Linked List: January 15, 2009

Thursday, 15 January 2009

Beautiful minimalist iPhone stopwatch app by Japanese developer Yuki Yasoshima. Looks great, works great. Free, at the App Store. (Via Peter Hosey.)

(Anyone know what typeface he’s using for the numerals? Update: Huh. Ends up that’s Trebuchet. I’ve long despised that typeface, but I actually like the numerals.)

Walt Mossberg on Steve Jobs’s Health and Apple ★

Voice of reason.

This Is Speculation ★

I’m inundated with email from readers telling me that Bloomberg is reporting that Steve Jobs is having his pancreas removed. This is not so.

What Bloomberg has published is idle speculation from doctors who have never even met Jobs, let alone examined him, that maybe he needs to have his pancreas removed, and that if so, the most likely reason would be a recurrence of pancreatic cancer. Not one person in this Bloomberg story claims any familiarity with Jobs, his current condition, or even with Apple. Compare and contrast with yesterday’s Times story, where the two sources were identified as people familiar with the treatment Jobs is currently undergoing, both of whom stated that he is being treated for an inability to absorb nutrients from food, and not for a recurrence of cancer.

Maybe Jobs’s pancreas is doing just fine. Maybe it is riddled with tumors and he’s having it removed right now, as I type this. I don’t know. But neither does Bloomberg, or the doctors they’ve quoted. And yet thanks to their “reporting”, there are now untold thousands of people who now believe it is a fact that his pancreas is being removed.

Yahoo’s New CEO: Carol Bartz ★

The other big CEO news of the week.

Joe Nocera: ‘It’s Time for Apple to Come Clean’ ★

Joe Nocera, the NYT financial columnist who got the infamous “I think you’re a slime bucket” call from Steve Jobs back in July:

I can even understand why he doesn’t want to disclose details about his medical problems to the world — it’s very distasteful, and Mr. Jobs also believes strongly that it’s nobody’s business except his and his family’s.

But he’s wrong. There are certain people who simply don’t have the same privacy rights as others, whether they like it or not. Presidents. Celebrities. Sports figures. And, at least in terms of his health, Steve Jobs. His health has become a material fact for Apple shareholders. His vagueness about his health, his dissembling, his constantly changing story line — it is simply not an appropriate way to act when you are the most important person at one of the most high-profile companies in America. On the contrary: it is infuriating.

I disagree with Nocera, but his position represents that of the financial community. Just because Nocera’s “infuriated” by Jobs’s refusal doesn’t mean Jobs doesn’t have the right to privacy.

Jim Goldman: ‘What a Difference a Week Makes’ ★

CNBC’s Jim Goldman, regarding a story he was working on regarding Steve Jobs’s health:

I sent a very personal note to Steve Jobs about this on Monday. I didn’t hear back. I did get a call from someone at Apple asking about what it was I was working on, in relation to these executives and Jobs’s health status. I confided in this person that if they had read my email to Jobs, they knew what I had. I informed Apple that we were going to try to gather more information, but would like to give Apple, and Jobs, a chance to come forward to respond. That was yesterday. I wanted to give it just a little more time. Apple had to be aware that if colleagues this close to Jobs were beginning to emerge from the shadows to speak to me, chances were very good that these sources and others would be talking to others as well.

I’m not saying we forced Apple’s hand, but I’m sure it contributed in some small way to the release tonight, especially since it was merely a week ago when Jobs issued his other release, ending that one tersely, “So now I’ve said more than I wanted to say, and all that I am going to say, about this.”

Something sure happened in the last nine days. The gist of Jobs’s January 5 PR was “I’m being treated but I’m not going anywhere.” The gist of his email today was “I’m going away for six months.” I somehow doubt that Goldman is correct that idle speculation from two industry executives who can no longer get Jobs to answer their phone calls or instant messages is it.

The New York Times’s Policy on Anonymous Sources ★

Clark Hoyt, the Times’s public editor:

The policy requires that at least one editor know the identity of every source. Anonymous sources cannot be used when on-the-record sources are readily available. They must have direct knowledge of the information they are imparting; they cannot use the cloak of anonymity for personal or partisan attack; they cannot be used for trivial comment or to make an unremarkable comment seem more important than it is.

Is this proof that Jobs’s problem is not a recurrence of cancer? No. But if you think The New York Times published the aforelinked paragraph lightly, or didn’t measure every single word of it very carefully, you don’t understand how The New York Times operates.