"In the meantime, my family and I would deeply appreciate respect for our privacy." "In the meantime, my family and I would deeply appreciate respect for our privacy."Also, for better or worse, part of being a public figure is living with the fact that your wellbeing impacts a lot of people, and these people have a right to know what that impact will be.
If he resigned he should have absolutely privacy, but since he hasn't the thousands of people that rely on him have a right to know where they stand.
He has the obligation to release certain specific information mandated by the SEC in a timely manner (details of his health are not on the list - it's largely financial) and there are certain things a company can not say (which basically boils down to honesty).
The SEC also say he and the company have to communicate in a particular way when information is shared (for instance so it's available to the whole market - no selective disclosure, and again it has to be honest and truthful and so on) and projections are heavily caveated.
The on top of that he has a general legal obligation to act in the best interests of share holders.
But there's no blanket reveal all, and nothing that specifically covers his health and I'm not sure why you think there is or where it comes from. Could you quote the specific authority or law in question?
Given that the market is made up of humans, and that nobody can predict with certainty the public reaction to every move a company or person makes, it's absurd to think that insiders in a corporation are not entitled to privacy.
After all, where would it stop? "Jonny Ive has had a break up with his other half and is really down, he's meant to be working on the new iPhone but he's really off his game...". "Inform the shareholders!"
It's similar to the difference between "in the public interest" and "the public are interested".
I would imagine everyone here agrees with his right to privacy on the details of his illness; however what some of the GPs are saying is simply that the overall status/summary of his health (i.e. he has cancer, or not) needs to be disclosed.
So that's useless to you (unless you're just being morbidly curious in which case you have no business here anyway) so you'd ask "well, what type?" and they'd usually say something pretty similar to the last answer so you'd go "what grade?" and they'd say something pretty similar again - probably narrower, but maybe not and certainly with very wide error bars which would cover both death in the short term and survival of 5 years plus (which for cancer is close to a cure).
So, still none the wiser, certainly in any way that would allow you to better judge Apple as a company, you'd say "how advanced is it?" and most of the time the answer would yet again be pretty similar but they'd say that different people respond to treatment very differently.
So then you'd need to ask "what the treatment protocol is he going to be on?" and they'd say the same and then you'd ask how's he's responding at which point you basically are asking for his white blood count (though I believe that's actually only used to judge whether a patient should have chemo at any given point in time rather than an indication of success / failure / health as far as the cancer goes).
He's clearly unwell enough to ask for an extended absence, it's not the flu. That's all you need to know.
In a way, I think this is similar to Google refusing to issue guidance (not sure if they still do that) and the shareholders just needing to deal with it.
Whether this is a good thing is a separate issue.
C'mon people. He's a goner. He's contributed immensely to the world. Let him go in peace and even with a little positive feeling. It'd be nice if he could turn to HN before his death and see a lot of people appreciate his work.