Jobs entrusts a NYT columnist with the truth about his health, even before he tells Apple shareholders

July 28, 2008 | Matt Marshall | Comments | |

An Apple (AAPL) spokeswoman lied recently when she said Steve Jobs’ haggard look lately was due to a “common bug,” a remarkable piece in the New York Times this weekend strongly suggests.

NYT columnist Joe Nocera so dogged Apple about Jobs’ health issue that Jobs apparently picked up the phone to call Nocera directly, and gave him an off-the-record explanation of what is really ailing him.

Jobs’ sickness is more serious than company representatives had acknowledged, but the health problems aren’t life-threatening and his cancer apparently hasn’t recurred, Jobs apparently told Nocera.

The piece provides some notable insight into Jobs’ character:

“This is Steve Jobs,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs said, when he called Nocera last week. “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.”

Most significant, however, as Nocera himself points out, Jobs was willing to entrust the truth about his malady to a columnist Jobs calls a “slime bucket” before his own company’s shareholders.

And yet, these machinations sound fishy. Read what Dan Lyons has to say about the matter. It makes you wonder whether Nocera was completely played. In the end, we really don’t know what the company has to say, on the record, about Jobs’ health. This may not be the end of it.

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Matt Marshall is editor and CEO of VentureBeat. Follow him on Twitter at @mmarshall, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • elo8
    While the decision to keep his health private is definitely Jobs' prerogative, it would also make sense of him to take advantage of this crisis of faith to address the issue of succession, which will inevitably come up again at a later date, even if he is given a clean bill of health tomorrow.

    Dr. Tantillo ('the marketing doctor') did a recent post on his branding blog (blog.marketingdoctor.tv), asserting that Jobs and Apple are two separate brands--Jobs one that is irreplaceable but that can, at this juncture, help ensure Apple's longevity--and that, with the question of Jobs' health at least being raised, this is definitely the time to do so.

    Here's a link to the full post: http://blog.marketingdoctor.tv/2008/07/24/brand...
  • Josef Stalin
    Good to read a view on Apple on VB that does not come from your resident Apple shill.
  • Thanks, I'll let Eric know.
  • Hey, I'm the resident Facebook shill, not the Apple one!
  • Stu
    Entrusts a NYT columnist with *what* truth? This basically amounts to, "Well, I lied my ass off to you last time, but this is the real truth now. Oh, but you can't put it on the record. It's just like *too* much truth or something."

    How gullible do you have to be to swallow that crap?
  • Gary
    Who Cares!!!!!
  • edhardy622
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    http://www.uggboots365.co.uk