Steve Jobs refused Tim Cook's offer of a liver transplant because he did not want to risk Tim Cook's life. He wanted to make sure Apple had a superb leader going forward. He refused for the sake of Apple.
I hope everyone reading would consider it. Obviously it is a personal non-trivial choice. But a liver donation is not like a kidney donation. A modest portion of the liver is removed and the donor's liver regenerates to replace the donated portion. So the risks are minor and a life is saved. A lot of bang for the buck.
Really? Why don't a lot of people do it then? Why is there such a long waiting list?
I hope everyone reading would consider it. Obviously it is a personal non-trivial choice. But a liver donation is not like a kidney donation. A modest portion of the liver is removed and the donor's liver regenerates to replace the donated portion. So the risks are minor and a life is saved. A lot of bang for the buck.
Really? Why don't a lot of people do it then? Why is there such a long waiting list?
Because you still have to be compatible with the recipient and if your in a backward country like the USA you'd need a ton of cash.
A TV is nothing but a box to stream content. Big whoop. A box and a remote. What else could there be? The rest is interface.
And then you have to deal with all of the content providers.
I think Netflix "cracked it", more or less (it could have better features) by becoming a producer and a content provider and leaving the hardware to others.
And TVs do not seem to be a high margin product and a hassle. And people don't upgrade them too often. Not like phones or computers.
What are you talking about? Are you trying to tell me that watching a Pioneer Kuro is no better an experience than watching a Sony Bravia? Pull the other one.
And because people do not renew their TVs that often is not a good reason not to make one. You have to assume Apple has bigger goals than that regarding products. They are about making the best product and there are no good smart TVs they're all junk with junk software. Making a TV is about taking 100% control of that experience and making it great, but this cannot be done without a solid gold tv show content deal. Without this Steve's 'go-to-market-strategy' is an impossibility.
"We are also very pleased to announce that Google will now provide the default search service for Yahoo! Our search engine will now complement Yahoo's Web directory and navigational guide."
"Microsoft's Bing search engine will power the Yahoo website and Yahoo will in turn become the advertising sales team for Microsoft's online offering."
Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo in 2008 for $47.5b but were turned down. That's interesting because their market cap was half what it is now. They were obviously aware that their assets were worth more.
They are now sitting on $60b of assets ($30-40b being the Alibaba investment). They're going to spin off that investment first and give their shareholders the shares in it so they can retain shares in Yahoo and sell off shares in Alibaba to get the profit from that. Once that happens, Yahoo will likely become a much cheaper acquisition target. They don't have much unique about them given that they use other search engines but they have 300m email users, which counts for something. It might not count for much to Apple if those people already have Apple accounts.
Without their Alibaba assets, I could see it being a sub-$10b acquisition. They could help iAd and maybe some of their cloud services. It makes more sense for Microsoft, Facebook or Google to buy them than Apple.
Well, given that Steve had a wife and kids, one might say not at least considering Tim's offer could be construed as selfish in some respects.
I don't get the need to denigrate people over difficult decisions like this and to label a selfless act as selfish just because it put the interests of his friend ahead of his family is absurd. Liver donation is low-risk but not zero-risk, people have died from it:
Tim would have been in his late 40s/early 50s. He might have suffered worse side-effects than someone in his 20s. Steve eventually got a liver from a mid-20s organ donor who died in a car crash.
For someone who would spend all of Apple's cash to destroy Android, I doubt the company was his first priority in this decision. Brands and companies are just proxies for people. The people are what's important. Money doesn't come first, products don't come first, people always come first.
I think Netflix "cracked it", more or less (it could have better features) by becoming a producer and a content provider and leaving the hardware to others.
The weakness with Netflix is the low subscription price. Cable providers are raking in over 10x their revenue and about 30x their income because they are providing the cable connection to broadband. Netflix will struggle to get good exclusive content deals with their revenue. Their subscriber base is already higher than the cable companies but with a fraction of the income. There has to be more than just a single subscription. Content keeps getting removed from Netflix. They need to have a supplementary payment model like being able to rent and stream new movies for an additional one-off payment.
It might never end up being the case that all content is available on all hardware like internet content is. Service providers aren't accidentally locking down content, that's their unique selling point. It's why console games get locked to consoles. I would say it's why Apple likes to use Lightning over USB on iOS devices too because it means exclusive peripherals. Vendor lock-in is very important to company survival and if the cable companies gave up their content lock-in, they'd make less money.
