I had lunch with a friend at Apple today and as I was leaving the campus I saw Jobs getting into a chauffeured black Lincoln Continental. This was right outside 1IL [Infinity Loop] at about two PM today.

A Lincoln is, of course, not Jobs' usual ride, and the notorious micromanager usually likes to be behind the driver's wheel; his Mercedes is known for turning up in Apple's handicapped parking spots. But Jobs just underwent a liver transplant and is only traveling to the Apple campus a "few days" per week, according to an Apple statement heralding his return to the company today. Presumably, the CEO's health is such that he needs to conserve his energy for activities other than driving, like running a company.

Earlier today, Apple declined to tell Bloomberg News whether Jobs was on campus. The company had good reason to avoid such a discussion: Entertaining that line of questioning might have led to a discussion of Jobs' itinerary and unwelcome question about why the CEO had to leave early, and about his health. More practically, it also would open the company up to endless questions from reporters about where Jobs is on campus that day. Of course, there's a good chance Apple is going to be getting those queries anyway, whether it answers them or not.

Anyone else spot the newly-returned honcho today? We'd love to hear from you.

UPDATE: Last week, Reuters spotted Jobs leaving the campus in a "black car."

UPDATE 2: The original version of that Reuters story last week had Jobs being "driven off by men in black suits with ear-pieces."

(Pic: Jobs at a MacBook press announcement on Apple's Cupertino campus in October via Getty)

"Steve Jobs is back to work," chief spokesperson Steve Dowling told CNN. "He is at Apple a few days a week and working from home the other days. We're glad to have him back."

A few days a week? Kind of vague, no? And then working from home, because it's not like Steve Jobs likes to micromanage, or just turn up at people's offices unannounced or roam the halls.

Just to recap the official line on Jobs' health, over time:

• First he had a "common bug" and no one should be worried;
  
• Then it wasn't that bad and Steve wasn't going anywhere;
  
• Despite his appearance, Jobs' health wasn't keeping him from doing his job;
  
• Fixing the health issue would be "simple and straightforward" and Jobs atill wasn't going anywhere;
  
• Jobs was taking medical leave, partly because all the talk about his health was a "distraction."
  
• Jobs had a liver transplant and his prognosis was uncertain, but Apple wouldn't acknowledge it.

Now Jobs is back at work, sorta. While no one will begrudge the cancer survivor a part-time schedule while he recovers, no Apple investors except a select few have a sense of what is known and not known about Jobs' health; how encouraging his prognosis is or precisely what risks the next six months carry. Some uncertainty is unavoidable when it comes to human health; but Apple's handling of Jobs' health just creates unnecessary uncertainty for both investors and employees who have more productive things to worry about.

Given Apple's track record, the sanest response for anyone who has to make a decision involving the company or its stock is to assume the official talk of Jobs' return is immaterial (read: untrustworthy) and that Tim Cook is in charge.

The upgrade looks like a brazen publicity stunt; Apple told Time last year it would ban adult content from official applications. Assuming that position hasn't changed, Hottest Girls could soon be pulled from the app store and even, if Apple elects to do so, yanked from iPhones where it is now installed.

If it permitted to stay —Apple is now allowing NC-17 games, after all — expect a flurry of "innovation." While porn has long been available through the iPhone's Safari browser, publishers haven't even begun to explore the possibilities of being able to use the device's touch screen interface. Apple has the opportunity to change the world again; it just needs to seize it.

The deputy managing editor of the Wall Street Journal went so far as to call out individual board members on Twitter. "Gore, Jung, Schmidt, York, Levinson - where are you?" Alan Murray wrote. Yesterday, before the hospital confirmation, New York Times columnist Joe Nocera accused the directors of "dereliction of duty."

Like a hung computer operating system, Apple's board is neglecting pressing information-retrieval work. Data on the effectiveness of liver transplants for Jobs' condition is, at once, scant and unpromising. Yet some specific information about Jobs' condition would be useful in evaluating his prognosis, according to an anonymous surgeon's blog (see prior link, via).

The kindest and most generous characterization that can be made is that that the evidence for treating neuroendocrine tumors metastatic to the liver with liver transplantation is mixed at best.

But obviously Jobs' is recovering nicely if he's going back to work next week, right? Perhaps, but it's not clear how hard he'll be able to work; recall that Jobs may be working part-time, per a Journal report earlier this week. Or he might not. He might be already back to week, per an anonymous (read: probably spoon-fed by Apple) report from CNBC's Jim Goldman. Or he might not be returning until June 30.

It should go without saying, but apparently needs to be said: Apple shareholders deserve to know who is running Apple — and who will be running Apple a month from now.

Sure, the tech writer has a forthcoming Newsweek blog to promote, named after his column at the weekly magazine. But his decision to lay off on Jobs wasn't a business decision so much as heartfelt concern about the Apple chief's health.

Now, as Fake Steve, Lyon's again cracking wise about favor-currying New York Times columnists begging to donate their livers, CNBC reporters bringing him lattes and, our personal favorite, having a gaunt Jobs brag that "I'm bench-pressing twice my body weight."

