Steve Jobs: Honesty Is the Best Policy 34 comments
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This quote from Joe Nocera's piece on Steve Job's health in today's NYT shocked me:
"This is Steve Jobs,” he began. “You think I’m an arrogant [expletive] who thinks he’s above the law, and I think you’re a slime bucket who gets most of his facts wrong."
I'm personally with Joe on this one. Steve Jobs is an arrogant f**k who thinks he's above the law. He's also the most amazing technology CEO/entrepreneur working right now. He's way better than Bill Gates (who isn't working anymore) and the Google duo in my book.
Apple and Steve are at the top of their game, pushing the envelope in so many ways. But Steve is wrong to try to hide his personal health from the media, the market, his customers, and his employees.
Steve's health is not a private matter - as much as he'd like it to be. Apple's stock is off between 15-20% in the past 45 days in the midst of one of the most powerful product cycles (iPhone) we've witnessed in the tech business. You can blame it on the fact that they are going to take Macbook prices below $1000 shortly and take share in the laptop market, but the stock market will love that because it can do the DCFs and value that move. The stock is weak because the market thinks Steve is sick.
The technology revolution that Steve has had so much to do with has changed a lot of things and one of them is transparency. You can't hide stuff anymore. So honesty is the best policy. And calling influential reporters "slime buckets" should be avoided as well.
Disclosure: I am long AAPL.
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This article has 34 comments:
PLEASE clean up your language. Parrots can be taught some pretty spicy language; their brains are the size of garden peas. One can almost invariably substitute the F and S words for ones with more oomph but less cringe
You think the hedgies don't use that exact word when they spread there little rumors.
Look I might be wrong, but to me this is time to play it a little bit safer. I hate giving more money to those individuals on wall street, but if I buy an expensive AAPL $2 or $4 Put to cover each 100 shares I hold, then I'm long with insurance (a little wall street protection money). AAPL moves up $10 or $20 and I won't even notice it's gone (to wall street).
Any comments would be appreciated...
Thank god you're not a influential reporter, lending yet more support to Steve's arrogance.
Might as well restate the real story right here since the slime bucket bloggers are out in force pounding the same topic:
The press blew way out of proportion Jobs' health. His condition isn’t life threatening. The press supplemented their “reporting” with rampant speculation, this in turn fueled the rumor mill that was gleefully juiced, pumped and perpetuated by boiler room Wall Street outfits entrusted with the marching orders to smear Apple in any way shape or form. The root in a word, greed.
Jobs is arrogant, indeed, so are many of the “reporters” and certainly bloggers that make their nickel from sensational hype.
Also, speaking of “above the law”, if Apple were breaking “laws” there would be suits. There’s no suits out of the ordinary for an operation this size. So again, arrogant and loose reporting.
So while Jobs may be arrogant, by definition in this case of being a hard nosed, untrusting businessman (I can’t imagine why so much of Apple’s initiatives are wrapped in secret, go figure); so too he’s correct in stating that many reporters are slime buckets.
The joke's really on the reporters and institutions that think most out here in the working world don’t get it.
Disclosure: long AAPL since October 2003.
well good for him it's his damn business unless of course he wasn't able to perform his job , in which case he and the board should tell the world his health conditions..
from the same article
While his health problems amounted to a good deal more than “a common bug,” they weren’t life-threatening and he doesn’t have a recurrence of cancer. After he hung up the phone, it occurred to me that I had just been handed, by Mr. Jobs himself, the very information he was refusing to share with the shareholders who have entrusted him with their money.
You would think he’d want them to know before me. But apparently not.
How can you be so sure?
When I buy or sell stocks, I don't recall filling out a questionaire or essay question .
But MSFT bothers me...Does anyone know Balmers resting pulse, blood pressure and if he's on Prozac ?
Disclosure: will buy shares of MSFT if they become cheap enough.
Steve Jobs can choose to discuss his health with people. Apple Inc., until such time as his health is a material fact, cannot initiate such disclosures.
Also, it'd be mind-boggling stupid to get stuck in the never-ending loop of "What is the current state of Steve Jobs' health?"
