Hope he is okay. If it is pancreatic cancer again, his odds are not good. My aunt had it, beat it, then it reoccurred four years later. She did not make it the second time. Only 2% survive. Good luck, Steve. Whether you like Apple or not, tech is much more interesting with Steve Jobs around.
Truly sorry to hear about your loss. Actual pancreatic cancer is virtually incurable, and far too few resources are allocated to its research versus less deadly cancers.
For example, breast cancer affects around 207K people (yes, even men get it, albeit rarely) and ends up killing around 40K people a year. Pancreatic cancer affects 43K people, and ends up killing 37K every year. [1]
All cancer research is important, but we should really step up as a society when it comes to cancers that happens to be a dead sentence over the course of 5 years or so.
I personally donate to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, and you can do the same here: http://www.pancan.org/
It's difficult to decide what should be funded, just because you throw money at a problem doesn't mean a solution will suddenly appear. For a look into the history of cancer research I recommend http://www.amazon.com/Emperor-All-Maladies-Biography-Cancer/...
Actually, Steve Jobs is quite lucky. His type of pancreatic cancer, called islet cell carcinoma, has a much better prognosis than most other types of pancreatic cancer. It is also quite rare, making up only 1.3% of pancreatic cancer cases.
Steve Jobs will eventually leave Apple. This is a fact. The question becomes "When he does leave, will Apple be damaged by it"? The press will undoubtedly claim its demise (as they have been for decades), and 10 years ago I think this might have been true - the corporate ethics that have made Apple successful were not in place. Now, with the executive team he's built and trained, I suspect his presence is vastly less important. The design team with Ives, operation team with Cook, etc. know what's making things work. He's been "absent" a lot in the last few years, yet it's been the strongest period for the company - clearly, something works when he's not at his desk.
The damage will be in PR. He's an almost unrivalled corporate showman, and few companies are as associated with their CEO as Apple. Whoever gives keynotes in the future would be wise to develop their own style rather than copy his. There may also be collateral damage in ruthlessness and vision - we constantly hear how he drives new products, and kills off "failures" early. However, the more I read recent interviews with anonymous Apple employees, the more I see he seems to have reformed the company in his image. It's impossible to gauge how much actual presence he's had over the last few years, and it seems quite likely the press have over-egged his effect. As long as his successor is not a radical corporate reformer, and is willing for a few years to be seen as an "Heir to Jobs", it seems likely to me things will roll on quite successfully.
I suspect Jobs will "retire" either this or next year. When they replace him, if they don't promote from within, then any CEO should: absolutely not engage in a massive expansion/race to the bottom; introduce change slowly rather than play with Apple like a new toy and; rely on the corporate team that's been built until they deeply understand what's working and what's not.
In many ways, Job's eventual departure (hopefully based on choice, rather than necessity) could be good for Apple. I firmly believe a little of his control freak nature could be sanded off the company to their advantage. They should drop the "Control for control's sake" direction they've been taking recently, and stay focused on the core corporate ethics that have bought them success - a high degree of perfectionism, technical risk taking, user focused design through everything, and a great marketing team. It won't be exactly the Apple of today, but given some of the…hostile decisions over the last 3 years, it might actually be an improvement.
Whether he leaves the company or not is a given. My beef is that I believe that Steve Jobs is dying, and the company isn't being forthright about it. I'm a nurse working in critical care for the last 17 years, and every single recent picture of him I've seen, I think to my self, "He's dying".
I could be wrong, but in 17 years of this business, I've never heard of anyone being cured of pancreatic cancer with a liver transplant. It sounds very much like a "Hail Mary" cure. To start, organ transplants are very rarely a cure for anything. What they are is a devil's bargain where they exchange the disease that's killing you quickly and get rid of your immune system instead.
But, cancer patients usually gain weight after they are in remission. So, my guess is that Steve still has cancer, and he has no immune system now.
So, I believe that Steve is dying. And, I don't think that the company is being forthright about it. I also believe that lack of transparency and honesty is terribly irresponsible since their stock price has been skyrocketing the last couple of years[1].
I don't think that the damage will be solely in the PR department. The company has created a mythology of Steve Jobs being not only the public face of AAPL, but the soul of the company as well.
Couple that with AAPL's notorious secrecy/lack of transparency and you're going to have big problems with Steve gone. AAPL was able to manage the antenna issues of the iPhone 4 while eating a bit of crow. But, when Steve is gone, then next antenna type problem they have is going to be read by the media as "Steve is gone! AAPL is going down the drain!" in the media.
He had pancreatic cancer in 2003. If he still "had" it, wouldn't he be pretty dead?
I dunno. We mythologize the guy, but, he's a human being. After being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, a death sentence, and then learning that he had the super-rare kind that could be cured surgically, he... went on a special diet. He strikes me as maybe the kind of guy who doesn't want to be dying.
So put yourself in Apple's position. You've got Steve Jobs at the helm. Jobs can only make it in 2 days a week and can't make it to caf for lunch. But he doesn't want to be dying. What is the board going to tell him? It's not like "doctors" are the White Council of Middle Earth who will speak with one voice and say "the verdict is you are dying".
What you say about organ transplants and immune systems and a 55 year old guy with a history of cancer makes sense. And it made me kind of sad.
Meanwhile, the market priced Jobs health a long time ago.
"He had pancreatic cancer in 2003. If he still "had" it, wouldn't he be pretty dead?"
I wrote a long post and then deleted it.
I just don't think this is the place for speculation of any kind.
There are tons of stats and bits of info out there ( http://www.cancerhelp.org.uk/type/pancreatic-cancer/http://info.cancerresearchuk.org/cancerstats/types/pancreas/... ). It's a hugely sensitive area anyway (the realities are bleak, a friend of mine passed last winter only 3 weeks after diagnosis) and where it affects a man like Steve Jobs and we all have a huge lack of information... well I just don't think we should be wildly speculating. Whatever happens, happens... so it goes.
> I also believe that lack of transparency and honesty is
> terribly irresponsible since their stock price has been
> skyrocketing the last couple of years[1].
Skyrocketing because of the CEO health, or because of the performance of the company? Don't forget, Jobs was also on medical leave for the good part of said couple of years.
Of course I am biased there, because for me, as outsider, all stock market stuff looks to be driven by most stupid things.
