Apple CEO Jobs Back At Work

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - - Apple's iconic chief executive Steve Jobs has returned to work after a five-month medical leave of absence during which he underwent a liver transplant.

"Steve is back to work," Steve Dowling, an Apple spokesman, told AFP on Monday. "He is currently at Apple a few days a week and working from home the remaining days. "We are very glad to have him back," Dowling said, declining to provide any further details.

The 54-year-old Jobs, the visionary behind the wildly successful Macintosh computer, iPhone and iPod, announced in January that he was taking a leave of absence to deal with "complex" health issues.

Apple has declined to release any further information about Jobs's health since the January announcement but a Tennessee hospital confirmed last week that he had received a liver transplant.

It said Jobs was "now recovering well and has an excellent prognosis." Apple has been notoriously secretive about Jobs's health since he underwent an operation in 2004 for pancreatic cancer. Apple last week released the first public comment from Jobs since he went on medical leave, a brief statement in which he lauded the sales of Apple's latest model iPhone.

Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple Computer in the garage of the Jobs family home in 1976 and the company's fortunes have been uniquely linked to Jobs, who returned to the California company in 1997 after a 12-year absence and turned around the flagging technology giant.

Under Jobs, the company introduced its first Apple computers and then the Macintosh, which became wildly popular in the 1980s. Jobs left Apple in 1985 after an internal power struggle and started NeXT Computer company specializing in sophisticated workstations for businesses. He co-founded Academy-Award-winning Pixar in Emeryville, California, in 1986.

Walt Disney Company bought Pixar in 2006 in a 7.4-billion-dollar deal that gave Jobs a seat on its board of directors and made him the entertainment titan's biggest single shareholder.

Apple shares lost 0.33 percent in New York on Monday to close at 141.97 dollars.

Source: http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20090630/ttc-us-it-company-telecom-apple-jobs-0de2eff.html

Tags: Jobs back at work, Steve jobs, Apple, iPhone, NeXT, Macintosh, Pixar, Walt Disney Company, Walt Disney Company’s biggest shareholder, iPod, Steve Wozniak, liver transplant, global IT news,

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Steve Jobs Had Liver Transplant

Steve Jobs has had a liver transplant during his medical leave but is expected to return to work as expected later this month after a medical leave he announced to a shocked Apple community in January, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The Journal cited no source in particular for its story, and got no direct comment from Apple itself. It quoted a “a person familiar with the thinking at Apple” that Jobs would have a diminished schedule at first when he returns to work and also reported that “At least some Apple directors were aware of the CEO’s surgery” as part of an agreement Jobs made with the board before he went on leave.

The Journal said the surgery took place two months ago in Tennessee, where there are three facilities which can perform such a procedure, there is no residency requirement and the wait is among the shortest in the country. According to the United Network for Organ Sharing, which manages the transplant network in the U.S., the five-year survival rate for liver-transplants patients is generally between about 73% and 76%, it said.

The subject of Jobs health has been a front burner item since he announced, on Aug. 1, 2004, that he had undergone surgery for pancreatic surgery. Over the course of last year it was apparent that he was losing weight, but neither he nor the company would directly address this painfully evident fact.

On January 5, Jobs told the “Apple Community” in an open letter that the cause of his weight loss was not a recurrence of his pancreatic cancer but a treatable hormone imbalance. In that letter Jobs said he had already begun a “relatively simple and straightforward” treatment for the condition, that he would remain on as Apple CEO during his recovery, and that he expected to be noticeably improved in a matter of months.

Nine days later Jobs dropped the other shoe.

“… during the past week I have learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought,” he wrote in an e-mail to Apple employees. “In order to take myself out of the limelight and focus on my health, and to allow everyone at Apple to focus on delivering extraordinary products, I have decided to take a medical leave of absence until the end of June.”

Since then COO Tim Cook has been running day-to-day operations, though the Journal has reported that Jobs was maintaining a “firm grip” on the company and involving himself in projects of his choosing, and that he had also shown up at work from time to time.

Apple shares have improved in Jobs’ absence. AAPL closed at $85.33 on Jan. 15, the first day of trading after he announced his medical leave, and closed at $139.48 on Friday, the day the new iPhone 3 GS went on sale — about a 63% gain. During the same period the NASDAQ has declined by 4%. Without Jobs fully at the the company held a successful if lackluster WWDC and launched the third generation of iPhone.

Source: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/06/jobs-liver-transplant/

Tags: Steve Jobs, WSJ, Apple, Liver transplants, illness, united network for organ sharing, tim cook, nasdaq, wired, iPhone, global economic pulse,

Posted via email from Global Business News