Steve Jobs is "offline"

In Monday's IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings watches the curious case of Steve Jobs' instant messaging presence (or recent lack of it). Not to mention exploding, flying, and crashing servers...

Robert X. Cringely (that one, not that one) gets to the point (eventually):

Steve Jobs ... is a guy who likes being talked about. He likes it so much, in fact, that he’s adopted a strategy to encourage it ... until Steve Jobs got sick, of course, at which point he went from skillfully managing the press to just as skillfully avoiding it.
...
Steve Jobs has stopped using his computer ... For years ... Steve came online [in IM] each day and remained there for hours and hours as you’d expect a Silicon Valley mogul to do. And it’s a trend that continued well past Jobs’ announcement that he was taking a six-month leave of absence to get well.  But then Steve started logging-on less and less. And several weeks ago he stopped logging-on at all. Silence.
...
Who cares? Anyone cares who actually expects Steve Jobs to return to Apple.

Ronald O. Carlson adds:

[This] can be viewed as either good news that Apple’s CEO is finally concentrating on his health or, disturbingly, that he has completely dropped off the radar for reasons most of us would rather not contemplate.
...
[Perhaps] Steve sensed this friend of Cringley’s would rat him out to the press and preemptively edited him out of his iChat buddy list. We’ve all expurgated a jerk or two in our time. That doesn’t mean Apple’s über CEO is any more or less ill than he was, right?

Christopher Neher:

Yearning for a slightly more credible source, with bated breath we await an update on Steve Jobs' health from the Palo Alto Fraiche Yogurt counter person.

Cringely replies:

Yes, he might have changed his chat name after many years, he might have disowned my source, might have done any of a number of other things mentioned BUT HE DIDN’T. You think I don’t check these things out? I’ve had this for 10 days and wouldn’t have published on a Saturday except it took that long to confirm.

Jack Schofield channels Shirdi Sai Baba:

"Before you speak, ask yourself: Is it kind, is it true, is it necessary, does it improve upon the silence?"

Meanwhile, Todd Dagres asks Obama to employ Steve Jobs in the auto industry:

Dear President Obama ... Suggestion: Draft Steve Jobs (his health willing) to run a combined GM and Chrysler. After all, who has done a better job developing and marketing products consumers want to buy? Who has been more successful keeping the US ahead of other nations in competitive, technology-based markets? Mr. Jobs has also done right by his shareholders.
...
As has been widely reported, Mr. Jobs has some health issues and it is possible that he may not be able to dedicate the time and effort required to put the US auto industry back on firm footing. Only Mr. Jobs knows if he is up to the task. If anyone can convince him to take this on, I suspect it’s you.

Shawn Farner tweets:

The car industry needs a Steve Jobs in the visionary sense or they need someone to create cars that are way overpriced?

As does Kezia Payne:

Isn't Elon Musk, the Car industry's Steve Jobs?

And Mark Schaver, too:

Steve Jobs as car czar: They'll cost 50% more than other cars and u won't be able to change the battery.

And finally...

• Exploding Servers
• Flying and Crashing Servers
  [hat tip: /.]

Previously in IT Blogwatch:

• HP has "hurd" about a recession
• Terry Childs speaks from SF jail cell
• Cisco gets cozy with Trend Micro

Buffer overflow:

• Saul Hansell: Surprise: America is No. 1 in Broadband
• Earl Zmijewski: Longer is not always better
• Cory Doctorow: How the Internet Will Devour, Transform, or Destroy Your Favorite Medium
• Theodore Ts'o: Aligning filesystems to an SSD’s erase block size
• William Jackson: Oak Ridge explores cybots

Other Computerworld bloggers:

• Michael Horowitz: Three cheers for Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
• Sharon Machlis: Quick Review: Head First Rails
• Preston Gralla: Microsoft to laid-off workers: You owe us severance
• Buying a netbook? Consider the Asus Eee PC 1000HE
• Mike Elgan: Don't listen to podcasts? Here's what you're missing!
• SJVN: Who's buddying up closer with Microsoft: Novell or Red Hat?
• Dan Tynan: iPhone, SchmyPhone: Five wicked cool cells
• Shark Tank: The Army way
• Shark Bait: Overseas operators

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Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/adviser/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and spam. A 23 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. You can follow him on Twitter, pretend to be Richi's friend on Facebook, or just use boring old email: blogwatch@richi.co.uk.