope all went well with the “chat” session.
- Barry
Bottom line we should start selling our stocks cause something in this story stink.
Ballack Obama and SamG, what a cute couple. We’re the tech experts who look down on the average buyer of tech products because of our unique expertise. No your tech expertise does not give you the right to look down on the average Mac buyer, they’re consumer products, the only way to judge them is if the consumer finds them good to use. People who think they can’t put a non-Apple hd or RAM in a Mac are misinformed, but no more so than the average PC buyer who freezes with fear and horror at the idea of buying a computer with a native OS other than Windows. Most people who but Macs like them and buy more Macs and other Apple products. The average consumer doesn’t even look at online help forums for Mac and just finds the idea of putting in new RAM or a new HD rather worrying. The average Porsche buyer would not want to put in a new engine though no doubt a case could be made for saying that a customised new engine would improve the performance of a Porsche. Are these people PorscheTard victims of corporate propaganda.
Drop the self satisfied tech nonsense, by any standards Mac sales are moving in a very successful direction, and mostly not because people saw the Get A Mac ads, but because they realise that the Mac OS makes a very usable alternative to Windows. That kind of success can’t be dismissed, exactly how many consumer products have that kind of sustained success except as the consequence of real objective good qualities? Let’s give MS a break here, they did a brilliant job of developing an OS and wordprocessing applications that the average consumer could use and which are compatible with an enormous range of hardware at every price, at a time when Apple had dropped the ball and the world was ready for mass market usable consumer and enterprise software. Now Apple are doing a brilliant job of producing a highly usable OS in quality hard ware for the above average price market, which in the US is now largely buying Macs, and that includes techies. Maybe this will extended to the average and bargain consumer sector and the corporate sector creating a sort of synthesis of IBM and MS at their respective peaks, maybe it won’t. Either way the future looks bright for Apple investors, as even just extending the Mac’s present success in US to the whole world would create truly enormous gains for Apple and its investors.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, techies who make a living fixing Windows for organisations find that Macs create less problems reducing the need for IT administrators (though not eliminating it). I’m not a techie but I do meet them and they don’t generally support what SamG say.
While the decision to keep his health private is may be Jobs’ prerogative at this juncture, it would also make sense of him to take advantage of this crisis of faith to address the issue of succession, which will inevitably come up again at a later date, even if he is given a clean bill of health tomorrow.
Dr. Tantillo (‘the marketing doctor’) did a recent post on his branding blog (blog.marketingdoctor.tv), asserting that Jobs and Apple are two separate brands–Jobs one that is irreplaceable but that can, at this juncture, help ensure Apple’s longevity–and that, with the question of Jobs’ health at least being raised, this is definitely the time to do so.
Full post: http://blog.marketingdoctor.tv/2008/07/24/brand-advisory.aspx
IstanbulTurd, shut up. Fix your homecountry. I am not a tech person. Actually I am a porn actor so maybe that’s why I know how to put hard things into others.
Shut up
Plonk**
Stupid troll iTurkeyturd
Ballack Obama
I’m a British citizen living in Istanbul, working in a major Turkish institution. I feel very British and very Istanbul Turkish. Sorry if that creates confusion. I was a bit harsh in my posts but I didn’t get into the kind of personal abuse you have just above. Good luck with the porn career (I suppose that was sarcasm but you never know).
I may have expressed myself harshly but I gave reasons for my criticisms and I tried to make positive points.
Stupid troll iTurkeyturd signing off
*groan*
I hate my own copycats.
- Barry
“Guys like Jobs do not just pick up a phone and call a reporter on an impulse. Ever.”
You talk about “classic Jobs.” Classic Jobs *IS* the kind of a guy who *WOULD* do just that, and damn the consequences.
Cancer is not a crime.
Re-read that line above. What is so sad about this whole affair is that simple truth has been lost amid a swirl of hyperbole, vendettas, hidden agendas on many sides, obfuscation, lies and hatred. Steve Jobs is and will always be a controversial and polarizing figure. You either love or hate him with a veracity rarely accorded anyone in the public eye.
What Dan wrote about may not excuse how Apple’s PR team has built a moat around Steve Jobs. But at the same time, Joe Nocera’s rant (it was hardly journalism) was anything but his most proud moment. Add to this the despicable behavior of people like Jim Cramer, the NY Post’s Brian Garrity and Peter Lauria or various and sundry short sellers and hedge fund powers that be, and you have a vile stew of very mean-spirited, greedy and selfish people.
Dan, if your post is to infer that this is a shining moment in the annals of journalism, it’s not. Nor is it a shining moment in corporate PR. And frankly, reading your post saddened me about you as well, as some deeply seeded hatred showed through in your words as well.
What’s lost amid all the venom and rancor is the suffering too many people have from cancer. It’s deadly. Debilitating. Humiliating. And excruciatingly painful. Those I have mentioned here may never have experienced the decimation that cancer can cause, nor do they seem to care a lick about it. All they want is their money. And they don’t care who they destroy to get it.
