KEY POINTS:
Despite the worries about Steve looking a bit slim and fears for his health, Steve Jobs is not dead. Even though The Bloomberg financial newswire mistakenly posted a lavish 17-page obituary.
It's common practice to file obituaries of famous people for instant use - Bloomberg decided to update its Steve Jobs obituary ... then inadvertently published it.
Steve Jobs, who won a battle with pancreatic cancer a few years ago, told graduates at a commencement speech at Stanford University in 2005 "Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Your time is limited so don't waste it. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking."
Sound advice - and luckily for Apple fans his 'limited' time is not quite as limited as the mistakenly published obituary would suggest.
Some investors were undoubtedly rattled to see it, and the mistake could have had negative financial implications. Gawker Media obtained the full document and republished it, which will surely be making those at Bloomberg squirm.
As macabre as it is to read the obituary of someone who's not only hale, but hearty enough to bound around the stage to introduce new products in a few days, the obituary is pretty thorough that we get to learn a lot more about Jobs.
Marked clearly "Hold for release - do not use", the obituary was updated by Connie Guglielmo, a widely published San Francisco-based US technology reporter and contributor to Wired.
It's interesting because it uses lots of quotes from other industry luminaries. For example, "In terms of an inspirational leader, Steve Jobs is really the best I've ever met." That's from Microsoft Corp co-chairman Bill Gates, when asked in 1998 to name the CEOs he most admired.
It still begs the question of who would succeed Jobs at the helm of the world's most exciting tech company. Jobs has said "It's my job as CEO to do my best to make sure everybody on the executive team is a potential successor to me."
Chief Operating Officer Timothy Cook stood in for Jobs in 2004, and another potential leader is Chief Financial Operator Peter Oppenheimer. Pundits also mention legendary Apple designer Jonathan Ives.
Jobs has a personal fortune estimated at US$5.4 billion, according to Forbes. So he's not only healthy, he seems to have a nice little nest egg and probably doesn't need KiwiSaver, should Amercians have access to such a great scheme.
