14 DAY TRIAL // Blogger Robert Scoble, a former Microsoft employee who runs his own tech blog and has some connections in Silicon Valley, claims he’s heard Steve Jobs will not be attending today’s festivities in Cupertino. The reason? He’s not feeling very well.
Steve Jobs, as avid Softpedia readers should well know, has resigned from his CEO position with Apple in August, leaving the reins to then-COO Tim Cook.
Cook was the logical choice for Apple’s CEO succession plan, having filled in for Jobs on several occasions with a great deal of success.
“I'm hearing that Steve Jobs won't be at tomorrow's press event. He's just not feeling well enough to come out in public,” writes Robert Scoble, who worked at Microsoft as an evangelist.
Scoble was one of the five people who started Microsoft's famous Channel9 video community.
The Silicon Valley geek believes Apple is in good hands, though he suggests Tim Cook will not shine as bright on stage as Steve did: “…and yes, that makes me sad, the industry will really miss him and they will see again tomorrow why”, he writes.
“I keep wishing that these continued rumors are wrong, but know in my head that they probably are right,” says Scoble, who decided not to name his sources, or even hint at who they may be.
Still, Steve Jobs’ fingerprints are all over Apple, and they’re going to remain in place for a long time, Scoble suggests:
“That said, tomorrow will be ALL about Steve Jobs even though he probably won't be mentioned much, beyond something like ‘Steve is watching today's keynote from the comfort of his home and he sends his best wishes to all of you’.”
His blog post is not necessarily about Steve Jobs as a person, as much as it is about his business decisions and leadership, as well as what he has left behind in terms of opportunities that Tim Cook needs to leverage.
For example, the blogger also claims he’s heard of this new iPad app that “looks a lot like DirecTV without the dish, too.” Scoble claims Apple is the developer and that it will be a big game changer (much like everything else Apple makes).
He also said “we'll see these two guys from Siri on stage too”. Siri technology is known to be the foundation of a new iOS 5 feature called Assistant, which Apple will unveil today in tandem with new iPhone hardware.