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)

We put the NDA in place because the iPhone OS includes many Apple inventions and innovations that we would like to protect, so that others don’t steal our work. It has happened before. While we have filed for hundreds of patents on iPhone technology, the NDA added yet another level of protection. We put it in place as one more way to help protect the iPhone from being ripped off by others.

Presumably because The Weinstein Company, Moore's studio, wouldn't want to be seen as somehow legitimizing file-sharing. And it would like to keep your email address on file, the better to flog paid downloads on Amazon.com and iTunes, as well as the DVD, when those are available. But really, Moore doesn't want to make a dime on this thing. He just wants you kids to get off your butts and vote. Free Internet distribution serves his political agenda; paid downloads serve Weinstein's commercial goals. With two masters to serve, is it any surprise Moore's film is making an awkward debut?

Kennedy said Podcaster takes as long as 3 to 5 minutes to load some menus, that he had to dismiss a confirmation sheet each time he added a new podcast, and that Podcaster's interface is crowded and ugly.

Remember, ugly is an unforgivable sin in the eyes of Apple, which warns developers on its Developer Connection site:

Apple human interface engineers labored painstakingly over every pixel in Aqua, so it’s important that you pay close attention to the details of your application’s Aqua user interface.

Beyond Podcaster's three fatal flaws, writes Kennedy, "there are a few obvious reasons why a platform such as iPhone might choose not to carry an application in its storefront:"

• Chargebacks. Buyers frequently return your product for reasons including buyer's remorse or just receiving a different product than they expected. The "I Am Rich" $1000 iPhone app carries a heavy chargeback risk.
• Insufficient differentiation. App authors should be able to submit an application to App Store and expect there won't be a knock-off product sold directly alongside. Open-source applications can swap out an application title and submit the app as their own without adding new functionality.
• Misleading marketing, including trademarks. Don't misrepresent yourself or your product or cause obvious confusion.
• Horrible customer experience. Apple will recommend interface designers who can assist you with visual aspects of your application. Long load times or heavy resource utilization might will make both you and the platform look bad.

I’m still trying to figure out why they held an actual event today instead of just putting out a press release. As a fellow filthy hack commented to me after the big show, “Can you imagine if Sony did this?” Nevertheless, there was much cheering and shouting and clapping and whooping, even though much of it came from Apple employees who had been instructed to remove their green event T-shirts so they’d look like regular members of the public. I’m not making that up. Friends, it’s true — Apple brings along its own employees and has them cheer like mad for their own products.

I don't have a problem with updates being reviewed but it has to go a lot faster. Given the no-demos rule, an app lives or dies by App Store reviews. It's incredibly frustrating to watch review after review complain about a bug that you fixed and "shipped" two weeks ago.

Hello Developer,

We've reviewed your application Pull My Finger. We have determined that this application is of limited utility to the broad iPhone and iPod touch user community, and will not be published to the App Store.

It may be very appropriate to share with friends and family, and we recommend you review the Ad Hoc method on the Distribution tab of the iPhone Developer Portal for details on distributing this application among a small group of people of your choosing.

Regards,

Victor Wang
Worldwide Developer Relations
Apple, Inc.

iTunes 8 includes Genius, which makes playlists from songs in your library that go great together. Genius also includes Genius sidebar, which recommends music from the iTunes Store that you don't already have.

It sounds like an iTunes version of Pandora, geared to selling you more music you might not have discovered on your own.

Naturally, this upset Murderdrome's creator Paul Jason Holden, who called — "infuriously," we suppose — for action on his blog: "PLEASE leave a comment. We’ll forward ALL of these to Apple, so that we can ensure that not only Murderdrome, but that ANY comic submitted to Apple doesn’t fall foul of the same censorship." (Do hyperviolent comic book authors also always go by three names?) By this morning, tech-news aggregator Techmeme was dutifully full of sympathetic retellings of Infurious's plight.

Not here though. We'll only make the obvious point that we'd never heard of the Comic Reader app, Infurious Comics or its just-plain-gross comic Murderdrome until now. Publicity for being banned worked commercial wonders for even James Joyce's unreadable Ulysses, so we bet it helps Mr. Holden's gore-porn sales just plenty.

There's no one big reason. This WSJ report lists several:

• ITunes, with few exceptions, requires that songs be made available separately. Some artists see their albums as one piece of work, and don't want them dismantled.
• Their handlers believe they can make more by selling complete albums for $10 to $15 than by selling individual songs.
• Apple isn't willing to sell songs for more than 99 cents. Most record labels see higher prices as critical to increasing revenue.

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.

It will be a fad, why? because Jobs has a very narrow mind regarding software, and that means we won't see the kind of cool stuff that PalmOS used to get in the late '90s/early '00s.

The iPhone-as-modem app just got canned, and that was way more useful that most of the crap on the store. Ask any gamer and he'll tell you that using non-physical buttons (like in some DS games) is a nightmare.

After the peak hype, only 10-20 percent of the user base will be buying (instead of just getting the free ones) apps in the store.