A couple of people have sent a link to a letter from Apple CEO Steve Jobs, discussing his health issues, and this year’s Macworld (which starts tomorrow by the way).
In it, he mentions how this is the first time in a decade where he wasn’t busy working on the keynote speech for Macworld, his health, and how some things were blown out of proportion:
As many of you know, I have been losing weight throughout 2008. The reason has been a mystery to me and my doctors. A few weeks ago, I decided that getting to the root cause of this and reversing it needed to become my #1 priority.
Fortunately, after further testing, my doctors think they have found the cause—a hormone imbalance that has been “robbing†me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy. Sophisticated blood tests have confirmed this diagnosis.
The remedy for this nutritional problem is relatively simple and straightforward, and I’ve already begun treatment. But, just like I didn’t lose this much weight and body mass in a week or a month, my doctors expect it will take me until late this Spring to regain it. I will continue as Apple’s CEO during my recovery.
For a long time, they’ve adhered to a schedule of announcing/releasing products at Macworld and other such events and this has recently started to work against them. As of the past few years, they’ve been in a situation where they either had to announce products at tradeshows (Macworld, etc.) that weren’t available for sale, or sit on products, to the point where it can cause problems (the longer you sit on something secret, the more chances are that somebody will leak it, accidentally or not). Some will disagree, and I’ve attended my fair share of tradeshows (and a Macworld or two) where it can be exciting, but at the same time, it was bound to happen – Apple became too diversified and had too many products to launch to stick to such a schedule.
Did I mention that Macworld starts tomorrow?
Among the rumors: New iMacs, new Mac minis, new 17″ MacBook Pros, some newfangled iPhone (smaller), and some kind of home server.
I have my doubts about all of those (with the exception of the 17″ MacBook Pro). Eventually they will have to come out with some kind of home server, especially since HP has started rolling out home servers capable of being used by Mac OS X Time Machine users for their backups, but I don’t know about now.
As far as some kind of Apple netbook, I would be very surprised if that happened. I expect that they’ll wait until after CES (which is also this week), and probably when better chipsets are around (especially NVIDIA’s platform).
Read: Apple.com – letter