Only in America could such ridiculous things occur. Do you find it both a little strange and EXTREMELY obscene that there are people ready to sue Jobs and Apple over what has been quite reasonable disclosure of his poor health, while at the same time no one seems to be pushing to sue Bernanke, Paulsen, Bush, Madoff, Huld and the other criminals who are still bankrupting America and destroying the world economy? I don't see anyone suing Wagoner and GM, Ford, Chrysler etc. Why are we even talking about this non-issue? Jobs has done more to build Apple from a punch-drunk small cap failure into the large cap Hyper-Jump missile that is wowing everyone in the world, including its competitors. Apple is an American Treasure. Believe it. This trigger-happy litigation is American greed gone badly wrong. This is the infectious American disease - this Sue 'Em mentality.

Only in America could such ridiculous things occur. Do you find it both a little strange and EXTREMELY obscene that there are people ready to sue Jobs and Apple over what has been quite reasonable disclosure of his poor health, while at the same time no one seems to be pushing to sue Bernanke, Paulsen, Bush, Madoff, Huld and the other criminals who are still bankrupting America and destroying the world economy? I don't see anyone suing Wagoner and GM, Ford, Chrysler etc. Why are we even talking about this non-issue? Jobs has done more to build Apple from a punch-drunk small cap failure into the large cap Hyper-Jump missile that is wowing everyone in the world, including its competitors. Apple is an American Treasure. Believe it. This trigger-happy litigation is American greed gone badly wrong. This is the infectious American disease - this Sue 'Em mentality.

Just give the poor guy alone to recover in peace! Steve is the reason the investors got rich in the first place, what a shame for the greedy people... that's exactly why this country's economy is down the toilet!

lawyers = wankers

only in AMerica can they do sue like this, arsholes.

...aside from the polarization this is getting (and many fall ill on the streets of far away countries every night) there may be some difficult arguments - corporations, lawyers & markets would seem perhaps too single minded about capitalization while such allowed Apple to do what it has done - if performance is affected it may be material - the bigger question may be the nature of corporations themselves - the movie 'The Corporation' explores this fundamental question: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3969792790081230711

I don't have Apple stock. The only people making a big deal about this right now is investors. And truth be told, I think they are just trying to find any excuse to recover they're recent loses in the markets. Some people won, most people lost, but for there to have been any gains by anyone, there had to be losers. It's pretty simple, really, you rolled the dice, you lost.

Lets look at something else, Apple made a point of indicating how much money they had in the bank during the last financial call they had indicating that they were well situated to weather the economic crisis. And what did investors do, moan about how Apple was unwisely sitting on this money instead of investing it (or paying them dividends which Apple does not do). It seems that every time Apple introduces a new product, Apple's stock takes a hit - that's investors building up the stock up to the anticipation of a new product, then selling to try and cut a profit. And take a serious look at Apple right now, they have talent, lots of talent, it's a completely different Apple than what SJ walked back into in the late 90's. In many years down the line, Apple may change to just another company, but that will not happen until - at the earliest - the current leadership begins to leave Apple - Steve Jobs has remolded the company. I feel confident Apple will remain the Apple we know for the next twenty years at least, longer if the current executives can replace their replacements as well has SJ has selected the current leadership team.

And also not forget that even under SJ, Apple's stock has risen, then crashed trading to between 10 and 20 dollars a share after Apple did a stock split and at times it seemed to struggle to gain, yet it did. Apple has said time and time again that they don't really focus that much on the stock market; surely now the stock market would be even less of a concern to them given volatility of the markets. No doubt, we are in a recession, and it's not like previous recessions, but that really is a different issue than the share price. I'm not sure Apple could be in a better position right now going into 2009 under the current economic situation. But as an Apple customer, not investor, I like what I'm seeing for products, OS, and I'll be buying myself an iPhone this year.

So Steve Jobs getting sick effects who? Not me, not my Mac using friends and family, nope, just the money grabbers. Which reminds me, looks like gas is going back up.

Lawsuits about what? The board seems to know what's going on and there fine with it.


Wow! The board of hand-picked Steve Jobs confidants is fine with it! Man, that is shocking!

But I agree with Loren. Apple is Apple. Apple easily survived when Steve left the last time (and actually prospered for a long while). Apple fans didn't go running to NeXT. They are Apple fans, not Jobs fans.

And Jobs is leaving the company with a better internal structure than he did last time, where he left it with a mentality of infighting, secrecy, pet projects, and other fun ideas that led to the disaster of the mid-90s.