We're surprised his bosses at Newsweek are playing along; Lyons killed his personal blog after they demanded he remove a post calling Yahoo flacks "lying sacks of shit." Perhaps the subsequent problems at the magazine's print edition have opened Newsweek's eyes to the promotional power of the Web.

Sure enough, Lyons is already linkbaiting Gawker. Yes, Mr. Jobs, we'd be happy to show up at your house with a camera; just send along an access code to the front gate in case we need to use the restroom.

(Pic by Mark Coggins)

It's no new story that Apple goes to greater lengths to prevent outside leaks than just about any corporation in recent American history, but who knew that even employees working at Apple often have little knowledge of what's going on there?

Secrecy at Apple is not just the prevailing communications strategy; it is baked into the corporate culture. Employees working on top-secret projects must pass through a maze of security doors, swiping their badges again and again and finally entering a numeric code to reach their offices, according to one former employee who worked in such areas.

Work spaces are typically monitored by security cameras, this employee said. Some Apple workers in the most critical product-testing rooms must cover up devices with black cloaks when they are working on them, and turn on a red warning light when devices are unmasked so that everyone knows to be extra-careful, he said.

Apple employees are often just as surprised about new products as everyone else.

"I was at the iPod launch," said Edward Eigerman, who spent four years as a systems engineer at Apple and now runs his own technology consulting firm. "No one that I worked with saw that coming."

In a separate piece the Times dug into the mysterious circumstances surrounding Jobs' recent liver transplant, going so far as to insinuate that Jobs may have used his wealth and status to his advantage in order to obtain a new organ.

Waiting times for a liver vary in different parts of the country, and people who can afford to travel are free to go to a city or state with the shortest wait and bide their time until they have reached the top of the list, a donor dies and an organ becomes available. Indeed, some patients rent apartments or stay in hotels near a hospital and wait for the phone to ring. It may not seem fair, but it is not illegal.

It is even conceivable that someone could go to the time and expense of registering for the waiting lists of several transplant centers around the country.

"If you had access to a jet and had six hours to get anywhere in the country, you'd have a wide choice of programs," said Dr. Michael Porayko, the medical director of liver transplants at Vanderbilt University, one of the Tennessee centers that has said it did not treat Mr. Jobs.

This isn't the first time the Times has called out Apple for its secrecy. In a piece published last July titled "Apple's Culture of Secrecy," Joe Nocera took Apple and Jobs to the woodshed over their unwillingness to divulge information about Jobs' declining health, which he speculated was the result of another bout with cancer, with company shareholders at the time, saying that Jobs "needs to treat his shareholders with at least a modicum of respect." This provoked Jobs to call Nocera a "slime bucket" in the course of denying that he was again battling cancer.

Since then Apple appears content to feed stories to the tech reporters at the Wall Street Journal, as they did with the news of Jobs' liver transplant that broke on Saturday morning, as well as a story earlier in the month about how Jobs was "starving to death" during a months-long battle with a mystery illness that left him unable to digest proteins. Near the end of May the Journal also reported that Jobs was, according to Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, "healthy" and "energetic" and that he "doesn't sound like he's sick."

So while the Times persistent reporting on these matters may appear to be them lashing out at an entity they feel has disrespected them, the questions that they raise are valid and beg to be addressed, though one can hardly blame Jobs for doing everything in his power to hold onto to life. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal appears content to run with whatever scraps get thrown to them by Apple flacks, seemingly unwilling to question any of it out of fear of pissing them off, or not really caring one way or the other about the validity of any information they get fed as long as their stories get picked up by other media outlets.

Finally, at the risk of sounding morbid, you know how it's often rumored that rulers of totalitarian states have died, most recently in Cuba and North Korea for example, but that government officials are keeping it a secret from the people they rule, going so far as to splice together old film and audio clips to create updated propaganda and employing lookalikes and body doubles for occasional public appearances? It's not that difficult to imagine Apple doing the same thing when Jobs eventually dies, which is well beyond creepy, but sadly something that doesn't seem entirely outside the realm of possibility.

Apple's Management Obsessed With Secrecy [New York Times]
A Transplant That Is Raising Many Questions [New York Times]

Yukari Iwatani Kane and Joann S. Lublin of The Wall Street Journal - who, it now appears has an outright monopoly on exclusives and leaks regarding Jobs (something that'd make sense, considering the most direct implication of the Apple CEO's various health crisis: Apple's stock price) - reported last night on the revelation. Though not going to far as to state anything but the actual surgery as outright fact, the Journal's filing vaguely speculated that Jobs' 2004 pancreatic cancer came back, and spread to his liver:

William Hawkins, a doctor specializing in pancreatic and gastrointestinal surgery at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., said that the type of slow-growing pancreatic tumor Mr. Jobs had will commonly metastasize in another organ during a patient's lifetime, and that the organ is usually the liver. "All total, 75% of patients are going to have the disease spread over the course of their life," said Dr. Hawkins, who has not treated Mr. Jobs.

Getting a liver transplant to treat a metastasized neuroendocrine tumor is controversial because livers are scarce and the surgery's efficacy as a cure hasn't been proved, Dr. Hawkins added. He said that patients whose tumors have metastasized can live for as many as 10 years without any treatment so it is hard to determine how successful a transplant has been in curing the disease.

