14 DAY TRIAL // Reports have confirmed that Steve Jobs is back as Apple CEO, following a six-month medical leave. For the time being, Jobs will be dropping by the office a few days a week, but will continue to work from his home, an Apple spokesperson has confirmed for Bloomberg.
“Steve is back to work,” Steve Dowling, a spokesman at the Cupertino, California-based company, said. Jobs was at Apple a few days a week and working from home the rest of the time, he added. “We are very glad to have him back.” Dowling declined to say whether Jobs was actually at the office on the day of the interview, or whether the company would provide more information on his health.
“It should give investors confidence in Apple’s three-to- five-year road map,” Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster explained. The researcher recommended buying Apple stock but doesn’t own it. “Having Steve Jobs back means they got the visionary back.”
During Steve Jobs’ leave, Apple’s Chief Operating Officer, Tim Cook, was in charge of day-to-day operations. According to the Bloomberg report, Cook also filled in for a month in 2004 while Jobs recuperated from surgery to remove an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor in his pancreas. Jobs, as readers should know, is a cancer survivor.
“His absence had an unintended consequence, in that it showed Tim Cook had the ability to manage the company as if Steve Jobs was still there,” Ryan Jacob, head of the Jacob Internet Fund in Los Angeles, which owns Apple shares, pinpointed. “As incredibly important as he is, by him taking a step back, it showed that there are good people behind Steve Jobs.” Jacob is just one of many analysts who suggest that Jobs has inspired every Apple exec to become a successor to the Apple “throne.”