BTW, Jobs isn't coming back in June to handle day-to-day. This will be his 'out', if you will. Take some time and enjoy life.

That anyone would sue over this is just awful. I can't see it ever getting approved. Frankly there were lots of signs coming that Job's health wasn't great, the job of an investor is to watch a company and look for things that aren't being said in order to determine whether you should be investing. Of course every company will always say that they have the best thing out there and everyone has no reason to not invest!

Either way Apple is Job's now, it wasn't when he left, last time he was driven out, this time he's sick and needs time away. My guess is they'll still bring products to him for the final say, and I imagine the current staff under him have an idea of his vision for things in the future. Besides do you think all the cool new features in iPhoto and iMovie this year were dreamed up by Jobs? No they took new ideas that were around (You think Apple came up with Face detection or wrote that in house?) and implemented them well.

The only moves that I could see Apple doing without Jobs would be diversifying it's product line more. The iMac may very well die with the introduction of a middle end mini tower. We may see a few products Jobs refused to introduce, but other than that, we'll be pretty good, Apple's got good heads on it's shoulders now.

... there'll be lawsuits!!! ;-)

The best thing that could of happened at the last keynote is that they introduced someone 'OTHER' than Phil with more of a personality and introduced some amazing new hardware to give the perception that Apple can move forward if Steve is not there.

Didn't happen.

As much as the world LOVES the stock market thingy, it's really kinda evil and changes on a dime based on subjective thinking, etc.

" Despite the site being open for anyone to post stories without any fact-checking "

That's why I prefer macnn, they don't allow just anyone to post stories.

Refuse to pay her! HAH!

Well, if you don't like this lawsuit, maybe investors should be suing because he made his health public, which drove down the price of the stock. Apple should've known that this would happen and should have kept the information private.

And can MS investors sue them for NOT releasing a statement saying Ballmer is ill and is stepping down from day-to-day operations???

errrr. Just how well is Lehman Bros stock doing btw? Is Huld being sued? And just how well is the Madoff fund doing these days? And how many lawsuits are coming up against GM, Ford and Chrysler and their CEOs? Or Citi? Or Bear? Or AIG? Let's also include all the other thousands of US corporations that have gone, or will go, belly up real soon now?
Who is suing Bush, Bernanke, Paulson and chums for lining their own and their friends' pockets with $350 billion of bankrupt American taxpayers' money? .... and another $350 billion to be distributed very soon he he.
Get a grip fools.
12 years ago Apple was about ready to be buried just barely alive. Today it is a large cap American Treasure. And these losers want to sue? Don't waste my time with your childish lawsuits, dumb Americans.

[And can MS investors sue them for NOT releasing a statement saying Ballmer is ill and is stepping down from day-to-day operations???]

Start suing! Anybody who bounces around the stage like Ballmer-- displaying obvious simian behavior-- is not healthy. That was scary. Tasteless too.

We all need to step back for a moment. Apple is a business. Steve is a human being. Apple should survive even when Steve does not. That leads to a need to make sure that investors and customers are able to logically separate the two. This isn't rumor or theory: just fact.

So how do you distance the company from the individual? Slowly. You start by having other Apple folks share the stage at keynotes and introductions. Then you kick that up a notch, and have the "others" take over keynotes. Then you keep moving that responsibly out. You do this slowly, over a year or two, so that you don't freak anyone out too much.

Then you have Steve back step back a little further: have the Marketing head take over the public face of marketing; the Operations head take over the face of operations (roles they have both been running for years). You prove that the company is not the pet project of one guy, it's "just" a company.

Step Steve out for a month or two: prep the ground for the time when he wants to retire, prove that the company can go on (while still allowing that the godhead will return).

Break the dependency between Apple Inc. and Steven Jobs in the eyesight of rather idiotic people who thought such a thing existed.

Apple survives. Steve gets some freedom to enjoy his life. The world does not stop spinning.

Simple, logical, obvious.

It baffles me that people who plan to suit are so insecure. Every human being has the privacy act in front of them I don't care if your the President, CEO or whatever. You are a person. I personally don't think it is cancer. I think he just needs to take time off from stress and take care of whatever he needs to take care of. If we trust him with Apple, surely we need to trust him period. Besides he needs to be home with his wife and kids.

Those who sue for this are morons. Us Apple followers love Steve and know he will be fine. Get better Steve..you have a big prayer network and we will celebrate in June when you return!