Orphanage

You always risk life and limb when you mock the Apple faithful -- of which I am one. Since returning to Apple in 1998, Steve Jobs' has been a one-man tour de force. Under his tenure, Apple stock, which I faintly recall trading at $13 in 1998, went to something around the $200 last year before the crash. It was nothing short of a storybook comeback. Apple is hotter than ever, having reinventing the portable music player business with the ubiquitous iPod and virtually manhandling the mobile phone industry with the iPhone. Meanwhile, iMacs, MacBooks and other Mac brands have increased market share. But like everything else, the party must end sometime and in this case the party is drawing to a close because the owner of the house has now retired to his room. Steve Jobs is sick and needs time to recover, having been successfully treated for cancer a few years ago. There is speculation that the cancer is back, or that the type of cancer Jobs had caused him to become a diabetic. In any case, the photographs don't lie. He has lost a considerable amount of weight and we can only hope for the best for him, even if if means he doesn't return to Apple.