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.