Yes, Steve Jobs might be an asshole. You know him better than I ever will. But unlike you, Dan, Steve Jobs is living with cancer and its effects. His life, and the lives of his family, will never be the same. You have never undergone the surgery that he has, or suffered its after effects. So while I am not a fawning fanboy beholden to Steve Jobs, I will give him a pass here. If you had to suffer the physical trauma that he has from cancer, perhaps you might be more sympathetic. But obviously, you don’t give a damn.
Step back and consider that for a moment. Maybe here, some of all that you preach may not completely apply. We can never stop learning, if we are open minded enough to understand that. Unfortunately, this very thing appears to have been lost in this sad chapter.
I hope you’ll take a cue from that, Dan. And everyone else who has been so hateful. Shame on you.
Being a journalist myself, I understand the frustration about people wanting to be off the record. As for people who want the truth to come out will not go off the record, well, that’s kind of a naive notion if you ask me.
Why? Because everyone has an agenda when they go “off the record.” That’s why some publications don’t allow off the record discussions. But in this context, knowing a bit about the history of Jobs’ relationship with the press, I have to say I think it makes perfect sense.
Obviously Nocera only agreed to part of the conversation being off the record, since he clearly gave us the gist of the conversation. Jobs’ cancer did not return. It was surgery, but not cancer surgery. It was related to digestive problems and loss of weight. Those parts were obviously not “off the record” or he wouldn’t have relayed that information. Otherwise, it was a violation of the off the record agreement between Nocera and Jobs.
What was off the record were the details. This is a slippery slope when dealing with off the record conversations. But he seems to have done a pretty good job of getting the information out that Jobs obviously wanted out without giving more detail than necessary.
Of course, readers have to trust Nocera to be honest at this point when he gives them the verdict that the cancer is not back. And only his reputation gives that claim any weight at all.
My theory is that RSJ misses FSJ so much that he actually impersonated his alter ego on this call. Meta meta meta! And now you, the real FSJ are doing real journalism on RSJ imitating FSJ.
The only way this could be better is if the whole phone call was Woz doing a prank.
PS: I am hoping that Jobs being this nuts is proof that he is going to be OK.
seriously, i love you, man. you nailed this one. i love that you continue to expose the PR machinations of big, truth-obfuscating companies. much love.
You guys have over analyzed this story by a HUGE margin. Steve is a fiercely private person and yet he knows that his beloved Apple will suffer if he doesn’t get the word out that he’s okay. That’s why he ambushed Nocera. He gets to have it both ways by keeping the facts private but still getting the essential truth out that he’s healthy. You’ve all seriously underestimated the driving force of pride and ego. Some people just truly loathe the idea of being forced to do something that they don’t want to do and we all know that Steve is one of those people.
Sheesh, it ain’t hard.
I think the value to Jobs for off the record, is that it his right to have any other non terminal condition remain in confidential, like most of us.
I was betting on the c-word, but then I have limited familiarity with normal American usage of expletives.
Certainly “bastard” seems way too week (Hell, where I come from it’s close to a compliment).
I like companies that have a hard ass, consistent policy in dealing with the media. Also the idea of making an ambush call to a hack is one I think is great. Why? Because usually it’s the other way around. It’s about the “gotcha” game the big media are pulling on companies and executives all the time and they just hate it, absolutely hate it when they don’t get what they want or when companies can’t be bullied by them. My guess here is that the board of Apple has been briefed but they just don’t. Sorry, Real Dan, but on this one I’m not with you. Think about how you’d have reacted as FSJ……!
Real Dan, I think you’re right on the money. Jobs is definitely enough of a player (and his PR team) to create a calculated effect like this.
Jobs is fine, no worries! All they have to do to quell the rumors that are affecting their OWN stock price is say so. Loudly and publicly.
But they haven’t, have they?
Dan’s comment – “…I’d bet a signed dollar bill that Apple recorded the phone call…”
California law requires two party consent to record. I’d bet a dollar they don’t break that particular law.
Dan, you should teach at journalism school. This is some of the best analysis I’ve seen of any media-related issue in the past two years. Well done and thanks for it.
This post is perceptive, clear, fascinating, and important. Please keep up the good work.
I do think your speculation that Steve rehearsed the line, and especially that it was illegally recorded, are unlikely, although possible. But even wild speculation can sometimes be informative as well as entertaining, and very thought-provoking, as it is here.
Sure, people say maybe Steve’s just playing “off-the-record” so he can spare us a discussion of the lamentable condition of his bowels, and avoid setting a precedent. But he could say the important stuff (no mere common bug, big surgery, lamentable bowel condition he doesn’t want to discuss, excellent odds of leading for years to come) on the record, and he should, or else not say anything at all. These off-the-record games are just a PR disaster, and yes, it is Steve’s fault, not just the journalists’ fault or the hedge funds’ fault. RealStan is quite possibly right about Steve’s motivation, but I still think it was a bad move.