One, Steve Jobs can die at any time in any number of ways. If Apple Inc. claims he's healthy and he dies of an aneurysm or a heart attack or a stroke the next day, how many class action lawsuits will there be the day after that? Apple Inc. isn't a medical profession -- they can't affirm or deny his health.
Once Steve Jobs goes on the record, the only way to control this issue would be to providing constant medical data with increasing amounts of information. For example, the treatment can affect one's immune system. How long before people want to know his white blood cell counts? Survivors often develop diabetes. How long before people want to know his blood sugar levels? Diet is believed to play a role in avoiding recurrence of problems? Will Steve Jobs have to issue a weekly menu? Will Apple have to disclose that Steve jobs had a steak dinner?
The only reasonable and correct answer is "Steve Jobs' health is a private matter".
reinharden
As to Apple's secrecy, and maintaining a culture of STRICT secrecy, I applaud them. In this competitive world, keeping your cards so close to the vest is a key strategic advantage. I know perfectly well what's going on at Apple, when I need to know it. That is to say, when everyone else knows it. When the next brilliant product is introduced, or the official announcement is made about the next release of the operating system. If everything weren't going so brilliantly at Apple, it might be a different matter. Investors would be banging down the door to try to understand the problems, and to get them fixed. But that is certainly not the case here. (God forbid, Carl Icahn would come knocking!)
The NYT article / author quoted for this piece is also totally off base when he says that Apple's secrecy "poisons its corporate governance. Apple tells analysts far less about operations than most companies do." Nonsense - again, Apple is in a very competitive technology space and secrecy is paramount! (Look how quickly the iPhone was cloned [albeit poorly] in Asia. Or how MSFT tries to copy Apple [again, albeit poorly].) The fact is many companies have stopped giving guidance in their quarterly calls because they're afraid of being sued by shareholders if there predictions fall short, yet Apple consistently provides guidance for the upcoming quarter, albeit consistently conservative guidance, but we do know what to expect.
Steve and Apple, keep doing what you're doing! Delight us with the brilliance of your market changing products. And keep us guessing. To your health Steve! And to everyone at Apple, great job!
Henceforth, he SEC should require that quarterly reports fully disclose every companies type 5 shareholder's medical records. Most importantly, in this brave new world we have access to every document held by the person in question's health insurance agency ( unless the shareholder gets health insurance from the company in question, in which case a the SEC will step in an act as unbiased measure of health ) .
Think of the charts ! AAPL PE to Steve Jobs HGL has just broke out of its 200 MDA ...BUY BUY BUY... but look at the T-cells
Looking forward to lower prices on laptops and iPods.
Really? I think it should be practiced more often, particularly those on the Steve Jobs Death Watch. Friggin' vultures.
And I think politicians need to be called that more often too.
I'd like to know more
tom
people - GROW UP. what a bunch of whining babies.
and oh yeah - try taking a reading comprehensions class or two.....
AAPL has personality. I remember the looks I got when I went long the LEAPS when the stock dropped to $16 and AAPL had the sex appeal of Michael Moore.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
1) Initial denial in seeking rational treatment of a malignancy in a timely manner
2) Undergoing the mother of all abdominal cancer surgery, a Whipple
3) His current gaunt, emaciated body habitat
4) His failure to reject that he is dying that creates an adoptive admission of the unfortunate reality.
The Vegas line favors Steve’s exit within 3-months!
Jobs quitting/passing away would be bad for apple stock, but Buffet's stepping down/leaving berkshire will be worse.
We all understand the pragmatist's view: that "why not set the record straight?" But consider that once "setting the record straight" becomes the standard, each and every rumor becomes a demand to deny that which isn't true.
The fact that the author saw fit to engage in an ad hominem attack on Mr. Jobs, e.g., "arrogant f_ _k" it should not surprise anyone that Steve Jobs, his innovative and record setting company and the rest of us, have an opinion about who, when all is said and done, is the "arrogant f_ _k." It isn't Apple's CEO.