Dear Steve Jobs: It's Not Always About You

Dear Steve,

I know that Apple is your baby, perhaps more than any other company is the direct spawn of its founder. I know that among the community of Apple devotés you're like a TV preacher who's also the deity for whom he shills. I know that you're the vision guy, the face behind the product. I know that people who go to MacWorld look forward to your appearance the way some people used to look forward to a Grateful Dead concert at Madison Square Garden. It must be heady stuff. And to a large degree, the mythology surrounding you is justified.

There's only one problem.

You're not a deity. You're all too human, as your body has been telling you ever since 2005, when you had surgery for pancreatic cancer. And you simply cannot continue this policy you have of being Mr. Apple, Without Whom The Company Cannot Survive.

We all want to feel that we're important, and vital to whatever endeavors to which we're a contributor. Look, I had a job in which I had skills and talents no one else in my department had. And they laid me off anyway. And they're managing to live without those skills and talents. It's not easy to realize that we are all expendable. Even you.

I know you've built Apple into this hybrid of corporation and evangelical cult, with you as its center. I know that when the board of directors booted you out and brought in John Sculley, thinking that a guy who could sell Pepsi could sell computers, he damn near ran the company into an iceberg. I know that once you came back, the company thrived again. I know this because Apple has done a great job, as it always did, promoting its products; products that combine style and substance. And the ads with John Hodgman are hilarious. I also know because Apple's stock price went through the roof, and since 40 shares in my IRA became 100 shares through stock splits, and were at one time going for $190 not that long ago.

And that's why I'm writing you, Steve. Because frankly, you look like hell. And people are scared. We're afraid for you and we're afraid for ourselves. There's a huge community of people who are card-carrying Apple-heads, and they aren't just the geeks at Macworld, either. All over the country there are parents and grandmas making picture books of their family vacations and meticulously documenting their kids' development -- projects they're learning how to do at the Apple store. There are Web developers and graphic artists who rely on Apple for their very livelihood. And then there are people like me, people less than fifteen years away from retirement, who've seen our retirement funds decimated because the markets are not taking kindly to watching you waste away and not create any kind of succession plan.

Let me just kick an idea out there. Isn't it just possible that by not creating a succession plan, you can convince yourself that you're not really sick and that you'll live forever? Isn't it possible that your mind has created a kind of twisted logic which says that if Apple can't survive without you, and you ARE Apple, that you by definition have to be immortal because Apple needs you? Isn't it just possible that not having a succession plan is your way of trying to beat back death?

It would be perfectly understandable for you to feel this way. But one of the consequences of being The Guy for a Big Operation is that it can't be about you anymore. You may have created this company, but there are too many people who are reliant, not just on you, but on the survival of this company. There are the employees and their families. The employees of the ad agencies and other associated companies that help Apple promote its products. There are the many shareholders -- shareholders like me; who have seen the value of their holdings plummet -- and now they continue to plummet simply because you have not been forthcoming about your health. Privacy? Sorry, dude, but you don't get privacy. When you decided that Apple = Steve, you turned yourself into a living, walking 10K. You don't like it? Then do something about it.

Back during the heyday of the Apple vs. Microsoft wars, we always thought you were the good guy and it was Bill Gates who was the dick. You were the good-looking one, the charming one, the guy whose PCs had smiley faces when they opened up, and they had pictures. You had the whiz-bang enthusiasm of a kid who grew up watching Mr. Wizard while Gates seemed like a kid who used to wear a suit to second grade. He was Nixon and you and Woz were Bobby Kennedy. So what happened? How did it turn out that YOU became the egotistical dick, more concerned with your own interest and this little bubble of invulnerability you've built around yourself, while Gates is out there spending his billions on trying to eradicate malaria and HIV in Africa and improving water quality in developing countries?

I'm glad you've decided to take a leave of absence, but it's not enough. Do you really think that taking a leave is going to stop the concern -- and yes, it is concern -- about your health? The answer is simple: Come clean. Release your health records. Yes, it's intrusive, and it shouldn't be necessary. But YOU'RE the one who set yourself up as indispensable, so if this bothers you, well, you should have thought of that.

So go. Take care of your health. But while you're out of the public eye, take care of business -- the business of Apple. Because whether you like it or not, it can't be just about you anymore.