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Comment by mixmax | Hacker News Reader

Well, as the saying goes: "If you invite the press for the wedding they will also cover the divorce"

Steve Jobs invited the press to the wedding.

I am guessing it would also be reasonable to say it has a material affect on Apple as a publicly traded company, at least in the short term. And certainly the stock price.

But I wish him the best, it seems too soon for him to be leaving this, and I am sure he has more he wants to do.

Yeah, we know it has a material effect... but that's not why this is here. Apple's stock isn't interesting Hacker News.

This is here because it's really fun talking about Steve Jobs, love him or hate him, and because the man's the archetypal startup founder along with Woz. That's totally fine but let's not kid ourselves.

yeah I wasn't really thinking about HN relevance, more the "privacy" issue.

I think Steve is important enough to be relevant to HN.

I would say that John Sculley confirms that :-)

Out of curiousity, what are your examples of Jobs inviting people into his private life? From where I stand, he's always been very demanding about the need to keep his private life private.

Apple does not rely on Jobs' public profile for success. Yes, they do rely on his ability as a driver of innovation, but if Jobs were never to say a word in public again, it wouldn't seem to hurt Apple (at least, that's my opinion, having watched the last keynote without him). As such, I don't think Jobs has traded on publicity for his success, and can consequently reasonably request that we leave his private life alone.

Meh.

I wouldn't say Jobs has been "inviting people into his private life". He has remained fairly private.

I did say "he's granted the media many levels of access, from photos through interviews, to boost his products." Just look at all the magazine covers he's had. The accompanying stories always mix a little of the personal biography -- the arc of his life -- with the product/business news of the day.

But also, consider the 2005 commencement speech he gave -- which I wouldn't attribute to simple PR machinations for Apple, but because a distinguished public person was invited to talk, and wanted to share his insights with the future. He talked about the circumstances of his birth and adoption as a baby; his college years; his exile from Apple; his pancreatic cancer diagnosis and surgery. That is, his life story, as it could help elucidate life choices for others.

The story continues; we're still curious. While it's wrong to pry illegally into private records, and it's wrong to hound him (or his non-public family) about these things, it's natural and keeping with the usual and fair treatment of a public figure to relay major new developments in his life story.

I am sure Apple would survive if Jobs retired as a company spokesman as long as he kept showing up for his very competent job as innovation driver.

I am not sure someone would be able to step in his shoes when he decides to retire.

I agree. The fact that this took two months to come out tells me that Jobs does not want it to be public information. I think that his privacy should be respected.

Your "opinion" is wrong. Apple's stock price is extremely correlated to Jobs' public profile.

e.g. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10057521-37.html e.g. http://www.businessinsider.com/2009/1/so-apple-lied-about-st...

Correlation on it’s own doesn’t mean anything. I’m sure we could just as easily dig up counter-examples where there are no correlations.

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