I know you’re getting slammed for “stepping on your dick”, and you did post a lot today in a way that did shove this post back off the front page, but all those other posts are also about this story, and I think this post is a good one. (And I was in tears laughing at all the variations on the “call from tech CEO to journalist, with opening insult” theme.)
As Barry points out, you’re talking about Nocera, not about those journalistic hacks pushing cancer rumors, but that’s probably just because this call, if true, which it probably was, reveals so much about Steve himself, and what an oddball he is.
Of course, David H Dennis is right. Steve need have no real fear of losing the love of the media, who as a group can’t hold a grudge any better than a puppy could. Same for investors. Look at how they rushed back into Russia and Argentina in the wake of enormous privatization burns, although again that’s as a group, not necessarily the same individuals.
I think Brian is incorrect about you not giving a damn about Steve’s cancer, or being hateful. You knocked off your whole Fake Steve gig very shortly after that keynote, even though “Confession: I’m wearing Depends today” was one of your funniest posts. This post was sympathetic to Steve’s cancer, just not to his childish “off-the-record” games, and although very frustrated and even outraged, I did not find it hateful. It seems far too few of your readers can distinguish between your frustrated criticism of people and things you love, like Linux, or Apple, or Steve, and some bizarre hatred and vendetta they imagine you to posses.
Maybe it’s a Catholic thing, the need to give the devil’s advocate a fair hearing, and people without that sort of painfully rigorous education just don’t get it. On the other hand, I was raised as a Unitarian atheist, and plenty of voices in favor of giving the devil his due are Jewish, so maybe painfully rigorous educations, and the passionate defense of dissent, come in all denominations.
I think Private Equity is incorrect that an on-the-record denial works worse than an off-the-record denial and pointer to the evidence. If a reporter is lazy enough to report lies alongside an on-record denial they obviously don’t believe, that reporter is lazy enough to report lies alongside a statement that the company had no on-record comment. I would go so far as to say that Private Equity should look at his or her argument and ask if he or she is justifying a childish and counterproductive habit of playing cat and mouse games with journalists. As the story about jogging in Armonk indicates, the diplomatic cold war between PR people and journalists, flacks and hacks, can really make people tense, frustrated, and paranoid in very damaging ways.
Zato has got to be trolling. Surely by now everyone knows that any view of the world that claims that all people are divided into two groups at war with each other, without any dispassionate third-party observers anywhere, is paranoid, frightened, angry, and most importantly, factually wrong. On the other hand, Solo500′s paranoia is delicious and refreshing and fun.
“Common bugs” would be a great name for a blog by an Apple fan who wasn’t a blindly uncritical Apple fan.
I’m amazed at how passionate people are about this, and how many obviously intelligent people like Istanbul iTard can really start foaming at the mouth over it. Breathe, man! Break up that speech with punctuation so you can inhale! In and out, in and out…
Likewise for harmless, comprehensible, but definitely unusual sentiments such as “I’ll merely bask in his Jobsness and consider myself privileged to have been in his presence for a micro-eternity during this mutual cosmic event.” That was just a joke, right?
I must remark that the idea that Steve is not interested in publicly discussing his health is not entirely surprising, and not at all an issue that should be of concern to us. Despite the off the record quality of his talk with Nocera I highly doubt Steve was lying to him when he said that his cancer was not back.
What I think to be the most ridiculous part of this whole debacle is the fact that there is a totally known explanation for Steve’s weight loss and yet no one seems to be just pointing that out. Instead they seem to want to make it all out to be a huge issue. It is known that as part of his fight with Pancreatic cancer he had a drastic reworking of his digestive system, a procedure that under most circumstances results in “severe, sudden and unpredictable weight loss and gains.”
I think that the most important thing to remember during all of this is quite simple to me. Every journalist likes to point out that it was likely that the call from Steve to Nocera was a scheme to get the stock holders to stop panicking. Lyons even suggests that Apple was taping the call and that they had other people on the call as well. That he requested to be off the record so that he could hide information (either by making sure Nocera doesn’t tell us or by lying to Nocera). In other words that Steve and Apple were being the classic corporate company that looks down on everyone else around it and believes it can run the world. To this point I can only say one thing. This is Apple we are talking about. This is Steve Jobs. Whatever you THINK about large corporate companies should be totally disregarded when speaking about Apple. Think Different.
thanks you a lot
tnk
thanks
thanks …
Я совершенно случайно зашел на этот сайт, но вот обосновался тут надолго. Задержался, потому что все очень интересно. Обязательно скажу о вас всем своим приятелям.
. Обязательно скажу о вас всем своим приятелям.
This really is the best carrier for saving Mom and Dad’s back. When I first opened it I thought it was way too big for me (I’m a 5’5″ woman, 140 lbs) but after putting it on and having the hubby do some strap adjustments, we got it to fit right. I would say it is the best choice for a 3 month or older baby.