Apple shareholders to ask about Jobs?
The Apple Inc shareholders meeting will be held today at their headquarters in Cupertino, CA. It is expected that they will get questions about the health of Steve Jobs and how reports of his illness were handled.
Steve Jobs, one of the founders and the current CEO of Apple is not expected to be at the meeting. Jobs has had now-famous health problems in recent years and is currently on medical leave until June. Jobs had pancreatic cancer but was successfully treated, according to reports, but then became very gaunt late in 2008, causing speculation about his health.
At first, he and Apple attributed this to an easily treatable hormonal deficiency and tried to deflect any worries about his health, according to a Forbes article. Shortly thereafter, however, Jobs and Apple released almost simultaneous statements saying that the new condition was more tenacious than they had thought, and that Jobs would take a medical leave of absence from January to June of this year.
There were any number of people that did not like the way the news of the top executive’s health problems were handled, saying that both Jobs and Apple were trying to downplay serious health problems in order to head off any problems with sales and/or stock prices. It is expected that this group will be represented at the shareholder’s meeting and that they will question the way that the issue was handled earlier this year. They will also likely ask for an objective update on the current status of Jobs and his medical problems.
Another faction thought that the health problems faced by Jobs were personal in nature and that too much was being made of them. This group believes that they were not a public matter, in any case, and were between Jobs and his doctors, rather than fodder for the financial media. They will also be at today’s meeting in Cupertino, but will probably not be able to keep these questions from being asked.
The actual situation is probably midway between these two extremes. By stepping onto the big stage, as Jobs has done in his high-profile leadership tenure with Apple, one yields some of the right to privacy that they would have if they have not done so. Shareholders, especially those that believe that Jobs is the Apple messiah, think that his health has a huge impact on the company and should be disclosed honestly and liberally.
Still, Jobs is one man. It remains to be determined if he has carried the company to new heights on his own, or if the company would have made there without him by virtue of good products and good marketing. These questions are for history to determine and will not be answered at today’s meeting. But that will not stop the questions about Jobs and his health from being asked.
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February 25th, 2009
Jobs was not a one man team. He got Apple back on its feet and helped set the direction and stuff. However, Jobs does not do everything we see. Not everything is his idea. His way of thinking will have rubbed off on others, he’s still involved in major decisions and the same people who developed products under Jobs are still there. And its 6 months, not forever.
People need to get a grip.