Steve Jobs - Alive And Kicking

An obituary on Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs published on Wednesday, presenting among other things his accomplishments with the company, quickly circled the globe before the mistake could be corrected.

The blooper was caused by Bloomberg News, as its ads department was supposed to just update the premature obituary marked "hold, not for release." This update system is extremely common for many news organizations, which access and complete the information from time to time.

The first few lines provide a general view over his entire career and his most appreciated contributions to today’s technological progress. "Steve Jobs, who helped make personal computers as easy to use as telephones, changed the way animated films are made, persuaded consumers to tune into digital music and refashioned the mobile phone, has XXXX. He was TK. Jobs XXXX, TK said XXXXX. "

Bloomberg’s editors deleted the story and wrote, "An incomplete story referencing Apple Inc. was inadvertently published by Bloomberg News at 4:27 p.m. New York time today. The item was never meant for publication and has been retracted."

The obituary presents a detailed analysis of his career, from the 1976 founding of the Apple Company, to the introduction of the Mac computer in 1984, the reach of the number one spot on the music market with the iPod and many other data. There are also some quotes taken from Microsoft Corp. Co-Chairman Bill Gates’ statements about Apple’s CEO, back in January 1998: "in terms of an inspirational leader, Steve Jobs is really the best I’ve ever met […]. He’s got a belief in the excellence of products. He’s able to communicate that," and some from his fellow college dropout Steve Wozniak who back in the day focused on the engineering part and Jobs came up with the sales campaign. "Every time I designed something great from when we were very young, he would say ‘let’s sell it,’ […] It was always his idea to sell it," said Wozniak during an Intel Corp. conference in August 2008.

Aside from Jobs’ long list of accomplishments displayed in four pages, the piece discussed Apple’s stock direction and also presented a list of his survivors, which included his wife, children and sisters.

Even though many considered it a joke from the start, there were several who bought into the news, as there were some concerns about Jobs’ suffering from a reoccurrence of pancreatic cancer that he beat back in 2003. These rumors were also fueled by his significantly thinner appearance at The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June. Last month, Steve Jobs addressed the health issue during an off the record talk with Joe Nocera, a New York City Times reporter, who only revealed that Jobs’ health problems "weren't life-threatening and he doesn't have a recurrence of cancer."

Jobs is considered by many analysts as the man who saved Apple, after he returned to the company in 1996. Jobs, who co-founded Apple, resigned in 1985. But he returned as CEO when Apple bought his company, NeXT. He became Apple’s permanent CEO in 2000.

Since his return, Steve Jobs has been involved in all Apple major achievements such as the launch of iPod and iTunes and the company’s transition to Intel-powered Macs. In 2006, after another speech also at WWDC, several news sites reported that Jobs has health problems, but Apple dismissed the information as rumors.

Even though Steve Jobs is looking to keep a low key on his public appearances, the plan proves to be extremely difficult, as his name keeps showing up in all sorts of situations which even though might not cause any significant harm, could become rather irritating.