The coverage of Steve Jobs of Apple and his health woes is starting to remind me way too much of the old Generalissimo Francisco Franco jokes on “Saturday Night Live” in the 1970s. Back then, Chevy Chase would report that “Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead”–a dark-humored play on the drawn-out coverage of Franco’s declining health, in which newscasters had solemnly reported that Franco was still alive.
So, we are told, is Steve Jobs. We know this because a terse and somewhat grumpyletter was issued from the Apple mothership in Cupertino, Calif., today, over the signature of Dear Leader himself. In this letter, Jobs acknowledges that he’s lost a great deal of weight in the past year and says doctors have finally figured out what’s causing it–it’s a hormone imbalance. And now he’s being treated for it, and he should start gaining weight again soon, and he hopes to recover by spring. And, as Jobs finishes up in his letter, “So now I’ve said more than I wanted to say, and all that I am going to say, about this.”
Left unaddressed were fears that Jobs has suffered a recurrence of the pancreatic cancer for which he underwent surgery four years ago. Today’s note doesn’t mention cancer at all. From this we are presumably meant to infer that Jobs does not have cancer again. That at least is the message Wall Street took from the news, as Apple shares popped four bucks today, to $94.
The fear began last June when Jobs appeared at a conference looking gaunt and frail. Soon after, word leaked that Jobs had undergone new surgery in spring of this year. In July, Jobs gave an off-the-record interview with a New York Times columnist in which he began by insulting the guy–calling him a “slime bucket”–and kinda sorta maybe said he wasn’t really seriously ill. The frenzy heated up again a few weeks ago when Apple announced Jobs would not give his annual keynote speech at this week’s Macworld conference.
The larger issue here and the one that Apple is failing to address in any meaningful way is the question of succession at Apple. Jobs says only that he will remain in charge for the time being. Who is his heir apparent? No one knows.
Compare this to the way Microsoft managed the handover of the company from Bill Gates to Steve Ballmer. Gates, you’ll recall, was every bit as synonymous with Microsoft as Jobs is with Apple. Yet Gates managed to slide out of Microsoft with no disruption. Microsoft accomplished this by setting up the transition years in advance, giving Ballmer the CEO post and letting him get more exposure even while Gates stayed on as the figurehead and official outside representative of the company. By the time Gates did step down officially–in June of 2008–his departure was almost a nonevent.
Jobs, by contrast, seems determined to hang on at Apple no matter what. See, in the world of Steve, it’s all about Steve. Not about Apple. Not about its shareholders. Confronted with sincere concerns about his health based on obvious symptoms of decline, he responded first with silence, then with insults, and finally with a grudging letter explaining his illness and grumping that “I have given more than my all to Apple for the past 11 years.”
When he finally does go, he will be remembered as a tremendous genius and a petulant, selfish narcissist with an overly grandiose sense of himself and a sadly limited view of the world. And oddly enough Bill Gates, his arch nemesis, will go down in history as the classy one. Yes, Gates might have made crappy software, but at least had the good sense to know that there was more to life than personal computers, and that the world did not revolve around him. And at least he will have devoted the last years of his life, and all of his billions, to helping the poorest people in the world–not playing petty cat-and-mouse games with reporters and Apple fanboys at Macworld trade shows.