Article: Steve Jobs Cuts Back On Chatting…Who Cares?

Yesterday, a couple of stories that reposted another story came across my RSS reader today about the fact that Steve Jobs has not been using his computer. This is going to sound harsh, but who really cares?

Obviously stockholders and Apple geeks all around want the face of Apple to be back and in good health, but in the story Robert X. Cringely wrote:

A friend of mine has for years been one of Steve Jobs’ Internet chat buddies. And as such his chat client has – again for years – shown as Steve came online 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.

If that’s the case, my brother is dying, as is this site, and probably about half of my friends.

There is a point where health issues must be disclosed for stockholder reasons and there’s another point where speculation runs rampant. Yes, there are plausible reasons why supposedly Steve Jobs has not been logging into his chat program (I’m guessing it’s iChat), but there’s also the fact that he could be out running errands, connecting with those he cares about, or just is taking a break from the technology stuff. Obviously some of these may be the result of a health-related wake-up call, but this is a story that got a lot more press than it needed to over some sort of basis with not much backing.

The point is, we need to worry about other things like new hardware and further developing the iPhone as a platform. The Mac Web has become more of a gossipy celebrity TV “news” show lately and less about interesting technology. Maybe Jobs has had even more health problems arise, maybe he he thinks Cringely’s friend is a jerk and blocked him, or he’s trying out invisible mode. Who really knows?