The content creators ultimately decide what's to happen. If they get a platform with a large userbase where they can dictate their earnings and global reach then it will sort itself out. It's slow-going because of the catch-22 where viewers don't want the product without content and content creators don't want to put their content on it without viewers. Apple's success in mobile devices can help out a lot.
They could bundle something like iBooks in iOS for movies but it would have to behave differently than the iTunes movie store. It would almost have to behave like Netflix but it's the payment model that needs sorted. Getting people to pay for content is the big problem for all kinds of media. People don't want to pay for books, movies, music upfront any more. Musicians make more from concerts, movies make more from cinema viewings because people are paying for something tangible. Internet access is an essential so paying a higher subscription to get the content is ok. Communication is essential so paying a higher subscription to get an iPhone is ok. Besides internet access, what can you offer to convince people to pay a high subscription for video content?
And TVs do not seem to be a high margin product and a hassle.
The main benefit is that selling a TV makes that product the UI for everything else, which gives some control but inevitably you end up with a small portion of the market.
That SJ was that sick at the time was never revealed before. I predict some douchebag will file a class action lawsuit in the name of protecting share holders.
For many years, we were considered to have the best tv in the world, even though it’s always been dire in the 21st century. Many of the best shows come from the US, now, though.
What I remember from my travels to London starting in 1986, was just a few channels with one of them playing an incredibly bad variety show, one with a four-hour snooker tournament and one playing ancient bad U.S. TV. But I'll grant you that overall, BBC News is far better than anything produced in the U.S., even PBS (and NPR on the radio).
I know you said in an earlier post that you didn't like TV and while 90% of it is incredible time-wasting junk, there's also much fantastic TV today, with high production values and scripts & drama that is far better than most movies, which are mostly comic book superheroes, remakes and sequels. That's a big reversal from how it was some decades ago.
When I was kid growing up in the 50's and 60's, while we had a TV in the living room that was on almost all the time, I pretty much ignored it, except for movies. When people talk about the junky shows of that time, I find that I didn't watch the shows they're talking about. Once music came into my life, I barely watched TV at all. When I got married in the 1970's, we only had TV in the bedroom and music was still much bigger in our lives. In subsequent years, there were some years when I didn't even own a TV. But I have to admit, I'm watching more TV now than I ever have. The best shows are really very good. It's the movies that I hardly go to any more and I probably used to see at least 30 films a year.
That SJ was that sick at the time was never revealed before. I predict some douchebag will file a class action lawsuit in the name of protecting share holders.
There was some talk about this at the time it was revealed that he was that sick.
But how did that hurt shareholders? Assuming an investor who didn't know Jobs was that ill, the stock would have been over-priced. But it's not like it crashed after Jobs passed away - aside from dips here and there, the stock has been on an almost constant upwards trajectory since that time and even today, with the market and Apple stock down a bit, it's still at the pre-split equivalent of $924 a share. The stock was at $40 a year before Steve passed away. I don't think anyone is suing anybody. They would look like idiots if they did.
Actually, Jobs jumped in front of the transplant line, instead of taking his colleague's offer. Which created a weird conundrum from what I read. The person that was in front of him could have had that transplant instead.
Tim Cook isn't offering anyone else that donation. So someone died when he/she may not have had to.
I definitely would. I've known him for 6+ years, met his wife and daughters, he is a good guy. I would want his family to have him for as long as possible.
I also for sure would have donated my liver to Steve Jobs if I had the opportunity. It would have been an honor.
There are THOUSANDS of people that make greater contributions to human society but are lesser known because they don't pursue the profit motive. How about that teacher that donates her time to inner city children.. she needs a liver -- you honored to donate to her? (This scenario is fictitious to illustrate a point). Of course not.
Bottom line, Jobs leaped to the head of the line (hmmmm???) ahead of someone else that could have benefited, if he took his friend's offer. And all this bullpuckey about how "Steve didn't want to risk the future of apple by jeopardizing his hand picked leader." is absolutely obscene. Apple is so important that the person that should have benefited from the Job's "stolen" donation had to die? smh.
Clarification - he offered part of his liver. The liver is one of few organs that can regenerate.
I'm not denigrating Tim Cook's offer in any way, don't get me wrong. It's still a major operation and an incredible level of self-sacrifice. But Tim is correct, he would have been fine.