Jobs took a leave of absence in January, handing control of Apple's day-to-day over to COO Tim Cook after publicly disclosing that he had a "hormone imbalance" that was "robbing" Jobs of his body's healthy proteins. Which sounds nothing like what causes one to get their liver removed.

The Apple CEO's been beset by rampant speculation about his health problems by Apple shareholders, journalists and bloggers of the tech and financial stripe, and some very self-entitled fanboys since said 2004 cancer scare. He's also been notoriously mum on the details of said health. Even when more or less busted red-handed, like this, the company continues to run interference, with Apple flack Katie Cotton barely even dignifying the question ("Steve continues to look forward to returning at the end of June, and there's nothing further to say.") and Jobs not returning anything for comment to the Journal.

The notoriously showy CEO enjoys managing his own press, and probably isn't too ecstatic about this bit of news leaking; then again, after what sounded like a pretty traumatic few months, he could probably care less. The guy's got his health back, and a company to run. No doubt the inevitably glitzy Steve Jobs Comeback Special will happen soon in front of a grey curtain, with cheeky jokes and maybe a not-so-subtle U2 soundtrack.

Meanwhile, the company didn't go down the shitter while he was gone (at least no more than maybe this), and other than what's no doubt going to be rampant speculation on this potential efficacy (or lack thereof) of Jobs' procedure and a few nutty conspiracy theories on whether or not Jobs pulled a Woz and cut in line, there's not too much more to see here until the guy gets back up on stage and shows us his about-town face. Don't worry, fanboys, haters, and otherwise: your vicariously lived-through deity carries on.

Jobs Had Liver Transplant [WSJ]
Apple boss 'had liver transplant' [BBC]

Previously: Why Steve Jobs's Health Matters to Us

To finagle a spot in line on the day of the new iPhone 3G S's release would be impressive enough; to do so in the heart of Silicon Valley, where new gadgets are especially coveted, implies Wozniak has grown his skills of persuasion to Jobsian heights. From a shopper in the MacRumors forums:

I arrived at 3:50am and Mr. Woz was chopping it up with the manager at Apple. Then around 4:30am he politely asked everyone in line if he could be the 1st to get his iPhone at the store and everyone said yes.

Of course, while Wozniak was talking people out of the precious spots in line, Jobs was collecting their money. The Apple CEO always manages to come out on top.

[via Business Insider]

He's just one Jobs ex among many. A quick tally:

• Palm's financial backer, Elevation Partners, employs Fred Anderson, the former Apple CFO who publicly battled with Jobs over blame for Apple's stock-options backdating scandal.
  
• The company also hired away Apple's former head of Mac PR, Lynn Fox.
  
• Then there was the poaching of Mike Bell, who had been at Apple for 16 years and was senior VP for product development.

Palm's hiring spree grew so annoying to Jobs that he supposedly called up Rubinstein and screamed at him.

Jobs had reason to be agitated. Rubinstein successfully instigated a crash development program that, somehow, conjured an incredibly slick device, the Pre, from a company whose technology had been languishing for years.

In the words of tech blogger John Gruber, "it's quite possible that they have done everything right since" the launch of the iPhone. "Palm designed, built, and released the Pre, WebOS, and an app store, all in about two years."

The Palm team's experience at Apple no doubt helped along the way; it would appear some very detailed knowledge of Apple's iTunes helped allow the Pre to magically sync with the media software, an impressive feat.

The Pre, just released, promises to give Apple's iPhone the most worrisome competition it's yet seen.

And now Rubinstein has his prize, taking control of the whole company from 16-year Palm veteran Ed Colligan. If Jobs needed a catalyst to get him fired up about his return to the helm of Apple later this month, he sure got it.

What did Goldman have to say? Forget the underwhleming new version of OS X, AT&T's crippling of the best new iPhone OS features or the hubub about iPhone upgrade prices: The conference was a "home run." Video:

In another case of tech pundit disassembly, a different tipster was thrilled to find this picture of Walt Mossberg's bald spot on Gizmodo's liveblog:

Speculation had been thick that Jobs would put in a cameo at the conference. Late last week, the Wall Street Journal reported the CEO would likely return to Apple at the end of June, as planned, and might drop by today's event.

Instead, Jobs left senior VP Phil Schiller to handle his second major Apple event without the CEO.

Even barring a brief on-stage appearance, Jobs, at the tail end of his medical leave, had other options. He'd have been great for demonstrating the video camera on the new iPhone, for example, via a recorded greeting for the conference keynote audience.

But if this is Apple without Jobs, it doesn't look so terrible. Early indications are that the company's new products will receive the customary lavish attention in the mainstream press, even though anyone who's got the old model will have to fork over at least $500 for the upgrade (read the fineprint) and the best new software features are still useless for American customers. Just like Apple's stock, the company's products can still muster cultlike interest, even in the cult leader's absence.

First, Apple said it was upgrading iTunes to allow movie rentals and the purchase of TV shows on the mobile device, just like on desktop versions of iTunes.

Potentially more promising for the print media is the newly-added ability to purchase content from within iPhone applications. A startup called Scrollmotion demonstrated from Apple's stage its forthcoming reader software and boasted it would offer 50 major magazines, 170 daily newspapers and 1 million books. Esquire, ESPN and Bon Appetit were pictured inside the app.