"I suspect his presence is vastly less important. The design team with Ives, operation team with Cook, etc. know what's making things work. He's been "absent" a lot in the last few years, yet it's been the strongest period for the company - clearly, something works when he's not at his desk."
Jobs recruits great people, and provides the right ingredients to enable them to work at their best. And he has his own very prescient ideas, as well.
When Jobs leaves, Apple will do fine... for a while. Then one of the people he recruited will leave, then another, and eventually Apple will revert to the mean, where it is no different from another company. Apple's products will become less special, and it's stock price will drop.
There is no reason whatsoever to make any other prediction. Jobs is at the heart of why Apple is what it is. He is unique. It's not a coincidence that the same person had the vision, smarts, and grit to be able to successfully found Apple, and also had what it took to bring it back from the dead after a succession of other CEO's failed.
Or, let's say... he may not be unique, but the odds that Apple will end up with a similar person at its center after Jobs leaves are low.
Again, it will do fine for a few years. But I wouldn't make a long-term bet on it after that.
The hardest post-Jobs question will not be "what would Steve do?" but rather "who would Steve hire?"
The team Jobs has assembled that built the past decade of Apple knows and shares his vision for products. The real test will be retaining the culture through turnover.
The problem with asking “Who would Steve hire?” is that the last time Steve picked a CEO, he brought in John Sculley to Apple, with his famous “sell soft drinks or change the world” pitch. And look at how that turned out…
True, Jobs has wizened up since then, but he also hasn’t been tested with a true replacement assignment since. (There is no obvious “heir apparent” in Apple at this time, AFAIK.)
Unless, of course, the people he's hired follow the same hiring practices, and train them in the same way. As the saying goes, A players hire A players (and in this case, one hopes A* players hire A players, then make them into A* s). I don't buy that companies are built around one person, and then revert to the mean - it's more about setting up a culture and following it. Does Google do well because Sergey is wandering the halls and jetting around the world shouting out inspiration? Or is it the culture that was created, covering it's many offices, that delivers the goods? If that is allowed to die, then yes - the company stagnates. But there's no reason to believe that the executive team can't keep it alive if they're as good as they should be.
That's not to say that Steve's absence isn't a big deal - it's just not a "Dump your stock, it's all over" level deal.
Leadership isn't just a procses...it's a vision. It may very well be that somewhere inside of Apple there is someone equal to Steve Jobs in terms of vision, determination, and smarts. That's not likely, however.
Companies like Apple fall off of their perch because you can't turn greatness into a process. It's much more innate than that. The grandparent is right. They'll be ok... for awhile. Soon they'll go the way of HP and IBM (and increasingly Microsoft). Not gone... just not what they once were.
The biggest struggles Apple would have with a new leader is establishing that leadership in the minds of the executive team and major/influential shareholders.
A lot of CEOs pretend to be a Jack Welch or Steve Jobs but are often just glorified bus drivers for their corporations. Often they are more concerned with keeping the board happy than analyzing the company product line.
Jobs is unusual in appearing to be absolutely in charge of his company, many other CEOs don't have that luxury or confidence.
On the odd occasion that I've caught the MUNI, I've been under the distinct impression that the driver and I are the only two people on the bus who could possibly have a job.
The point is that bus driver is not a derogatory term but that people that drive buses do important work and give direction to a 10+ton vehicle that would otherwise be going nowhere and take responsibility for the lives of their passengers.
Calling a CEO a 'glorified bus driver' is an attempt at playing down the importance of bus drivers and CEOs at the same time when in fact in both professions the responsibilities are substantial and the price for fuck-ups is immense.
Buses and companies do not drive themselves and if there is nobody or a bad choice at the wheel the corporations, their shareholders, the buses and the passengers will suffer.
This is wrong twice, first, a bus driver is in full control of his vehicle, he can't decide on the route but he's totally autonomous in his decisions.
Then, a CEO does not decde 'what the goals of the company are', that's something that will be decided usually in close cooperation with other managers.
CEOs that act as dictators usually do not last very long, typically they'll be the ones to maintain relationships with the outside world at the highest level but that's not reason enough think that they and they alone make the decisions as to what the goals of the company are. A CEO tries to get his people 'on board' with respect to the decision that are being made, and if as a CEO you do not do that you will either find yourself between jobs or you'll face a walk-out of your managers. In many cases the 'goals of the company' are codified either in a mission statement, in the articles of incorporation or in a separate agreement between the major shareholders of the company.
In a company where the CEO is also the largest stockholder it may well be the case that the CEO dictates what the 'goals of the company are', but in that case it is probably better to speak of him or her as the 'owner' of the company in that context rather than the CEO.
CEOs carry out the corporate vision, they do not define it by themselves.
We're writing this in a thread about Apple, and in the case of Apple it is probably right to say that Steve Jobs is the man with the vision who indeed does set the goals of his company but just as he receives only $1 in compensation for his work (he has substantial stock so that is where his real compensation is) he is something of a rarity in CEO land.
You're being really pedantic. The degree of leadership and autonomy required of CEOs is orders of magnitude more than bus drivers. Lumping them together in any meaningful way other than as fellow human beings is disingenuous.
Sorry, but that's nonsense. A CEO that tries to 'drive the company in to the lake' would find himself fired just as fast as a busdriver that did the same.
Really, the autonomy of CEOs is vastly overestimated here and I think that it is in part people like Steve Jobs that re-enforce that myth, but typically the CEO is not the person that decides like some kind of dictator how a company is run.
They do carry final responsibility but that's another story.
Please make a distinction between CEO/owners and CEO/minor shareholders, the difference is huge in this respect.
I don't think anyone is trying to make the point that you seem to think they are. I was responding to the fact that in this comment here (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2112766), you seem to be drawing some very odd parallels between bus drivers and CEOs. The reality is that most people could drive a bus. Very few could be a CEO. The skillsets and levels of responsibility are just completely different. If you genuinely think that they're comparable, I don't really know what to tell you.
> Sorry, but that's nonsense. A CEO that tries to 'drive the company in to the lake' would find himself fired just as fast as a busdriver that did the same.
But it took them quite a while to fire Darl McBride, didn't it?
Oh, I agree with you. I just think that he unambiguously drove the company into a lake, though I guess it doesn't matter if the board doesn't realize that.
The CEO is also the top salesman of the company. In many companies, the CEO doesn't actually run the company - he's the face of the company and goes out doing sales. That can be incredibly important.