This one didn't have to. Steve himself admitted not acting aggressively when first diagnosed was a mistake. If he had, it's very likely he would still be with us today. Hopefully if nothing else his experience could serve as a warning to others in a similar position to not make the same mistake.
Clarification - he offered part of his liver. The liver is one of few organs that can regenerate.
I'm not denigrating Tim Cook's offer in any way, don't get me wrong. It's still a major operation and an incredible level of self-sacrifice. But Tim is correct, he would have been fine.
Maybe. Any surgery has risk and major surgery has major risks. And when livers fail, they fail pretty fast so having part of your liver removed puts the remainder of your liver under big-time stress that can cause permanent damage, even though it can regenerate. Because of some drugs that I take, I have to have my liver checked every four months or so. The reason why it has to be checked so often is because of the speed at which the liver can fail.
So don't underplay this. Offering someone a piece of your liver is a very big deal. I have to say that if an ex-girlfriend of mine needed a piece of my liver, I'm not sure I'd make the sacrifice - at the very least I'd have to give it a lot of thought.
Cook's offer demonstrates just how much of a wonderful human being the guy is. And I think that Steve's rejection of the idea was also the right thing to do, although I suspect that he knew that another transplant wouldn't have helped (assuming that this was after the first transplant).
I didn't think I was - as I also said in my post, I'm not denigrating his offer and also acknowledging it's a huge personal sacrifice.
The point I was trying to make is he wasn't offering to trade his life for Steve's as some seem to think. Hope that clarified my position sufficiently.
Comments
Really? Why don't a lot of people do it then? Why is there such a long waiting list?
Apple TV has been a non-starter in the UK since its inception, due to the lack of support for the main broadcasters.
It supports iTunes and Netflix content. That's worth the £59 alone.
Because you still have to be compatible with the recipient and if your in a backward country like the USA you'd need a ton of cash.
What are you talking about? Are you trying to tell me that watching a Pioneer Kuro is no better an experience than watching a Sony Bravia? Pull the other one.
And because people do not renew their TVs that often is not a good reason not to make one. You have to assume Apple has bigger goals than that regarding products. They are about making the best product and there are no good smart TVs they're all junk with junk software. Making a TV is about taking 100% control of that experience and making it great, but this cannot be done without a solid gold tv show content deal. Without this Steve's 'go-to-market-strategy' is an impossibility.
Yes, they originally had Alta Vista, then went with Google:
http://www.google.com/googlefriends/alert2_2000.html
"We are also very pleased to announce that Google will now provide the default search service for Yahoo! Our search engine will now complement Yahoo's Web directory and navigational guide."
but they switched to Bing in 2009:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8174763.stm
"Microsoft's Bing search engine will power the Yahoo website and Yahoo will in turn become the advertising sales team for Microsoft's online offering."
Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo in 2008 for $47.5b but were turned down. That's interesting because their market cap was half what it is now. They were obviously aware that their assets were worth more.
They are now sitting on $60b of assets ($30-40b being the Alibaba investment). They're going to spin off that investment first and give their shareholders the shares in it so they can retain shares in Yahoo and sell off shares in Alibaba to get the profit from that. Once that happens, Yahoo will likely become a much cheaper acquisition target. They don't have much unique about them given that they use other search engines but they have 300m email users, which counts for something. It might not count for much to Apple if those people already have Apple accounts.
Without their Alibaba assets, I could see it being a sub-$10b acquisition. They could help iAd and maybe some of their cloud services. It makes more sense for Microsoft, Facebook or Google to buy them than Apple.
I don't get the need to denigrate people over difficult decisions like this and to label a selfless act as selfish just because it put the interests of his friend ahead of his family is absurd. Liver donation is low-risk but not zero-risk, people have died from it:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/health-wellness/2014/02/02/death-living-liver-donor-calamity-for-two-families-and-lahey/q9iRF9nHyQdewWjvlTgmRI/story.html
and it means having a huge scar over your stomach which might not heal completely:
http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/young-ont-woman-donates-most-of-liver-to-dying-neighbour-1.1650591
Tim would have been in his late 40s/early 50s. He might have suffered worse side-effects than someone in his 20s. Steve eventually got a liver from a mid-20s organ donor who died in a car crash.
