The month of June is winding down and that means that Apple's Steve Jobs is scheduled to come back to work. A lot of mysteries surrounding Steve Jobs and his health as always, you remember he took a leave of absence to recover from pancreatic cancer. Then the Wall Street Journal reported he received a liver transplant in Memphis.
As usual Apple has declined any comment on all manner of questions with regard to Steve Jobs' health. And that will be a subject that experts will debate in terms of governance - how much disclosure, what should the CEO say, what should the CEO say about his health, how much should the board disclose to the shareholders. We'll be debating that forever. But the real question is, you know, what's up with the future of Apple. Apple did just fine while Steve Jobs stepped back. And of course here again we don't know how involved he was during this time period, obviously he had a liver transplant. There were many days and maybe even weeks when he wasn't involved with the company at all.
Tim Cook, the No.2 at Apple is obviously a very competent and very intelligent guy fully capable of running this company. But over the long run, even though the company didn't skip the beat while Steve was on the leave of absence, over the long run, there is no question that Apple will not be the same without Steve Jobs. When you talk about innovation, you talk about attention to detail, attention to consumers, the ability to see over the horizon to come up with new products. There is no one on the planet who does that better than Steve Jobs, really the Thomas Edison of our time.
You think about Steve Jobs' health, you have to wonder: how much time does he have running this company. Obviously no matter what happens, his health is not great. And you know with Steve Jobs, you really have to wonder, you know, how much longer will he run this company. It's, it's a heartbreaking question. I's a question that no one really wants to discuss or talk about. Obviously we all wish Steve Jobs well and it's interesting to see you know, if he comes back what kind of shape is he going to be in and where he will take this company. Right now people are looking for a netbook or a reader to come out from this company. Um, will they do that, um will they continue / making iPhones bigger, better, differently, what's gonna happen to the Mac product line. Um, there're just a whole host of questions.
And right now the way Apple likes to handle things is they want to be in control of the information destiny. They want to be in control of the information flow very often when reporters ask questions, they just decline to answer and say that, you know either they don't want to answer or it's really none of the presses' business. So far that's seemed to work, but it's obviously a very controversial strategy, we'll see how that serves, I mean in the Steve Jobs' Apple saga, as it unfolds over the next several weeks and months.
Vocabulary:
1.wind down: to draw gradually toward an end
2.pancreatic cancer: 胰腺癌
3.all manner of: 各种各样的,形形色色的
4.skip the beat: 应该是用作比喻,心跳加剧意味着不安,紧张等症状,反正这里意思是就算乔布斯没在,苹果也没出现啥异常。
5.a host of sth: 许多,大量
6.saga: 英雄传奇