I think there's little doubt that Jobs is the top salesman of Apple.
I read it as saying that most CEOs are skilled but interchangeable workers, like bus drivers. It takes skill, but the route is set, by the board, by shareholders, by expectations. Of course the metaphor breaks down pretty quickly, but I think it's apt. Jobs took Apple in directions that few CEOs could even imagine, let alone implement. Most would have driven Apple straight off a cliff.
How would the destination of a driverless bus affect its path? I think the major path affectors would be things like concrete barriers, buildings, other vehicles, bodies of water, or large rocks.
To be honest, I'm not sure I buy the whole greatest corporate showman thing. In fact I'd even say some of the other Apple execs have a more natural presence on stage.
I thunk Jobs is successful because the product sells itself in most cases, and he doesn't (have to) bullshit you. Of course he's also involved in making the product, which is a different matter.
It's interesting because I agree with you, Steve does feel a little awkward on stage, and he always has. But at the same time I think he's the best corporate showman I've ever seen.
I think there are two reasons for this. First off, he's a perfectionist when it comes to timing and arrangements. Apple execs in general are pretty good at knowing what the public cares about hearing and what they'll find boring; not so with other companies, whose executives are usually hilariously awful. But even among Apple's top presenters I think that Steve's timing is particularly terrific.
The bigger reason, however, is that Steve displays a really sincere love for almost all the things he shows off (and it's very obvious on the rare occasions he doesn't like what he has to say). It seems really clear that he genuinely thinks all the things he shows off are as terrific as he says they are. It's magnetic to see somebody talk about how much they love something. It's also rare to see it coming from a corporate event.
I think with Steve his passion for his products is worn on his sleeve when he presents in a very natural manner, this makes up for perhaps some strange foibles when he's on stage.
Compare this to Zuckerberg, who tends to look a bit nervous and like he's trying to sell something a bit. (Note I'm not saying Zuckerberg isn't passionate about what he does, he is, but it tends not to show). Or Ballmer who looks like he's trying really hard to be passionate about his products.
While not hour-by-hour in any sense, this is the only description I've ever heard of Jobs' day-to-day activities:
“I have one of the best jobs in the world. I get to hang out with some of the most talented, committed people around and together we get to play in this sandbox and build these cool products. Apple is an incredibly collaborative company. You know how many committees we have at Apple? Zero. We’re structured like a start-up. We’re the biggest start-up on the planet. And we all meet once a week to discuss our business… and there’s tremendous teamwork at the top and that filters down to the other employees… and so what I do all day is meet with teams of people and work on ideas and new problems to come up with new products.”
Somehow, I get a feeling of authenticity from Jobs that I don't get from many CEOs. Mostly I think it is because of his historical relationship to Apple. It's easier to believe he has a genuine personal and emotional interest in Apple and its products rather than it just being his job. I can honestly believe Apple is his calling.
I think a lot of that has to do with how he returned ($1 salary, etc). I've also got a bit of an attachment to him and Woz through growing up learning about computers and programming on a series of Apple ][ machines. When we switched to Macintosh at home, I had awful experiences with the pre-iStore Macintosh affiliates and to this day I instinctively cringe at the thought of purchasing Apple products.
I don't know how the younger generations see Apple. Probably they way we saw Sony. Honestly, I don't think any products Apple has made recently are as inspiring or enlightening as the Apple ][ line. The few Apple products I've used recently have always ended up being a hassle. I don't think the way MacOS X wants me to think and I hate iTunes. I bought an iPad and had to return it because we couldn't get along. Nevertheless, Apple still has a place in my heart even if its products do not and I hope Jobs is OK.
"It's easier to believe he has a genuine personal and emotional interest in Apple and its products rather than it just being his job. "
Yea, I mentioned the myth that after a manager has an MBA, he or she can manage anything before.
It helps that Apple's products are cool and some of them practically sell themselves - but Jobs is able to bring a level of genuine sincerity to his presentations that few other CEOs can (despite their best efforts).
IMO the big thing about Steve Jobs and showmanship is that he feels sincere. We've all seen the keynotes and launches where the CEO is trying to express his/her enthusiasm about their new product in the most contrived, artificial, cringe-worthy way possible (Ballmer is a master at this). Jobs seems immune to this - he comes off as just as excited as you are.
The enthusiasm is infectious and helps the press (and in turn, the general public) get hyped up about the product.
Did you really have to bring up Ballmer? You're absolutely right, he's the anti-Jobs when it comes to public persona, and not in s good way. Eric Schmidt I'd say is almost a polar opposite to Jobs, but comes off well. Ballmer? Ugh.
I've never known Eric Schmidt to get up in front of a crowd and try to hype up a new product. I may be wrong though.
If you're going to hop on stage and build buzz for your product, you better be pretty good at it. Ballmer gets brownie points for trying (most CEOs don't, and leave their marketing underlings to deliver equally boring keynotes).
Steve is passionate about product and bringing new value to the customer via great product. Ballmer is about competition. The end difference is ... well the difference between Apple and Microsoft.
In fact I'd even say some of the other Apple execs have a more natural presence on stage.
I have to disagree with you. I was at WWDC '09 and the keynote (http://movies.apple.com/datapub/us/podcasts/apple_keynotes/w...) was by far the worst part of the conference. I felt like a lot of the presenters of the individual sessions had a better stage presence than some of the execs.
The guy I was actually thinking of was Scott Forstall, who apparently is Vice President of iPhone Software. I don't know how far down the hierarchy that is, although he seems to appear on stage/video a lot.
Well the showman doesn't need to be the CEO. And I have seen captivating presentations especially at the E3 show, which sometimes are given by the CEOs. I think Iwata gave the one that introduced the Wii, which went phenomenally well.
But my point was more about the 'showman' part than about the 'corporate' part. When Jobs takes to the stage, he's almost invariably unveiling a ridiculously cool product with revolutionary/craze potential. One that he has personally worked on. It's no surprise that he seems so personal and sincere, or that that the enthusiasm is palpable. What other companies lack is not a great showman, but this great situation of having their leader demo a brilliant invention every 6 months. That requires a) a leader and b) a brilliant product.
With the blackberry playbook announcement my thought was from Monkey Island - serious tablet? First you'll have to stop waving it around like a feather duster.