Magazine and newspaper publishers might prefer to put together their own iPhone store, just as the TV studios set up the video-sharing site Hulu. Apple's terms would let them keep 70 percent of the sale price of their content — a pretty good deal in comparison to selling content on the Kindle, where Amazon and its wireless carrier reportedly keep close to 70 percent of the money.

The real question, though, isn't the mechanics of selling content on an iPhone app, but how publishers will get people to buy content often available free a couple of clicks away, on the Web, where it often includes goodies like links, comments and video that actually make it better than the printed product.

(Picture by Brian Lam via Gizmodo Liveblog)

It came via Twitter! The microblogging service is notorious for its downtime, but is thus far holding up like a real trouper. Wonders never cease.

UPDATE: The social news network is back. For now.

The downtown San Francisco Apple store, at One Stockton Street, rents for somewhere around $2 million per year. Apple paid big bucks not only for the proximity to tony Union Square, with its upscale clothing shops, but also because the BART subway system has an exit literally underneath the building.

That valuable shopper-delivery spigot is what DVD Jon, real name Jon Lech Johansen, exploited: He simply rented billboard space at the top of BART's escalator, which sits behind the billboard in the attached picture, sandwiched between the advertisement and the side of the store. The placard touts his doubleTwist software, which allows non-Apple devices to be connected to your iTunes library (and which may or may not convert your Apple-encrypted files — the program is still in beta).

TechCrunch, which first published this shot, has another picture as well. The publication reports that "Apple employees are currently scratching their heads" over the ad; something tells us CEO Steve Jobs, now on medical leave, will take a more forceful approach with BART upon his all-but-confirmed return later this month.

Writes the Journal:

Two people who do business with Apple said senior Apple managers have told them the company is now trying to coordinate Mr. Jobs's return with a product launch or public event.

The prospect of a public return by Apple's CEO, following a six-month medical leave, will no doubt help build buzz for the company's developer event, where Apple is expected to launch a new iPhone into a barrage of free publicity.

But the inside information leaked to the Journal also helps highlight how traumatic Jobs' health scare has been for him and his company — despite past indications to the contrary.

Apple once attributed Jobs' rail-thin appearance to a "common bug." When later announcing his medical leave, Jobs avoided disclosing the seriousness of the situation, saying he was leaving due to the complexity of his health issues and even because of the distracting "curiosity" over them."

But things got pretty bad, at least according to the Journal's well-placed source. Select members of Apple's board received weekly updates about his condition, a "person familiar with the matter" told the paper, and they wouldn't have all been pretty:

He was one real sick guy... Fundamentally he was starving to death over a nine-month period. He couldn't digest protein. [But] he took corrective action.

From a PR standpoint, it seems unlikely Apple's directors and executives would want Jobs up on any stage until he looks as healthy as he feels. But the CEO is notoriously headstrong about these sorts of things. If he wants to show up Monday, he will.

The Justice Department is investigating whether large tech companies illegally conspired over employee poaching. It's an open secret in the Valley that tech companies have agreements not to actively recruit one another's workers; Kleiner Perkins partner Randy Komisar called these "gentlemen's understanding[s]" in the New York Times today. It appears the Justice Department may have finally decided to make an issue of the practice on antitrust grounds.

If that's the case, some of the largest tech companies are at risk. The Times quoted a former Google recruiter saying the company distributes a list of companies whose workers cannot be approached. Then there's the email:

A December 2007 e-mail message written by a Google recruiter and obtained by The New York Times suggests that the company might have had an agreement with Apple on recruiting.

Laura Sheppard, a contract recruiter at Google, sent the e-mail message to a job candidate asking him to put her in touch with another potential candidate. "It is a bit touchy since he works for Apple," Ms. Sheppard wrote, adding that Google had "a nonsolicit agreement with them."

Google declined to comment on its hiring practices or on the e-mail message, whose authenticity could not be independently verified.

There you have it: When it comes to immigration controls or the taxation of stock options, tech honchos are all about the free market. But when it comes to the sort of competition that most benefits your average Silicon Valley worker — competitive hiring — suddenly they turn into feudal lords. Is that really so "gentleman"ly?

[Times]

The Washington Post's anonymous sources said the Feds are investigating whether the firms illegally negotiated "the recruiting and hiring of one another's employees," in violation of antitrust law.

Silicon Valley companies have been known to compete fiercely for top talent, including immigrant engineers. When Google hired computer scientist and former Carnegie Mellon professor Kai-Fu Lee away from Microsoft, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was famously said to have thrown a chair across the room in anger.

The upshot of competition for immigrant workers is higher wages. Free marketeers who advocate for more H1-B worker visas, like the American Enterprise Institute, should know that better than anyone.

Logically, then, if tech companies suppressed competition for H1-B visa holders, they were retarding immigrant income growth. By treating workers like so much property, they would have inhibited the very prosperity they claim to support.

Tech companies wouldn't talk to the Post about the investigation. But they should reverse that chance as soon as they can: The Valley's image as a center of immigrant wealth and opportunity is among its strongest political assets.

