At each pass, he faced incredible skepticism; a rational analysis would have predicted defeat. But he persevered. His legion of admirers — and critics — are now wishing him a full recovery now that he begins a six-month medical leave from Apple. And whatever suffering his present physical condition is causing, the mental anguish of acknowledging that he is not well enough to lead his company must be its own particular pain.

Every hero's strength is usually also a flaw. With Jobs, it is his relationship with the truth. That spirit of denial is exactly what has led him to reinvent industry after industry for the past three decades. But the truth about his own declining health — at first flatly denied, then grudgingly confirmed but downplayed, and now confirmed as grave — cannot be changed simply through the power of belief.

In 2005, two years after he was first diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, Jobs waxed philosophical about death in a commencement address he delivered at Stanford University:

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Therein lies the contradiction: In his health, Jobs does indeed have something to lose. And following his heart, which surely tells him to ignore the problem, in this matter is dangerous.

Jobs's track record, though, makes his defiance understandable. Having overcome so many other obstacles, why would he not think the aftereffects of cancer would prove trivial, too? Here's the career which helped feed Jobs's hubris:

1976 Jobs, a college dropout, founds Apple Computer with engineer Steve Wozniak. They introduce the Apple I, a personal computer for hobbyists.

1977 Apple introduces the Apple II, one of the first personal computers with a color display. Over the next 16 years, Apple sells more than 5 million units.

1984 Jobs, with a crew of self-described "pirates" pulled from other projects at Apple, introduces the Macintosh, a computer with a graphical user interface and a mouse.

1985 Apple's board fires Jobs. He founds Next Computer.

1986 Filmmaker George Lucas sells Pixar, then an animation-software startup, to Jobs.

1995 Pixar releases its first digitally animated feature film, Toy Story, and goes public; Jobs owns 80 percent, a stake worth nearly $600 million. (Pixar movies make regular appearances in Jobs's presentations for Apple, like this one in 1999.)

1996 Apple buys Next for $430 million; Jobs becomes an advisor to hapless CEO Gil Amelio.

1997 Having lost faith in Amelio, Jobs sells his entire stake in Apple. Amelio is forced out. Jobs becomes interim CEO.

1998 Jobs unveils the iMac.

2000 Jobs drops the "interim" bit and becomes Apple's CEO.

2001 A month after 9/11, to little notice, Jobs introduces the iPod.

2003 Apple launches the iTunes Music Store, with a little help from rock-star friends like Mick Jagger.

2005 The iPod Nano comes out, unveiled by Jobs as an aside at the launch of a now-forgotten iPod-phone combination.

2006 Disney buys Pixar; Jobs's stake is now worth $4.6 billion.

2007 Jobs unveils the iPhone.

2008 The MacBook Air and the iPhone 3G are announced. Observers notice Jobs's dramatic weight loss.

(Photos by AP and Getty Images)

I was born and raised in Alabama. Went to school there. I know these people, I have lived among them, I am one of them, and let me tell you something...they're assholes.

However, Alabama is notorious for having the kind of civil litigation environment that makes tort reform advocates scream about "jackpot justice." So she probably thinks she can make this thing pay out like a Biloxi slot machine, and given the right sort of jurors, she probably can. Until the massive award gets knocked down to nubbins on appeal.

Please, somebody from Mississippi - do something stupid in public, quick!

You'll be able to search for people outside of your friends, make/approve/ignore friend requests, and search your inbox and sent folder, for starters. Notifications will also arrive in real time while the app is running. The version of iPhone for Facebook after this will deliver them to you even if the app isn't running using Apple's push notification service. Overall, it's pretty excellent, check it out. [Facebook]

I opened myself to my iPhone 3G epiphany during a seven-hour road trip (it should have been five, but that's another story) to AMD's headquarters in Austin, Texas. I spent that trip with a BlackBerry 8800 and an iPhone 3G resting on my passenger seat, playing "anything you can do, I can do better" with each other the whole way. It was a delight. I was not a paragon of highway safety that night, but I learned more from that trip than I did from a solid week of lab testing. During the trip, the handsets' attention, and mine, were divided primarily among email, browser (news.yahoo.com and phone bandwidth tests on dslreports.com), and real-time navigation.

Specifically, the "3G" part of "iPhone 3G." Patrizio writes that "on disabling 3G, service improved immediately. There were no more dropped calls. Audio quality was fine. Battery life was much better." An analyst tells Patrizio a chip inside the phone is the problem: "We believe that these issues are typical of an immature chipset and radio protocol stack where we are almost certain Infineon is the 3G supplier." Patrizio's three other problems with the iPhone:

• Steve Jobs's kill switch:
  

  Jobs confirmed if you install applications unapproved by Apple, the app will be removed as soon as you plug it in to synch and recharge. What would happen if Microsoft did this?

• Cracking cases. After The Unofficial Apple Weblog reported "Cracks 'appearing' in new iPhone 3Gs," they updated their story to write:
  

  Commenters are literally pouring in to tell us that as careful as they've been with their iPhone 3Gs, even the most babied devices are showing cracks.

• App developers are angry over NDAs. Developers building apps for the iPhone have a hard time helping each other out because Apple forces them to sign strict non-disclosure agreements. The response? FuckingNDA.com.

At the Soho Apple Store on Sunday, they turned away at least two hundred people who had been waiting in line because they had TWO phones in stock before the store opened. But this showed up as "in stock" on the website.

And yes, I am sending this on my first generation iPhone.

Sorry, I wish I had [taken photos], especially of the starbucks toting d-bag of a store manager pecking away at a Blackberry.

(Photo by ycr)

From a would-be iPhone 3G buyer in San Francisco:

Date: Jul 18, 2008 9:00 PM
Subject: apple store can kiss my ass

so i go to the chestnut street apple store at 10am this morning and they tell me they are sold out of 3g iphones after i checked their website last night. i'm like, how did you sell out at 10:01 am? and they said, we've been open for an hour! eh? their phone and website clearly details they open at 10am. wtf is going on? i felt like slaughtering them.

(Photo by Alex Choi)

A tipster snapped this late-night shot of Apple's Union Square store being overhauled. You — yes, you waiting in line with your old iPhone — send us photos of the results when the store opens at 10, willya? Separately, we've been told that Apple Store employees at the San Francisco flagship cut off would-be buyers who arrived after 5:30 p.m. Shoppers timed the morning line at 2.5 hours yesterday. That's even more time than I spend watching my BlackBerry reboot.