Thing is, we already know what Apple is like without Jobs, and frankly it reverts to type very quickly.
Last time he was off on medical leave, they brought out a new Mac Pro that was massively more expensive than the model it replaced (to a Quadra level in the UK); they started going all MBA with the MBP, segmenting the MacBook with an aluminium MacBook and the polish on iPhone OS 3 took a nosedive into stripey-icon ugly land.
Weren't there also some awful app rejections in that period? Pretty sure there were, but either way, the impression Apple gave in those days might as well have been Apple 1992 all over again.
Don't forget that the majority of those things would have been setup on his watch - the Mac Pro, for example, came out only a few weeks after he left on leave. Also, I don't recall iOS 3 being particularly "ugly" - all in all, I remember it as a big step up in usability and reliability over iOS 2.
App rejections were silly pretty much right up until September of last year when they released more guidance - well over a year after he came back from medical leave.
Were he to quit tomorrow and never talk to an Apple employee again, we wouldn't see the damage done/advantage gained until at least 6 months, if not 12+. Product design and direction is set a long way before release, and though he might veto early products, I doubt anything hardware related within a 3/6 month window of release has ever been killed (nothing would have been allowed to get that far).
The Pro hardware will have been setup in advance, but the pricing will be done very close to launch, and the launch was a couple of months after he left.
The MacBook that was a MacBook and then a Pro is a much more telling example, which you skipped over. A reverse-face like that after Jobs's return shows pretty clearly that they'd got it wrong in his absence.
iOS 3 brought the universally derided striped icons, which sounds like a minor point, but is actually the sort of attention to detail Jobs brings.
There's plenty more like that in there, but I don't think there's much value in such aesthetic quibbling. My overall point is that there was undoubtedly a difference in Apple's direction and approach during that time, and I don't think it was for the better.
EDIT: Cor, that's a lot of upvotes. The consequence is that Jobs now contributes so little to this perfectly humming Apple that he can leave abruptly amid a medical crisis and they don't make a mis-step? I don't buy it.
There are so many examples of Apple doing something weird and reversing direction, with or without Jobs at the helm. Especially picking out a minor detail like stripped icons seems akin to reading tea leaves. The iTunes and Mac App Store UI and the iTunes symbol have been “universally derided”, too.
(I would also like to note that, on the grand scale of things, your examples are minor. Sure, they matter, but they are at least rectifiable at a minimal loss.)
Yes, this is all very true. If I'd thought "Jobs matters" was going to be so controversial I would have prepped the examples better!
Even if they were minor, I think they show a tendency that Apple has, and always has, that very few people can rein in -- or at least that there are very few people that Apple will allow to rein in.
More than anything, Jobs's return brought focus to Apple. With him gone, that will be the challenge more than any of the PR sizzle or attention to detail that he also brings.
That focus is something that must be brought to the table.
After all, Apple keeps its staff a very long time. This is still, at some level, the company that loves to make new things but will channel that energy into OpenDocs and Dylans and Soups and MPWs and zillions of other cool things that don't get it where it needs to go.
Are any of the current leadership team the type to bring that focus that harnesses that energy? I haven't seen it yet.
“If I'd thought "Jobs matters" was going to be so controversial I would have prepped the examples better!”
I’m not disagreeing with you. I just don’t know how Apple would do without Steve Jobs and I don’t think Steve Job’s recent leave showed any clear or dramatic effects, I’m not even sure whether there were any changes at all.
Anything longer than six months might be different but I’m not sure about that.
I've just counted default icons on iPhone iOS 3, and even with a generous interpretation in your favour I get 7 blue and 14 non-blue, and that's leaving out Maps as Google related and counting weather, camera and remote in with the blues.
Jobs is man with a vision and Apple is built around his vision. Apple is still fresh and needs to make good strategical decisions to further establish itself. This wont happen if the new CEO will try to continue where Jobs left off. Why? Because 'proceed as before' will not lead to innovation. The new CEO has to be a man who will be willing to invest big in new technologies and fight for his vision.
I'm sure there are lots of good people at Apple, who can come up with great ideas, same goes for Google. The difference between the 2 is that where Google has lots of separate small projects going on, Apple delivers one big product with lots of features and that's what makes it so great. Integration and simplicity.
Apple needs a strong leader with a vision in order to be as successful as it has been in the past.
You'd be surprised how many internal projects are going on inside apple at once. THe difference might be that Google is more public abbot many of their projects (Labs). Also most Projects inside apple get killed or morph.
That's what I meant by saying that Apple and Google are similar. At Apple the small projects are combined into a single solution (hence lots of 'features'), whereas Google launches their applications independently and only later integration might take place.
> In many ways, Job's eventual departure (hopefully based on choice, rather than necessity) could be good for Apple...[i]t won't be exactly the Apple of today, but given some of the…hostile decisions over the last 3 years, it might actually be an improvement.
I think we should all take a few moments to reflect on the debt that computer users and developers everywhere owe to Steve Jobs for his work in these last few years. Yeah, most of us have our differences with him (I am not a fan of the "closed garden" approach), but there is no denying that he opened huge new markets and product categories that all of us will benefit from.
It takes a lot of drive to do that kind of work while having such major medical troubles. I really believe that what drives him is the desire to give the next great thing to users, and to take Apple to new heights. Money can't be the motivator - he's got plenty, and it's probably not at the top of his list anyway, during such life and death struggles.
Speaking for myself - I recently had some surgery which was nowhere near as complicated and life-threatening as what he went through - I know I wouldn't have the drive and commitment to return to work in such a big way, especially if my family was already taken care of financially. So - thanks to Steve Jobs and best wishes for his health, and no, I don't think it's right to wish for him to return to work soon - he will decide how to spend his energy, and he's already spent more of it at Apple than anybody had the right to ask.
Absolutely. I'm in the mindstate to do this today, as we celebrate one of history's great leaders (MLK). It may sound like a ridiculous comparison, but I put the two together as my biggest heroes: people who put their vision for the future of humanity ahead of their own well-being.
This. This is one of the most commonly misunderstood aspects of medicine today.
As a society, we have become exceptionally good at treating pathological diseases. This is how we know we will eventually cure AIDS because we fundamentally know how to do this kind of medicine. (And it appears like an AIDS vaccine, and perhaps even a cure is closer than we think.)
