Now that we’ve had a few days and, hopefully, a fresh New Year’s perspective on the latest Steve Jobs media scare and conjecture-fest, let’s assess what really happened and get one high-tech PR expert’s prediction (that would be mine) on what it could mean this week.
Last week’s Steve Jobs newsflow (see Apple Investor News Steve Jobs news category) showed a pattern: several credible journalists with inroads into Apple corporate are telling us Steve’s health is not declining. This group includes CNBC’s Jim Goldman, who always gets the post-new product announcement sitdown TV interview with Jobs, Reuters, and Barron’s Eric Savitz. The WSJ’s Kara Swisher chimed in too, reminding us this is all getting “flat-out macabre.”
So it’s clear Apple is doing it’s best to indirectly dispel the “Steve’s health is declining fast” Gizmodo report without violating its stated policy that Steve’s health is a private matter.
Of course, blogger Robert Scoble took the media prize with his much-reported Tuesday Friendfeed post (“I'm in Palo Alto. Just had yogurt at shop that Steve Jobs eats at frequently. They said he was in a couple of days ago and is in great health”). This reportage was both the oddest and perhaps the most grounded piece of information to hit us all week.
But it was a Reuters report that sealed the deal for me by managing to get an Apple spokesperson to deftly dance around its policy with the words: "...if ever Steve or the board of directors decided that he was no longer capable of doing his job as CEO of Apple, I'm sure they will let you know."
Now an Apple spokesperson is indeed on the record with a promise to alert the media. If he or she somehow misspoke and Steve is indeed ill, this will have to be clarified shortly or Apple faces SEC scrutiny and media mistrust. If not, with each passing day we can be more assured that Gizmodo’s report is indeed wrong.
Which gets to my prediction: I think we are going to get further clarification on this topic in the coming week, probably to confirm Steve is doing OK. I wouldn’t be surprised if Steve made a remote appearance at Macworld, perhaps showing up via a video iChat during Phil Schiller’s Tuesday keynote. If I was steering Apple’s PR, that’s what I’d do. I’d have him there on webcam bantering with Phil and enjoying some yogurt.
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