There’s good news and bad news about Steve Jobs. First the good news …
President Barack Obama traveled Thursday night to Woodside, California (in Northern California) for a meeting with a group of Silicon Valley chief executives, including Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, Oracle Founder/CEO Steve Ellison, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers, Yahoo! President and CEO Carol Bartz, AND Apple Founder/CEO Steve Jobs.
Jobs is also reported to have ‘bravely’ worked a full day February 7, 2011 at Apple — working on a new subscription service for the iPad.
The bad news is that doctors (who, by the way, have not treated Steve Jobs) are speculating that he has only six weeks to live. Their comments are based on photos obtained by the National Enquirer. The photos were taken while Steve Jobs was apparently getting breakfast before heading to the Stanford Cancer Center – the treatment center where Patrick Swayze, who died of pancreatic cancer, was treated during his final days.
‘Mr Jobs is most likely getting outpatient chemotherapy at Stanford because the cancer has recurred.’
— Dr Jerome Spunberg‘He is terminal. What you are seeing is extreme muscle wasting from calorie deprivation, most likely caused by cancer. He has no muscle left in his buttocks, which is the last place to go. He definitely appears to be in the terminal stages of his life from these photos. I would be surprised if he weighed more than 130lb.’
— Dr Gabe Mirkin, a physician/author/radio personality‘Judging from the photos, he is close to terminal. I would say he has six weeks. He is emaciated and looks to have lost a lot of muscle mass, which spells a poor prognosis.’
— Critical care physician Dr Samuel Jacobson‘He is very frail, moving like a weak, feeble old man.’ … ‘pain with every step’
— Unnamed source
Last week, Apple had lost almost $10 billion value in four minutes on the stock market. Market analysts at first called the the flash plunge mysterious, but now the drop is blamed on unsubstantiated rumours that Jobs was in the hospital and sicker than people thought — even knowing that he is on his third health care leave of absence from Apple, Inc.
Earlier in February 2011, several media outlets, including ZDNET, CNBC, CBS MoneyWatch, THE STREET, The Motley Fool were reporting that Apple, Inc. is the most valuable company on earth.