Unfortunately we are terrible at treating any aging-related disease. Diseases such as those that relate to the fundamental breakdown of the metabolic process, cancer or Alzheimer's. We just simply don't have the research and experience to treat these diseases in anything less than a crude way.
For those unaware, Chemotherapy and Radiation are probably some of the least-precise medical treatments we apply on any broad scale today in modern medicine. We try to radiate or kill your cancer cells before we kill the rest of your body. Seriously.
Anyways, more research on aging-related disease is critical if we want people to keep living longer. If we don't, then we should just focus on pain management and let people die as they grow older.
Why are aging billionaires like Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates are not putting millions and millions of dollars into medical research to stop these kind of aging-related diseases? It would seem they have higher incentives for this than the TB / malaria related research Bill funds.
That seems sort of silly - I would posit instead, why should we care much about which causes any of them value (and their reasons why)? Why shouldn't Mr. Gates be allowed to allocate as much (or as little) of his funds to a cause which a) needs attention, badly and b) benefits a massive number of people in the immediate future, and long term?
Some people value the needs and well-being of others equally, or higher, than their own.
This. This is one of the most commonly misunderstood aspects of medicine today.
AFAIK, it's actually true. If we live long enough, we'll all get cancer. In the case of men, it's a near certainty we'll get prostate cancer if we don't die of something else first.
Also, 85% of us have Cytomegalovirus, which basically executes a DOS attack on the memory of your immune system, eventually resulting in immune deficiency. However, the progression of CMV is so slow, we'll almost certainly die of cancer before this happens.
And cancer isn't one condition, it's many many conditions, so if they cured prostrate cancer you'd likely get another one. The chances of a single "cure for cancer" is basically zero.
>For those unaware, Chemotherapy and Radiation are probably some of the least-precise medical treatments we apply on any broad scale today in modern medicine. We try to radiate or kill your cancer cells before we kill the rest of your body. Seriously.
This is very true. I think the most exciting developments in cancer treatment in the past decade have all been targeted therapeutics: drugs that are designed to affect the function of just one particular protein in a cell rather than the "kill anything that moves" action of traditional chemotherapy. These targeted treatments are only effective against the subset of tumors that rely on that particular protein. For example, Trastuzumab and family only help about 10% of breast cancers that have highly amplified Erbb2, but you can test ahead of time to find out if it will likely help you.
I find great hope in this approach. It's possible that in a decade, with a much greater repretoire of anti-cancer chemical weaponry, much better genomic diagnostics, and much better understanding of how genes interact to cause cancer and evade treatments, we could squash a huge percentage of cancers, even pancreatic, brain, and ovarian cancers. Every tumor would have a custom-designed cocktail of off-the-shelf drugs.
There are some fascinating things to be learned, about ageing as an anti-cancer mechanism, and particularly about how much is being discovered right now. It seems that what we characterize as ageing is mainly a side effect of "cellular senescence" which may very well be treatable without increasing likelihood of cancer. There are people who say we basically have the means now to increase life spans by at least 15% but ...
another fascinating aspect is that a huge blockage to research on ageing is that it is not classified as a "disease", which means firstly that it fails to qualify for funding from most public sources and further that it is every very difficult to get drugs through the FDA since the FDA will reject things that don't have a proven clinical benefit (hard to prove for something that isn't a disease in the first place). As a result, even though we could have a huge impact on cancer by funding ageing research, we don't - instead we fund cancer research and some little bits of that trickle into knowledge about ageing.
Yea, I know. The difference between treatment and prevention. Our medical system is mostly based on treatment (mostly using drugs), and that makes sense sometimes, often prevention makes more sense.
This is where I sympathize with transhumanist ideas.
We should seriously research the possibility of transferring the human consciousness into a machine "body". Our organic bodies will fail us eventually.
Presuming such a body existed; imagine yourself sitting in a chair and being told by a doctor that your brain has been successfully copied into the artificial body, and he is now going to kill you, the original. Would you go for that?
The common thought experiment goes something along the lines of this:
Replace a single neuron in the brain with an artificial one. Every time you go out drinking you lose plenty more cells, so clearly "you" are still "you". Now do another, and another, and another. At no point do you "break the pattern", but eventually you're left with a completely virtualized mind. Copying the pattern and destroying the original generally counts as "breaking the pattern", which is what you are describing.
Presumably we'd only be killing off the originals once they were malfunctioning to the point where continuing to live was not a pleasant experience. At that point plenty of people that don't have "backups" are happy to die, so as long as that's how it was happening, then the fact that you're copied into another body is just a bonus, this body is going to die anyways.
Further, once you did the switch at least once and had the memory of "waking up" in a new body, you'd have a lot more confidence that "you" would still exist after the transfer.
> Presumably we'd only be killing off the originals once they were malfunctioning to the point where continuing to live was not a pleasant experience.
I see no reason to presume that; if it worked at all, you'd expect people of all ages to upgrade immediately.
> Further, once you did the switch at least once and had the memory of "waking up" in a new body, you'd have a lot more confidence that "you" would still exist after the transfer.
That rather is the point of my question... You didn't wake up, a copy did, you got killed afterwards and knew you were about to die. The point was to question the idea that you could ever be uploaded in a meaningful sense.
What I personally see actually happening, is people being enhanced to the point where implants make up more of their consciousness than the real brain does and they feel so disabled without the implants on that they no longer see themselves as whole without them. At some point, our idea of consciousness will simply change and then it'll be no big deal killing off the biological part and going pure machine, gradually.
That problem's easily solved. Render the original unconscious before performing the transfer. Keep it in a coma for a few days while verifying the duplicate works as expected, then pull the plug.
If the transfer is successful, from your point of view you went to sleep in one body and woke up in another. If it failed, you'll fall asleep and then wake up a few days later.
That's not solving the problem, it's avoiding thinking about it. I said you were awake on purpose, it's a condition of the thought experiment; it makes you address what you means.
It's not respectful to talk about Jobs if he wish to stay out of the press, but it is surely possible to talk about "Apple without Jobs" without any kind of privacy violation I guess.
Steve Jobs chose consciously and deliberately a long time ago to give up a large share of personal privacy in return for the wealth and power that being the CEO of a public company brings. The wealth of millions of people rides on his health; expecting privacy under the circumstances is ludicrous and he knows it.