(Pic via)

Wozniak told the Journal's Ben Charny that Jobs, who went on leave in January, "doesn't sound like he's sick." His comments came during a side conversation at the newspaper's D tech conference in Carlsbad, California.

But Woz added he hadn't actually asked his old friend about his health directly. So perhaps it's no surprise that traders didn't take the ballroom-dancing computer engineer's medical evaluation too seriously; in the two hours after Woz's quote was published, Apple shares traded basically sideways.

Brushes has a companion app called Brushes Viewer that records the creation of a drawing from start to finish, and we've posted the video of Colombo creating his cover art below.

The photo of Dennis J. Skillicorn ran with an article about Missouri's horrendous methods of carrying out executions and was bordered by an Apple ad featuring Long and Hodgman just sort of standing there like a couple of jerkoffs.

In a column published yesterday, the Times' David Carr said the following about advertising on the paper's website:

"For more than 100 years, Tiffany has occupied the upper-right corner of Page 3 of The New York Times. Until our digital model finds a way to create a similar kind of exalted placement, it will be tough to charge the kind of prices for advertising that reflect the cost of producing quality content."

This is purely a wild guess here, but we're doubting that this is an example of "exalted placement" on the Times' website, right?

Photo via [In Other News]
The Times and the Future [New York Times]
Executions Debated as Missouri Plans One [New York Times]

The photo you have on your site is fake. I just took these photos.

Please update your article to indicate that Apple's subcontractors know how to spell 'bump' when Steve Jobs is on leave.

Look closely at the photo he sent in, though. Why is the area around the "U" discolored? Could it be evidence that contractors hastily fixed the error (or obscure Star Trek joke? Or is this a Photoshop? You can see the pixels, after all).

Update: Mystery solved! We're calling this one: yesterday's photo was real and Apple quickly made the fix. A neutral and very trusted source just went by the parking lot to investigate. His assessment: "Yeah, this was obviously scraped clean very recently and repainted. Can you see the outline of the old lettering? Sorry about the crappy iPhone photo. Nice coverup, Apple." He sends photographic evidence:

Even more update: Another tipster caught Apple contractors in the act of resurfacing the misspelled "BMUP" sign:

A tipster just sent us what they say is a photo they snapped on their iPhone (but of course) at Apple's Cupertino headquarters in the parking lot for 5 and 6 Infinite Loop. It might be a Photoshop. Or a Star Trek gag. You be the judge.

The FTC, which polices antitrust violations along with the Department of Justice, is investigating Apple and Google for a potential violation of a 1914 law against overlapping boards which may hinder competition.

People in Silicon Valley have long wondered at the close ties between Apple and Google. When Google CEO Eric Schmidt joined Apple's board in 2006, Apple had yet to launch the iPhone and Google wasn't a player in the cell-phone market. But the depth of ties seemed curious, even without that conflict. Genentech CEO Art Levinson already served on both boards, and two Apple board members, Bill Campbell and Al Gore, served as Google advisors. That's a block of four directors — half the board, able to stalemate any Google-unfriendly strategic move.

It's an obvious thing to investigate. But why now, since it's been the case for years? Schmidt campaigned for Barack Obama, and was recently appointed as a science advisor to the president. Fat lot of good that's done him. This is the second antitrust case Google is facing, following one over a settlement with book publishers which critics say would limit competition in book search.

The Obama administration, despite its ties to Schmidt, has signaled that it will be more aggressive in antitrust enforcement (as Democratic administrations usually are). But what else do Google and Apple share, besides directors? A common enemy in Microsoft. And Microsoft has hired Burson-Marsteller, a PR and lobbying outfit which lists "position[ing] technology firms in antitrust cases" as one of its specialties. A Burson-Marsteller executive has denied lobbying against Google on Microsoft's behalf. So modest! At the same time, the firm, run by loathsome unterflack Mark Penn, went as far as to hire Eric Schmidt's ex-girlfriend to help out its tech practice. Revenge is a dish best served with a summons from the antitrust cops.

Tomorrow, Jobs will have to justify himself for once. For eight years, Jobs has been trying to tear down a 30-room mansion in Woodside, Calif., where he lived for a decade before moving to Palo Alto. Local preservationists have successfully fought him off, citing rules that require mitigation of the loss to history. On Tuesday, Woodside's city council will reconsider his request.

At this point, Jobs's intransigence seems more like stubbornness. He has not lived in the mansion for 15 years, calling it an "abomination" that was "poorly built" — though he once happily gathered his employees at Next Computer, the startup he ran in between his first and second stints at Apple, on the lawn (as seen in the photo, left). Does he actually want to build a new residence in Woodside, after buying a home in Palo Alto and replacing the house next door with a fruit orchard? Or is he simply furious that the residents of Woodside did not simply bend to his will?

There's the wild rumor that Jobs is moving to Memphis, to be close to St. Jude's oncology center. (Jobs was treated for pancreatic cancer in 2004, and is currently on a six-month medical leave from Apple for an unspecified health problem.)

