A Few Words in Appreciation of Steve Jobs

The chorus of negative criticism over Apple's announced pullout from Macworld Expo 2010, Steve Jobs' no-show for the 2009 Expo keynote, and what in many instances appears to be to be a thinly-veiled death watch regarding Jobs' health prospects commends no one. As Jobs put it, "the curiosity over my personal health continues to be a distraction not only for me and my family, but everyone else at Apple as well."

I don't want to imagine what it must be like living with even a moderately serious health issue amid that sort of nattering public kibitzing ongoing.

Jobs probably hoped his open letter to the Apple community posted last month would stanch the flood of speculation, but in some instances it may have have made it worse, and now that he's announced that he's going on medical leave until June, the floodgates have burst, with Apple stock (of course) plunging in overreaction.

Now the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is showing no such reticence or compunction (to say nothing of common decency) in launching an investigation into whether Apple committed securities fraud by failing to inform the public about the true seriousness of Steve Jobs' health problems while Jobs is at least figuratively, and perhaps literally, on his sickbed.

I feel for the Steve Jobs. I've never battled cancer, but I've had my share of chronic health travails, and my heart goes out to Jobs and his family. I find his almost wistful musing in the open letter that "I have given more than my all to Apple for the past 11 years now . . . I hope the Apple community will support me in my recovery and know that I will always put what is best for Apple first," especially poignant.

Apple's Savior

So true! If it wasn't for Steve Jobs, Apple Inc. might well never have existed in the first place and would most likely have been swallowed up to become a niche specialty division of some other IT firm back in late 90s. Jobs cofounded Apple, then parted ways and went off to develop, among other things, the operating system that would become OS X, returned in 1996 to save the company and revitalize it into one of the strongest and most innovative personal computer and consumer electronics firms in the industry, with a market share growing and sales amazingly buoyant in the worst economy since the Great Depression and larger cash reserves than some small countries.

Not only that, in a broader sense Steve Jobs has been instrumental in conceiving, popularizing, and enhancing technological innovations that really have changed the world profoundly within a fraction of a lifetime, enriching the lives of millions of users. I know the Mac has enhanced mine - it's a bona fide revolution and epoch-changer. Not an awful lot of people throughout history can say that.

As Forbes' Brian Caulfield put it in a retrospective tribute last month:

"He has healed one very sick company. And along the way he has changed the way we think about music and movies, telephones and computers . . . Jobs launched the personal computer industry as we know it with the Macintosh. He returned to Apple to lead a thunderous revival. He remade movies at Pixar. He led the creation of the iPod and the iPhone."

I'm not an uncritical Jobs fanboy. I've questioned many of the decisions he's made at Apple, and his arrogance can be pretty hard to take sometimes. However, it's very hard to second-guess the success of his stewardship at Apple overall.

A Visionary Leader

Some will argue that many of Jobs' accomplishments were made standing on the shoulders of others: Steve Wozniak with the original Apple computers; Jef Raskin with the Macintosh (Jobs was famously Mac-hostile in the early going), and in the second Jobs era the design genius of Jonathan Ive. All true, but I'm doubtful that without Jobs' entrepreneurial vision, flare, and drive that the formidable talent and creativity of those three men (and many others) would ever have had the opportunity to shine nearly so brightly.

Jobs has also been well-compensated, of course, amassing a personal fortune estimated at some $5 billion (the bulk of it from the sale of Pixar Animation to Disney, of which Jobs is the largest individual shareholder), the stock options, and the famous Gulfstream V650 jet, none of which I begrudge him.

We have much to thank Steve Jobs for, so now that he's announced that he's taking medical leave, and amid the drone of negativity, I'll take this opportunity to express my appreciation and thanks - and wish Mr. Jobs a speedy and sustainable return to robust good health so that he'll be around to surprise and delight us (and occasionally annoy and infuriate us as well) for many years to come.