What's your point? Don't you think he should have some privacy? The man might be extremely sick, and at worst could potentially be dying. Why does it matter if he's the CEO of a publicly traded company? What does that have to do with his right to privacy when he's ill?
The CEO of a publicly traded company has a legal obligation to disclose any matter that can impact the stockprice positively or negatively. This certainly falls in that category.
Also, for better or worse, part of being a public figure is living with the fact that your wellbeing impacts a lot of people, and these people have a right to know what that impact will be.
If he resigned he should have absolutely privacy, but since he hasn't the thousands of people that rely on him have a right to know where they stand.
He really has no such obligation. Do you have any idea how many things a CEO knows that might negatively impact the share price of an organisation?
He has the obligation to release certain specific information mandated by the SEC in a timely manner (details of his health are not on the list - it's largely financial) and there are certain things a company can not say (which basically boils down to honesty).
The SEC also say he and the company have to communicate in a particular way when information is shared (for instance so it's available to the whole market - no selective disclosure, and again it has to be honest and truthful and so on) and projections are heavily caveated.
The on top of that he has a general legal obligation to act in the best interests of share holders.
But there's no blanket reveal all, and nothing that specifically covers his health and I'm not sure why you think there is or where it comes from. Could you quote the specific authority or law in question?
No - the CEO has a legal obligation clearly spelled out by the SEC and other laws, I'm sure.
Given that the market is made up of humans, and that nobody can predict with certainty the public reaction to every move a company or person makes, it's absurd to think that insiders in a corporation are not entitled to privacy.
I agree that he should have some privacy but as the CEO of one of the largest publicly traded companies the state of his health is something investors need to know.
No, it's something they'd like to know, and would be useful to know, but there's a difference between that and need to know. So long as everyone (within reason) has the same information and that information is honest, then the market is fair because they're all in the same boat.
After all, where would it stop? "Jonny Ive has had a break up with his other half and is really down, he's meant to be working on the new iPhone but he's really off his game...". "Inform the shareholders!"
It's similar to the difference between "in the public interest" and "the public are interested".
I don't think anyone here is asking for his white blood cell count or wants to know the name of his doctors and what kind of medication regime he is on.
I would imagine everyone here agrees with his right to privacy on the details of his illness; however what some of the GPs are saying is simply that the overall status/summary of his health (i.e. he has cancer, or not) needs to be disclosed.
That much information would be basically useless. Saying someone has cancer could mean anything from "they're going to have a few hospital appointments but will be fine" to "they'll be dead within a month".
So that's useless to you (unless you're just being morbidly curious in which case you have no business here anyway) so you'd ask "well, what type?" and they'd usually say something pretty similar to the last answer so you'd go "what grade?" and they'd say something pretty similar again - probably narrower, but maybe not and certainly with very wide error bars which would cover both death in the short term and survival of 5 years plus (which for cancer is close to a cure).
So, still none the wiser, certainly in any way that would allow you to better judge Apple as a company, you'd say "how advanced is it?" and most of the time the answer would yet again be pretty similar but they'd say that different people respond to treatment very differently.
So then you'd need to ask "what the treatment protocol is he going to be on?" and they'd say the same and then you'd ask how's he's responding at which point you basically are asking for his white blood count (though I believe that's actually only used to judge whether a patient should have chemo at any given point in time rather than an indication of success / failure / health as far as the cancer goes).
He's clearly unwell enough to ask for an extended absence, it's not the flu. That's all you need to know.
I've been thinking about this problem and I think it should be up to the relationship between the company and the investors. A company may not be as open with investors as others and it's up to the investors to take that into account when evaluating the company. All things being equal that company would trade at a discount.
In a way, I think this is similar to Google refusing to issue guidance (not sure if they still do that) and the shareholders just needing to deal with it.
Yes, Apple stock prices are determined by whether Steve Jobs is getting a colonoscopy or whatever other procedures that might be coming to him. I think that there are some serious limits to the "CEO of a publicly traded company" line that nosey people keep spewing.
Well, seeing how Apple shares fell about 6-7% where they are traded today and this has been the only major announcement recently, I would say that yes, to a degree Apple stock prices are determined by whether Steve Jobs is undergoing medical treatment.
It's creepy how so many comments here are about the impact on the company, on shareholders and investors. "Steve, it's so rude not to recognize the impact your disease and likely death is going to have on me."
C'mon people. He's a goner. He's contributed immensely to the world. Let him go in peace and even with a little positive feeling. It'd be nice if he could turn to HN before his death and see a lot of people appreciate his work.
It is vastly impossible to run something like Apple in a successful way with just an outstanding guy like Jobs, you need N outstanding people. While he is a for sure a remarkable personality in the computer industry and the "soul" of Apple, I think they'll be able to succeed even with N-1.
On the other hand, generational turnover is very, very important. Maybe at some point, even a terrific figure like Jobs may be as bad as it is good for Apple. For instance, how much big role he played in the culture of closure of Apple?
So it is even possible that an Apple without Jobs could be, all in all, a better company.
First of all, on the pancreatic cancer note - what he had was a curable type of cancer, a rare form, not your typical pancreatic cancer. What really is far more likely is transplant rejection, and his doctors probably asked him to take some time off and are going to play around with his immunosuppresant medications. Just a guess though.
Hopefully he will return because without him Apple really is not the same company, despite their ability to succesfully execute on their planned projects. A visionary has to plan for the future, and Steve Jobs isn't just the CEO of Apple, but kind of a new type of media mogul. He seat on Disneys board surely holds sway, and Apple is going to need his influence to further it's push into TV, movies and publications - he is the man, for example, Murdoch or Igor are going to want to speak to.
I just want to let you know that I accidentally downvoted you. I meant to upvote you, as I think your point is a valid one, but my thumbs are too fat for my iPhone. Sorry.
I lost my dad on 31st December, 2010. He had a cancer in his rectum, which eventually reached his lungs. My mom and I are still trying to recover from our loss :-(
I lost my mom to cancer when I was 20. I can only tell you the truth - it takes a long time for the pain to subside, but it never truly goes away. The only thing you can do is to talk with friends and family and to tell stories about your dad to keep his memory alive. It's been 13 years or so since then and recently I got married and we had our first kid. We "adopted" a very good family friend to be a surrogate grandmother to our son, not in replacement of my mom but just to fill the void.
I know this goes against the ethos of HN, but life is really not about software. It's about people. Get out there and live life and meet people. A lot of exercise and playing loud angry music was also really good for me for a while.