Jobs has earned his fortune fully and well. If he wants to squander it on any number of houses, so be it. But the notion of Steve Jobs, real-estate mogul, seems at odds with his minimalist image. He's not known for entertaining, or collecting art, or any of the other habits of the rich that require lavish spaces. (Do we know anything about Jobs, really, besides his work?) The main virtue of the Woodside mansion seems to be its location up in the hills — farther away from the annoying mass of humanity who have filled Jobs's pockets by buying his gadgets.

(Photos by Jonathan Haeber and via Friends of the Jackling House)

Unlike with Sarah Palin's emails, there's not really a public-spirited reason to post the screenshots the hackers took, except, of course, pure voyeurism. The detail-by-detail, appointment-by-appointment depiction of the lifestyle of a rich and famous actress is all engrossing stuff for the masses (and for us). And yet it feels oddly unsatisfying — the same drip, drip, drip of minutiae that the Internet famous overshare on blogs and Twitter.

Screenshots of the shayek@mac.com email account, released by habitués of the online bulletin board 4chan, appear to be authentic. Breaking into the account was a simple matter of knowing Hayek's birthday — September 2 — and guessing at her security word (they claim it was the name of her best known movie role) to reset the account's password. Public-records searches show that the 323-area-code phone number Hayek listed in a sent email belongs to the actress. A spokeswoman for Hayek has not returned a call requesting comment.

The glimpses into Hayek's life revealed by her inbox are fascinating, even if mundane: The stranger-suckling actress has been invited to America Ferreira's 25th birthday party. She downloads a bunch of iPhone applications from the iTunes App Store — and she gets spam from Apple, just like the rest of us. As for the perks of being famous, a driver was scheduled to meet her flight arriving in Abu Dhabi. American Express has given her a new Gold card. (What, she doesn't rate the exclusive black Centurion Card?) Balenciaga and Stella McCartney deliver designer clothes to her apartment. She schedules "Japanese face massages." And she gets scans of stories about her in the celebrity weeklies.

As our colleagues at Gizmodo have reported (see update), when Goldman told On the Money's Carmen Wong Ulrich that Windows PCs are more expensive than they appear, each of his talking points was taken from this BusinessWeek article by Arik Hesseldahl. (The arguments, a list of costly extras supposedly required to make Windows machines as good as Macs, are neatly summarized in the CNBC graphic below. A clip of the appearance is above.)

The duplication of six data points between the BusinessWeek story and Goldman's CNBC segment would be enough, on its own, to give away Goldman's cribbing. But the real tell that Goldman didn't do his own work was his sloppy copying of BusinessWeek's comparison: Hesseldahl wrote that a PC buyer would need Adobe's low-end Photoshop Elements to match the Mac's built-in iPhoto. In the CNBC graphic, Goldman rendered this as "Photoshop" — a much more expensive program that doesn't come with a PC or a Mac. (Hesseldahl has now accused Goldman of "borrowing" his column, and pointed out other errors.)

Perhaps Goldman should go back to taking his lines direct from the mouths of Apple flacks. At least then there wouldn't be a paper trail of his copying, as there was this time around. Or the probability of an uncomfortable discussion with his boss about the exact boundaries of plagiarism.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Jobs is still in charge, with little-known COO Tim Cook running things day to day. Wall Street analysts expect a minor shift after Jobs returns to work in July — Jobs becoming chairman, say, with Cook as CEO.

Yet there seem to be some fears on Apple's campus — perhaps of Apple's long-term prospects without Jobs at the helm, or perhaps of something else happening inside the computer and smartphone maker. The Journal reports that Apple's rivals are finding it easier to poach people from Apple:

Job recruiters say they aren't seeing significant employee turnover at Apple. But executives at several Silicon Valley companies say they are getting more interest than before from Apple managers, particularly those in the mid-to-upper levels. Most recently, Greg Dudey, one of the lead engineers for Apple TV software, left the company to work for Dell Inc. Mr. Jobs's health is not necessarily the driver of such job moves, according to these people.

Palm, which is rolling out the Pre, a smartphone which hopes to compete with Apple's iPhone, has hired away several people. We also hear that an engineer working on a secret project to build an Apple-branded videogame console is being wooed by other Valley companies. And the company's efforts to improve its online services has been stymied, we hear, by difficulties in hiring the right talent.

Jobs, despite his reputation as a tyrant, has always been an excellent recruiter. Most recently he pried longtime IBM executive Mark Papermaster away from Big Blue, despite a legal fight. Will the industry's best brains want to work for an Apple without Jobs at the helm?

(Photo by Getty Images)

The Woz and partner Karina Smirnoff were ejected from the televised dancing competition last night, four shows into a season that was already something of a Silicon Valley obsession before the first installment even aired. The charmingly oversharey ubergeek won plaudits from the judges for his enthusiasm and, following a foot fracture, determination.

But as computer-hardware-designer Woz himself knows, brute force is rarely the optimal way to solve a problem; elegance inevitably wins over the long term. Tiring of Woz's clumsy steps — one said Woz's was the worst Samba he'd witnessed — the judges eliminated him last night, along with former Playboy model Holly Madison.

Ever the gracious contestant, Wozniak went of his way after being eliminated to praise the Dancing voting system he had once slammed; as well as Madison and partner Smirnoff. "I want to dance more with you," he told her.

