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As much as he galvanised Apple with his return to Cupertino, if he were not to return, Apple would shrug and it would be business as usual. It should also be noted that he is in contact and will be involved in major decisions. The announcement brought out as many pundits as we suffered at the funeral of the late Princess Diana, with what he might do, what he should do, what will or will not happen. All of it speculation. One outlet suggested that Jobs was not entitled to privacy when it came to his health and the failure to come clean had done damage. That last bit about damage might be right, but I do not believe the public, or Apple's shareholders have any right to such private information; plus I do not know the time-scale between the press release claiming a hormone imbalance and the one that told Apple staff there was more to it than was earlier believed. Whether he knew or whether more results became available in the interim we do not know: the rest is speculation.
A last point about that motivation aspect. Depending on which source one reads, this is sometimes called his reality distortion effect, which when one is on the receiving end may be about as devastating as Sir Alex Ferguson's "hairdryer", but when the same energy is used it can motivate and create a dynamic organisation. And just for the record I hate soccer. Among the hatchet jobs being done on the Jobs' health story, two stood out for me. The Fake Steve Jobs, Dan Lyons, losing his cool on the TV in a panel discussion, and the BBC, who had part of their interview with him on the release of the iPhone, coupled with a view of him onstage which emphasised the thinness, possibly by changing the frame size. The video on the website is for the 3G release and is not the same as what I saw on the TV. Needless to say, Apple shares fell again as the analysts clucked and shook their heads and in my opinion these shares are badly underpriced currently. If the President of the US were to die, there would be a pause and then business would carry on (I remember Kennedy's assassination); likewise if the Queen of England were to pass away -- as we all must, of course -- there would be no pause as Prince Charles becomes King at the same instant. Bill Gates has gone, Walt Disney died years ago; after Armand Hammer's death in 1990, Occidental Petroleum thrived and is now the fourth largest U.S. oil and gas company. I also thought of Randolph Hearst, who was the subject of Citizen Kane, Orson Welles' famous movie. He died in 1951 and now the Hearst Corporation is one of the largest media companies in the world. We may also include Thailand's own CP Group in such a list.
Another rumour concerns the MacBook Air; or a new version that is reported to have a 15" screen. The rumour comes from China where a lot of Macs are made and a lot of false rumours have begun in recent months.
True have already created 12 apps some of which can be used on the iPod touch as well and these are available on the iTunes app store. I downloaded a couple o from the dozen available. A number of interesting ones were iPhone only, probably because of the need for GPS access, while a couple did not suit me: sport and online shopping stuff. But in the end I was unable to install these as they are specifically for the Generation 2 iPod touch. Should read the specs shouldn't I?
The iPod touch does not have a camera which is one of the features of the iPhone and this was highlighted last week when some of the images from the Airbus crash in the Hudson river, from which everyone escaped, were taken by users with iPhones.
The Post Business section on Monday had the iPhone release as its main story and this mentions the thousands of people who attended Siam Paragon on Friday: so many indeed that it went on until midnight apparently. Some figures were available: 5,000 pre-booked and a source suggested another 3,000 turned up for the release without having booked. True had to take some 300,000 phones from Apple, so after those who did not turn up at the launch have made their way to the shops in coming weeks, we will have a better ideas of what True has let itself in for. A lot of people would have found Friday evening in central Bangkok inconvenient, I certainly did, although on my way home I was reminded of just how vibrant Krung Thep is at night even away from the hi-so areas. In that post article, there were comments from rival companies, which I presume means DTAC and AIS who are taking the Ballmer line about the price aspect, asking if it makes sense for customers to pay such high prices when the main point is to make phone calls. One wonders how these executives managed to suppress their smirks having been selling high priced Nokia, LG and other phones costing every bit as much, over the last few years.
This week, we are told that T-mobile is heavily discounting the iPhone in Austria: 1Euro with a 45Euro per month package. That monthly fee is 2045 baht, so this discount is actually more expensive than Thailand with the Silver, Gold and Platinum packages that True is offering. The speculation here is that either they are over-stocked or a new model is on the way: that mythical iPhone nano again.
Seagate have offered to assist with a free firmware update as that seems to be the source of the problem and with data recovery where necessary. Although there is a 1-800 number, that won't help many people this side of the Pacific but "Seagate also says that customers can expedite assistance by sending an email (discsupport@seagate.com)." The company asks users to include the drive model number, serial number, and current firmware revision.
By sheer coincidence, the British Royal Navy has computer problems caused by a virus although we are told the weapons and navigation systems are unaffected. Not yet, anyway. The Navy aren't saying which virus it is: security, you know? A spokesperson said that with installations they have, "obviously we are fighting off viruses daily," which sounds so incredibly pompous and stupid to me as a Mac user.
Too Good to Miss?
Forgotten recently in the rush to update consumer software is Final Cut Pro and all the pro applications. A note tells us that the new Brad Pitt movie, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which relies heavily on special effects, was filmed mainly on digital cameras and edited on Macs using Final Cut. As I often tell my students, if you want to make (and here I substitute the name of a movie like Lord of the Rings), then get a Mac.
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The last 7 days have seen the release of the iPhone in Thailand and the news that Steve Jobs was taking a 6 months leave of absence, which had much of the press all a-tremble. This week's database article is a second look at MacWorld with the benefit of a bit of hindsight.
As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, there is a great team in place at Apple, with several more there less in the public eye and while Jobs has been the motivator, someone else will step up to the plate and Apple is not going to make the mistake of having a sugar water salesman (or an accountant) as head a second time.
A couple of days after writing all that, I was directed to a Mac World article 
Last Friday the Phone finally arrived officially in Thailand with a rollout by True Move at the Royal Paragon Hall, Siam Paragon. I wrote 
On Monday morning I went to the gate to fetch the Bangkok Post which as usual had one of those shiny advertising supplements at the front, only I could see that this one had an Apple logo on it. True had the four-page supplement on the iPhone and it was all in English, but what it does not tell users is that they need credit cards to sign up and not everyone has the two that are specified. This is beginning to annoy me.
They miss the point, as True executives seemed to on Friday even though they did use the word, Convergence. It makes phone calls in a convenient way, plus SMS messages, plus email and surfing, plus music and video, plus games, plus utilities, plus camera, plus integrating data between phone and computers easily. By trying to separate the functions for the purposes of criticism those rival executives clearly miss the point and it sounds more like sour grapes, although a source in that Post Business article did suggest that AIS suspending talks with Apple made economic sense.