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Alan

" Not because I'm worried about what might happen to Apple in his absence, but because I want to see him triumph against a deadly disease that so few overcome."

Sounds like you believe he has AIDS? What's up?

Jason

Charlie, I get that conceptually, but again that gets back to the role of a CEO. Wanting to keep his health issues private, to me, doesn't mean he's likely to lie about something else, particularly as it relates to Apple's fundamentals. And let's not forget, again, the hundreds of other people inside and outside of Apple that help with corporate governance.

Let me ask you this, would you trust a company whose CEO commits adultery? Because the raw statistics on infidelity suggest that there's no discernible correlations between deception in one aspect of your life and that of another.

Charlie Wood

Jason-

Whether the man is sick or not, the bottom line is this: if you don't trust Steve Jobs you shouldn't be holding AAPL stock anyway.

-Charlie

Jason Wood

Thomas, could you flesh out your first contention -- i.e., that he has very little right to privacy under U.S. law? It's my understanding that he has a legal duty to disclose any illness that may impede his job performance to the Board, but that it's by no means a requirement to go public with it, do you interpret the law differently?

Thomas Otter

Under US law he has very little "legal right to privacy", but that is another discussion.

There are two things at play here, and they overlap.

On the one hand Jobs is a CEO, but he is also a celebrity. It is a faustian bargain. He is a public figure, even if he is often publicity shy. Jobs has a following in the same way as pop-stars and movie stars do. Call it the People Magazine syndrome. He rode that wave for all it was worth. It helped him sell more kit, and it helped establish him as one of the most significant figures in business history. Long after we have all left this mortal coil he will be thought of in the same way as Karl Benz, Cecil John Rhodes, Henry Ford or Andrew Carnegie, and yet because of the media driven society, today he is of interest to those who follow what Britney Spears' sister is
up to.

Secondly.
The market is amoral, it feeds on information and where it lacks certainty it seeks it out, or prices for the uncertainty. Annual reports often say people are our most important asset, but nowhere is it more starkly proven than here.

Apple needs to get on and show us
what they can do with the other employees.

I wish him a speedy recovery, and my thoughts are with him and his family.

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