We have a feeling there are at least a few other people who'd like to keep watching.

Lauren, the star of Microsoft's latest ad campaign, wants a laptop with a 17-inch screen for under $1,000. She goes to the Apple Store; no luck. "I'm not cool enough to be a Mac person," she sighs as she drives away. She heads to Best Buy and finds one for $699. (Oh, by the way, though Microsoft is telling people that the people like Lauren featured in its new ads were hired on Craigslist for a "market-research study," Lauren is an actress.)

Kind of sad when the sole product quality you can tout is its cheapness, right? But that's always been the virtue of Windows: Not the quality of its software, but the business deals Microsoft struck with PC makers and retailers which make Windows machines the cheapest computers around. (Cheaper even than Linux machines, which have not achieved the volumes needed to beat Windows machines on price.)

It's a clever yet straightforward sell, especially for buyers in economic straits. There's just one problem with the strategy: What if Apple comes out with machines that match PCs on price? The Apple Store was Lauren's first stop. All it takes is one cheap laptop for it to be her only one.

If you read Gizmodo, you know Apple released an iPhone software upgrade today, which includes this news-y feature:

The new software will also give developers new ways to make money on the device, allowing them to sell monthly subscriptions, new levels in a game or items in an online store without asking users to leave the application. So for example a seller of electronic books on the iPhone can sell digital texts right within its application, instead of directing iPhone users to their Web sites.

So: if the New York Times, for example, decided to start charging for its online content, it could sell its subscriptions just like an iPhone app. Those things sell pretty well, I hear! Iphone users seem like the types who wouldn't mind paying a few bucks a month to read the New Yorker, or Vogue, or, I don't know, Wired on their digital contraptions, if the publications packaged their offers well.

At least iPhone users are more primed to pay for content than the internet community at large. So while this isn't quite a full-blown iTunes model for news—which would probably fail—it could be a good indicator of how much cash mobile news is potentially worth. More than 17 million iPhones have been sold so far; if even a million of those belonged to people willing to pay $5 a month for a news subscription, it could mean... hardly enough to save the old media. But enough to save some media jobs! [Pic via]

[Disclaimer: I am not Owen Thomas, technology expert.]

It makes sense that the microblogging service, where people endlessly repeat (or "retweet") friends' 140-character updates, is celebrating copy and paste like no one else. Twitter, after all, is the ultimate home of groupthink, where mouthing received verities is its own reward. Now people can simply copy and paste their friends' tweets. Hurrah! No need to ever compose an original thought again.

Aside from that: Yes, it's utterly ridiculous that Apple didn't include copy and paste in the iPhone's first release a year and a half ago. Now that the company has fixed its glaring omission, can we talk about something we didn't copy from a friend's Facebook feed?

No surprise that an Apple flack lied. Under CEO Steve Jobs, the company has made a fetish of secrecy, misdirection, and fabrication. Dowling may have been following orders, or he may have been misled by a colleague himself. (He has not responded to a voicemail asking for comment.) But on matters as important as Jobs's own health, Apple flacks have consistently deceived reporters, and — worse yet — gotten caught.

What still surprises us, though, is how many people are so eager to trust the word of a flack with a shoddy reputation for honesty.

California law requires warning in advance of layoffs of 50 or more employees. But the salespeople in question were split between Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., and Austin, Texas, which means the layoff wasn't subject to the layoff-warning rule.

And they weren't that big a deal, either, in the grand scheme of things. Hewlett-Packard, which has offices right next door to Apple, is in the process of laying off some 15,000 employees. Why not acknowledge the layoffs, and point out how small they were in comparison to others? The only reason I can think of why an Apple spokesman would lie about something as minor as these layoffs: Sheer force of habit.

(Photo via Esquire)

There are layoffs at Apple today. Lots of security around. Looks like Mac hardware and pro applications folks are being impacted. Don't have any idea of numbers....but it seems like a lot.

A recent report of layoffs in Apple's sales force sparked some controversy, because corporations are supposed to file notice of mass layoffs in advance and Apple PR denied the layoffs. I absolutely believe they happened, despite bloggers who bought Apple's PR spin. It only makes sense in a weakening economy, when businesses are slashing purposes, to cut salespeople. And Apple spokespeople, who have made a foolish practice of uttering obvious lies in public about matters as serious as their CEO's health, are about as credible as, oh, say, a CNBC reporter these days. But let's look at the actual law.

For a company of Apple's size, federal labor law only requires notice for layoffs of more than 500 employees at a single site, in most cases, under the WARN Act. If the employees are physically spread out over multiple sites, it may not apply. California, where Apple is headquartered has a stricter law, which covers layoffs of 50 or more employees, but there are similar loopholes. The state only updates layoff filings once a month, at any rate. If Apple really is making cuts, we may not get official confirmation of the layoffs for weeks, if at all.

There's another route the company could take to cut jobs without calling them layoffs: Disemploy workers with poor performance reviews and call them firings, a move called "forced ranking" that's used at companies like Cisco and GE.

Apple spokesman Steve Dowling did not return a call for comment, but that's okay, because he never does.