This is a sad day, I wish all the best to Steve and his family.
Maybe this is not the best place to ask, but does anyone know about Steve's eating habits? I know he was a frutarian at a certain point and then changed to fish/vegan (particularly sushi), but would really like to know more.
The reason is that I am in need of drastic personal changes regarding diet/exercise and thus trying to incorporate a vegan/vegetarian diet, which has been very difficult for me. I know that cancer is a multi-factorial disease, but it still scares me that some apparently very healthy individuals (such as Jobs or Linda McCartney) have such tough health problems. I feel very well when I manage to stick to a vegan diet, but would like to know more about longterm effects.
I think whatever you may learn about well-known peoples' eating habits will be self-reported. It may be beneficial to appear as a vegan or vegetarian, but we'll never know exactly what do celebrities actually eat. Also, as you noted, their habits may change during their lifetime.
If you're seriously interested in healthy eating habits, I would suggest to look at sources or studies on the subject, rather than trying to emulate the celebrities diets.
"I am in need of drastic personal changes regarding diet/exercise". This kind of thinking scares me. What's wrong with gradually moving towards a more balanced lifestyle, taking on one hurdle at a time? Whatever happened to eat well, sleep well, exercise? Why this sudden urge to 'change everything' from one day to the next? Why directly switch to vegan when 'eating less meat' would be a good start? Do you want to get healthy for real or just feel the satisfaction of "living a healthy lifestyle"? Sorry if I'm a bit harsh, but I see far too many people suddenly "switching to diet X" & destroying themselves in the process. Go easy on your body.
Ovolacto vegetarian for a decade here: Veganism is hard to do right compared to almost every other sort of meat/animal product light diet.
B12 and several other less prominent nutrients are not in great abundance in non-animal based foods, so you have to eat a lot of a certain subset of strange foods to guarantee your health, as you do need those nutrients
If you really are trying to make a lasting change, try vegan + fish (So no bird eggs, or milk based products), ovolacto (no meat or fish, but milk and egg based products), just lacto (no meat or fish, but milk based product), or just ovo(no meat or fish or milk based products). All of these additionally are much much much more easy order at a restaurant or to fix out of the rest of the stuff at a dinner party, both important social functions in human existence.
All of them are relatively easier to do than straight veganism (although pretty much any of them involving milk products leave you a huge channel for saturated fat intake, namely cheese, which may not help fix your issues).
I know for years I ate sushi occasionally until a bad experience the next day one time has made me leary to usually avoid it.
Maybe instead of scaring you, it should provide you with comfort. Steve Jobs, after all, survived whatever he has been through. I'm not saying it's because of his diet - but who knows, it probably could not have hurt.
But it's totally unpredictable. You are right about Linda McCartney. Also why did Dana Reeves, who never smoked, die of lung cancer at the age of 44?
Best thing you can do is treat your body as a shrine. Follow a healthy diet - I think veganism is great if you can stick to it, meditate to keep your stress levels under control and engage in a moderate amount of exercise, you really don't need to do anything too excessive because that can take a toll over the years as well. And don't spend too much time thinking about it too, cause at the end of the day, you really should enjoy life.
While this book is not specifically about vegetarian diets, it does contain good information about diet and the effect on preventing cancer, along with other info: http://amzn.to/mg3jg
Just today I was thinking of why Jobs works so well for Apple: could it be that he doesn't let the company become complacent? Every other big company seems to become complacent. There simply is no need to invent radical new products if you are still bringing in money by the truckloads. But I could imagine for Steve Jobs it is not the revenue that makes him happy, it is the optimum product. So if a product could be better, Apple employees will have fires under their asses.
Liver failure killed my mother. Cancer killed my father and grandmother. They're both ugly, ugly diseases. While I'm not thrilled at the way Jobs used his money to get himself on as many transplant lists as he could, it's still not anything I'd wish on anyone.
While I'm not thrilled at the way Jobs used his money to get himself on as many transplant lists as he could, it's still not anything I'd wish on anyone.
I have cystic fibrosis, which accounts for a really high percentage of lung transplants in the U.S. (something like 1/3 of adult and 1/2 of pediatric lung transplants, IIRC) and people with CF sometimes get other organ transplants as well. Transplant itself is really hard on the body and then you take anti-rejection drugs for the rest of your life. Sometimes it doesn't go well and people die after transplant. The stories are pretty heart-wrenching. I can't help but feel it is Frankensteinian and I wish there was more research into preventing and reversing organ degeneration/failure. My feeling is transplant is kind of "glamorous" and glitzy for the medical world whereas preventive medicine is boring -- if you avert crisis, there isn't any real "news" to report: "These people didn't get gruesomely ill and didn't suffer horribly. Film at 11". It just doesn't sell.
I don't envy anyone facing transplant, money or no money.
> Transplant itself is really hard on the body and then
> you take anti-rejection drugs for the rest of your life.
It would be nice to have genetics research advance to the point where we're able to grow our own organ replacements. Elsewhere in the comments people have suggested donating to cancer research. An alternative I would humbly suggest is donating to organizations that participate in stem cell or other genetic research.
If conquering cancer is a while off, replacing someone's cancerous organs with healthy new organs that exactly match their own DNA is a good way to save more people as cancer research is ongoing. It also has myriad benefits beyond just cancer such as helping amputees, burn victims, and so on.
I used to have a hole in my lung. The tissue regenerated. I'm a former homemaker and homeschooling mom. Currently a divorcee with an entry level job I can't get promoted out of. Stating that I have done this and therefore I know it can be done -- and it doesn't take fancy technology -- is met with incredulity, to say the least. Suffice it to say, I have strong feelings on the matter but it's probably best for me to try to leave the subject alone at the moment.
I think how we finance it is a very, very big part of the problem and the two probably can't really be separated. I think it actively encourages bad solutions.
Conventional medicine is a lot better than the alternatives, although it is not without flaws. What's needed is a more open marketplace, more effective regulation and administration, and a better mechanism for protecting intellectual property than the awful system of patents provides.
There's also serious issues with the profit-driven industry surrounding conventional medicine, yet this is not unique to medicine.
