Steve Jobs' liver cancer health: Apple news, post iPhone 3G S coup

After all the secrecy, we have news of Steve Jobs' cancer health, now that Apple's iPhone 3G S launch has been successful. In IT Blogwatch, bloggers mull over the curious liver transplant story in Saturday's Wall Street Journal. What does it mean? Who leaked it? And are we just fools, allowing ourselves to be spoonfed reality-distorting updates about the Glorious Leader's pancreatic illness?

By Richi Jennings -- your humble blogwatcher -- who selected these bloggy morsels for your enjoyment. Not to mention an unlikely iPhone app...

Cade Metz has this summary:

Sometime in April, roughly three months after taking a medical leave of absence from the Apple CEO post, Steve Jobs received a liver transplant. News of the two-month-old transplant broke late Friday evening, at the end of a day when Apple released the latest incarnation of its worldwide status symbol, the iPhone 3G S.
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As reported by The Wall Street Journal, Jobs is recovering well and will return to work by the end of the month. ... Apple is famously tight-lipped about, well, just about everything, and chances are, it's no accident that news of Jobs' liver transplant arrived after the market had closed for the weekend, at the sleepiest point in the weekly news cycle, on a day when Apple had re-exerted its hold on the smartphone market.

Jim Dalrymple adds context:

Questions about Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ health resurfaced this weekend after the Wall Street Journal reported that he had a liver transplant during his leave of absence. However, Apple said Jobs is still coming back at the end of June. ... Apple did not confirm whether Jobs had undergone surgery. It has been Apple’s policy not to discuss Steve’s health, saying it was a private matter.
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Of course, concerns over Steve’s health stem from his bout with pancreatic cancer in 2004. The cancer was successfully treated at the time and apparently has not returned. We will have to wait and see if Jobs does return and what role he plays at that time.

Rex Hammock finds the whole thing utterly curious:

It is Sunday in Tennessee. Since there are Sunday editions of many papers in the state, we’re now 38 or so hours into a curious lack of any coverage (in print or online) by local media attempting to verify where exactly in Tennessee Steve Jobs had a liver transplant two months ago, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. By now, reporters have checked sources and obviously, have come up blank in their attempts to verify the ... story.
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“Release bad news on a Friday night” is one of those ancient truisms of corporate communications that today seems to be accepted as a part of their profession’s Ten Commandments. ... I have no doubt Steve Jobs was and is a very sick person. I hope and pray for his recovery. But I don’t get the benefit of him handling this news in the same way Apple handles a product release.

John Gruber examines all the options:

What’s intriguing about this story is not the question of whether Jobs actually had a liver transplant. I do not doubt that (although I’d like to see better sources for it). What is intriguing is the question of who leaked this information to the Journal and why. ... Some portions of Kane and Lublin’s WSJ report must have been sourced from someone on, or very close to, Apple’s board of directors.
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A member of Apple’s board of directors leaked the information to the Journal without Jobs’s permission or knowledge, or perhaps, if the matter of public disclosure had been posed to and dismissed by Jobs at a board meeting, expressly against Jobs’s wishes. ... It sounds sensational to speculate that there is conflict in this regard between Jobs and at least some contingent of Apple’s board of directors, but sensational or not, it makes more sense to me than any other scenario.

Joe Wilcox has his own theory, and the fanbois won't like it:

Apple is once again up to its media manipulation tactics. ... Surely I can’t be the only person seeing just how transparent was yesterday’s Wall Street Journal Steve Jobs liver transplant story. The timing, on day of iPhone 3GS launch, helps protect Apple’s share price and deemphasize an important fact: Steve isn’t really coming back this month.
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This kind of manipulated reporting makes me really mad. I worked as a journalist for a long time and know that the first question to ask when presented with leaked information is “Why?” ... [It's a] bombshell—the kind that sends a company’s stock free-falling. ... The information confirms, at last, that Apple’s CEO was way sicker than previously revealed. ... If Steve had his transplant just two months ago, he’s not coming back to work at the end of June, folks.

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols gets real:

Unfortunately, all the pancreatic cancers can also involve the liver. While no one is saying that liver cancer is why Jobs has a transplant, it's not at all unlikely. ... In the long run, Jobs' surgery is likely to be successful. The American Liver Foundation states that the five-year survival rate for liver transplant patients is about 75 percent.
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If all goes well, we can expect to see Jobs back in Apple's saddle within six-months to a year. So, this is good news for both Jobs and Apple. That said, now, as ever, there are never enough organs to go around for transplants. I strongly encourage everyone to become an organ donor. I am.

So what's your take?
Get involved: leave a comment.

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Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and spam. A 24 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. You can follow him on Twitter or FriendFeed, pretend to be Richi's friend on Facebook, or just use boring old email.