(Photo via londonderrynh.net)

That's not a "major" layoff, as one Valleywag tipster maintained this morning. As Eric Savitz points out in Tech Trader Daily, Apple would have to file through the WARN Act if it was going to conduct major cuts. But the WARN Act does not generally apply to layoffs of fewer than 500 employees.

Perhaps the cuts felt major to workers within Apple's unloved enterprise group. Why is that division getting the business end of cutbacks? The least sexy part of Apple, selling servers and other products to corporate customers, has never gotten much attention inside or outside the company. Steve Jobs has never particularly cared about business customers — in fact, he once ridiculed them as lemmings in an '80s-era Apple ad (see clip above). Even though he's ostensibly on medical leave, the cuts in Apple's enterprise sales are a pretty good sign he still has his hand on the tiller.

Update: An Apple spokesman has denied the layoffs.

If so, then Apple's latest product announcements seem like a conveniently timed distraction. Apple CEO Steve Jobs has never been a big believer a corporate sales force, preferring to sell directly to customers online. Al Shipp, Apple's SVP of enterprise sales, quietly left the company in November and was not replaced. Does anyone know more? Drop us a line.

It's a phenomenon the geeks are already calling "Dancing with the Woz" and is potentially the greatest terpsichorean trainwreck in television history. Woz has entered the ABC dance competition to prove that anyone can learn some new steps, and his fans are already gearing up to stack the vote by any means necessary. Wozniak has asked tech-savvy viewers not to hack ABC's voting systems. If that happens, it will be just part of the circus that will make this a must-see.

When did computer-company founders become reality-TV contestants? When they stopped having anything resembling a real job. If hard-driving Apple CEO Steve Jobs is on technology's A list, then Woz, who dropped out of Apple to teach at a public school, and then returned to a life of studied Silicon Valley dilettantery, is surely on its D list.

Indeed, he's so on the D list that he dated My Life on the D List's Kathy Griffin for a while, before a surprise marriage (his fourth) to an Apple colleague last August.

Wags are already calling his pairing with dancer Karina Smirnoff "Beauty and the Beast." But Woz makes up for his schlumpy, bearded appearance with a lot of what American Idol's judges call "likeability." Unlike Jobs, who is obsessive about his privacy to the point of being a snarling jerk, Woz overshares to a degree that the Twitter generation finds charming. He's a bit of a prankster — which means we might have some on-air pratfalls to look forward to. He may not make for a conventional TV star, but he's perfect for the low expectations of today's reality lineup.

Obsessive fanboy Brian Tong of CNET infiltrated Woz's dance studio and interviewed him for the clip above. "If you ever want to focus on one thing and see how far you can go, this is the way to do it," Woz says. Here's the full segment from CNET's "The Apple Byte":

This year's meeting is especially notable for the absence of Steve Jobs, who is on a six-month medical leave after his health took a visible turn for the worse starting last summer. Goldman, who made himself notorious for repeating Apple's PR lines as company flacks lied about the health of CEO Steve Jobs, first complained that Apple wasn't streaming the shareholder meeting over the Internet, which would save him the trouble of leaving his desk. Then he tut-tutted over Apple's decision to ban cell phones, laptops, and other wireless devices from the event.

It never occurred to him to just disobey Apple. That's what two members of Investor Village's Apple message board did. To their chagrin: The meeting was dominated by nutty environmentalists, universal healthcare advocates, and union-hating ranters. Apple board member Arthur Levinson shot down a question about whether the company had violated disclosure rules in not being forthcoming about Jobs's health. In short, the meeting was about as informative as a typical Apple report by Jim Goldman.

This is as much our fault as it is his. Since he returned to Apple a decade ago, he made himself the company's indispensable man. Since he had a brush with pancreatic cancer in 2003, he has reminded us all of De Gaulle's saying about indispensible men — that the graveyards are full of them. The panic that ensued after he appeared gaunt and unwell at an Apple event last summer, his subsequent skipping of his Macworld keynote speech, his disclosure of new medical problems, and his decision last month to take a six-month medical leave have all done nothing to relieve people's worries about what the state of his health will mean for Apple as a business.

The latest tick-tock of concern: A report by tech columnist Robert X. Cringely that Jobs has stopped logging into his IM client. Cringely dug further and confirmed that Jobs has been completely offline for weeks. The always-on generation instantly grasps the meaning of this: If you're not in constant communication with the rest of the world, you're as good as dead to them. People are taking the IM thing more seriously than an earlier report, from a hospital worker, of Stanford Hospital prepping to host Jobs for surgery.

Is the fascination with Steve Jobs's health morbid? As surely morbid as it is necessary. Jobs has not stepped down as Apple's CEO. After the surgery report surfaced, some blogs reported Jobs had been at Apple for meetings. Is he in? Is he out? This nonstop dance has the effect of keeping Jobs at the center of any talk of Apple even when he's ostensibly removed himself from its daily affairs.

Only someone with an overweening sense of self-importance would allow this to continue. Unfortunately, that describes Jobs.

Which is why he needs to step down, for good. Apple is too important a company, its employees and shareholders too dependent on its health, to rely on one raging egotist's welfare. We all need to learn what it means to have an Apple running without Steve Jobs. The sooner we take Jobs off our collective buddy list, the better.