Steve Jobs ‘Health’ Issue Just Gets Curiouser and Curiouser

A measured piece by Jim Goldman regarding the rumormongering regarding Steve Jobs’s health, specifically an Associated Press report on yesterday’s conference call that read, “Steve Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, did not join the conference call with investors as he commonly does, prompting an analyst to inquire about his health. Jobs survived pancreatic cancer.”

Goldman writes:

You see, Jobs is never on the company’s earnings call. Never. Ever. And anyone covering this company knows it. And anyone investing in the company should know it. And that’s why that sentence in the AP story is so troubling, and so factually off base.

That’s not quite true, though. Jobs has participated in a handful of these analyst calls over the last decade — but only when there is extremely bad news to report. (MDJ publisher Matt Deatherage, who covers these calls in more detail than any other reporter in the industry, put the number at three — three calls in 11 years — in a post to the MacJournals-Talk mailing list yesterday.)

(Via MacDailyNews.)

★ Tuesday, 22 July 2008