As many transplant lists? He got on one, Tennessee, by living there. He didn't live there long, but to be considered he had to be there, not California, Hawaii, and Texas. And I don't blame him. Cancer is a nasty disease and if you've got the money to beat than more power to him. We should all have the resources to fight any disease, but after the silly arguments made about HCR I can say that we don't really "want" that.
I'm all for it, let's distribute the organs back to the same income bracket that generated them. I'm pretty sure there would be a substantial across the board wage increase.
There are a lot of problems with this idea. You've created a perverse incentive structure.
Poor people won't be able to get the organs of rich people.
This will favor people at the top of each income bracket, since they will have more money to move to where the waiting list is shortest. Or if you want to let people buy and sell organs, they'll have more money than their competitors.
Rich people can use financial instruments to change their income.
Since most people accumulate wealth over life, organ donors will usually be young and poor. Recipients will be older and richer. This disparity is large enough to ensure that some organs will go to waste.
Oh and this will never happen because politicians are rich and old and need organ transplants.
It's weird how people suddenly care what you do with your corpse when it can directly help others. Buried? Fine. Cremated? Sure. Donated to research? Go for it. Frozen in liquid nitrogen? Whatever floats your boat. Sold to the highest bidder so you can provide for your family after death? Eh, not so much.
It probably would be good to note here that there are far fewer wealthy people than there are poorer people.
So this will not favor those at the top of the income brackets because waiting lists are typically on a compatibility and first-come-first-served basis.
Right now for instance there is a big flap going between the Netherlands and Belgium, the dutch have voluntary codicis, the Belgians have mandatory ones. Because EuroTransplant matches up donors and organs from both countries the Dutch benefit from this arrangement disproportionally.
> Since most people accumulate wealth over life, organ donors will usually be young and poor. Recipients will be older and richer.
Yes, that's the current situation, pretty much. Poor people in need of organs that are older are not getting any because rich people in need of organs get to use their money to 'jump the line'.
> Oh and this will never happen because politicians are rich and old and need organ transplants.
Yes, I realize that, it underscores my point I think.
Why have to redistribute donated organs at all. In an ideal world medical research wouldn't be impeded by a religious agenda. Think about how much research could have been accomplished if there wasn't an effective ban against stem-cell research? How many lives are lost because organ donation is double opt-in? You have to agree to it before death and your next of kin has to agree after your death. And how could preventive medicine allow people to diagnose a problem before organs were lost.
Steve has the money to see the problem and take effective countermeasures. A lot of people don't and the way the current government is carrying on you would think some don't want the help.
It's funny my original comment must have been modded down several times and then modded back up again, it's almost as though there is some misinterpretation going on there.
If you disagree with it feel free to speak out :)
The idea behind it is a simple one: If rich people can use their money to 'jump the line' and buy the organs of poorer people that have died but left with a donor-codicil in their name then it would be good to limit the distribution of those organs to people that are roughly in the same income bracket.
By doing that there would be a drive for people that are wealthy to encourage research that would relieve the need for donor organs or there would be a push to reduce the income disparity so there would be more people available in the higher income brackets that could serve as donors.
Both would be beneficial in the long run. Having the rich be overrepresented as the consumers of donated organs and under represented as the donors (in absolute terms) is not good for society at all.
It's about a rich man in the US. If he was in another country than this would be a different conversation.
Organ transplant is already hard enough, adding another layer doesn't improve anything. Jobs didn't jump the line, just found a shorter one. Since organ transplants are compatibility and location dependent wouldn't you also attempt to find where you had the best chance at advancing in the list and having a better match.
It would make an interesting table if you could display organ phenotypes correlated by location. Maybe that is exactly what he has done that made him decide that Tennessee was the best place to be.
I don't know Jobs' specific circumstances regarding paying or not, but I do believe you get liver priority if you are not an alcoholic. Since most liver failure issues are alcohol related, those patients usually have to wait to even be put on a list. In Oregon it is six months of sobriety.
The sad fact is that Apple will never be the same after Jobs.
I think he embodies a unique ability to see the heart of a new technology or aspect of technology and to focus in on the critical part or parts, ruthlessly getting to what he sees. It's not just a design sense (like Ive), nor a good sense of what consumers really "want." And there are plenty of downsides to this unique gift. (We can all cite plenty of examples.)
I don't think we've seen that from anyone else, even at Apple, over the years, so there's no real replacement possible.
I think it's even spilled over to Pixar's success, which is pretty amazing.
In 2009, Jobs was on leave from January to June with Tim Cook in charge. There was a dip in the stock when it happened, but it did just fine during the period of his absence (if you define "just fine" as going from ~ $82.00 to ~ $142.00)
I think after it all sorts itself out, it'll be fine.
I'm just not sure. Analysts have generally been clueless when talking about apple, and I don't see that changing. And now they're saying that things would be alright for 6mo to a year, no matter what. That's a code for: I'm selling first thing.
They'll sell today and tomorrow they'll see it's lower, think it's a bargain and all buy it back... These are not bright people (or rather they often are demonstrably very bright people who just hide it well with their words and actions).
IMHO not the best example : If they can sell today and buy it back lower tomorrow, then that's pretty smart. They own the same thing, but have $$ left over.
If that was their intention then yes it's smart but it seems it's rarely thought out that far in advance. And when by "that far in advance" I mean "tomorrow" it's a bit scary.
Today is a holiday, so there is no trading... but it is a weekday so the press will have this thing over and done by the end of today. Tomorrow it is old news.
Tomorrow is also their earnings announcement. That will have a bigger impact on the stock than Steve taking time off.
Tomorrow they will talk about Mac App store results, 10 billion apps sold, Verizon estimates and drop hints about revenue from their new products in 2011 (iPad 2 etc).
the numbers of shares is not important. Apples Market Cap is about twice the size of BP but even this is not important if you look at a relative change (%), not an absolute ($).
The second point is the important one... news that there was a really big problem was slow to come out. Eventually BP lost 50% of its value, but it took many weeks.
As heartless as this may sound, I think Apple stock will represent whatever the media says about his health. I hope he recovers to good health, whatever might be the problem.
My guess is they have, just not publicly. (Easy to argue the merits of that.) Pancreatic cancer doesn't leave too many survivors so I am sure the management team thought a lot about life without steve, at least at that time.
I agree, but I think it's less of an internal logistics issue and much more of a public image issue: Steve Jobs is so much the face of Apple as it sits currently, every time there's news about his health the stock fluctuates and that isn't good.