For someone who would spend all of Apple's cash to destroy Android, I doubt the company was his first priority in this decision. Brands and companies are just proxies for people. The people are what's important. Money doesn't come first, products don't come first, people always come first.
The weakness with Netflix is the low subscription price. Cable providers are raking in over 10x their revenue and about 30x their income because they are providing the cable connection to broadband. Netflix will struggle to get good exclusive content deals with their revenue. Their subscriber base is already higher than the cable companies but with a fraction of the income. There has to be more than just a single subscription. Content keeps getting removed from Netflix. They need to have a supplementary payment model like being able to rent and stream new movies for an additional one-off payment.
It might never end up being the case that all content is available on all hardware like internet content is. Service providers aren't accidentally locking down content, that's their unique selling point. It's why console games get locked to consoles. I would say it's why Apple likes to use Lightning over USB on iOS devices too because it means exclusive peripherals. Vendor lock-in is very important to company survival and if the cable companies gave up their content lock-in, they'd make less money.
The content creators ultimately decide what's to happen. If they get a platform with a large userbase where they can dictate their earnings and global reach then it will sort itself out. It's slow-going because of the catch-22 where viewers don't want the product without content and content creators don't want to put their content on it without viewers. Apple's success in mobile devices can help out a lot.
They could bundle something like iBooks in iOS for movies but it would have to behave differently than the iTunes movie store. It would almost have to behave like Netflix but it's the payment model that needs sorted. Getting people to pay for content is the big problem for all kinds of media. People don't want to pay for books, movies, music upfront any more. Musicians make more from concerts, movies make more from cinema viewings because people are paying for something tangible. Internet access is an essential so paying a higher subscription to get the content is ok. Communication is essential so paying a higher subscription to get an iPhone is ok. Besides internet access, what can you offer to convince people to pay a high subscription for video content?
The main benefit is that selling a TV makes that product the UI for everything else, which gives some control but inevitably you end up with a small portion of the market.
My sentiments exactly. There's a reason why TVs have names like "idiot box." Chronic views sucks away time that's far better spent doing other things.
Better check for midichlorians.
With respect since we all know this:
"...there may have been a better chance of a better/longer outcome...."
Not trying to throw my comment in your face, but Cancer is relentless, and earlier detection, advanced treatments, greatly increase your "chances".
For many years, we were considered to have the best tv in the world, even though it’s always been dire in the 21st century. Many of the best shows come from the US, now, though.
What I remember from my travels to London starting in 1986, was just a few channels with one of them playing an incredibly bad variety show, one with a four-hour snooker tournament and one playing ancient bad U.S. TV. But I'll grant you that overall, BBC News is far better than anything produced in the U.S., even PBS (and NPR on the radio).
I know you said in an earlier post that you didn't like TV and while 90% of it is incredible time-wasting junk, there's also much fantastic TV today, with high production values and scripts & drama that is far better than most movies, which are mostly comic book superheroes, remakes and sequels. That's a big reversal from how it was some decades ago.
When I was kid growing up in the 50's and 60's, while we had a TV in the living room that was on almost all the time, I pretty much ignored it, except for movies. When people talk about the junky shows of that time, I find that I didn't watch the shows they're talking about. Once music came into my life, I barely watched TV at all. When I got married in the 1970's, we only had TV in the bedroom and music was still much bigger in our lives. In subsequent years, there were some years when I didn't even own a TV. But I have to admit, I'm watching more TV now than I ever have. The best shows are really very good. It's the movies that I hardly go to any more and I probably used to see at least 30 films a year.
That SJ was that sick at the time was never revealed before. I predict some douchebag will file a class action lawsuit in the name of protecting share holders.
There was some talk about this at the time it was revealed that he was that sick.
But how did that hurt shareholders? Assuming an investor who didn't know Jobs was that ill, the stock would have been over-priced. But it's not like it crashed after Jobs passed away - aside from dips here and there, the stock has been on an almost constant upwards trajectory since that time and even today, with the market and Apple stock down a bit, it's still at the pre-split equivalent of $924 a share. The stock was at $40 a year before Steve passed away. I don't think anyone is suing anybody. They would look like idiots if they did.
Tim Cook isn't offering anyone else that donation. So someone died when he/she may not have had to.
Save your BS for someone else.
I definitely would. I've known him for 6+ years, met his wife and daughters, he is a good guy. I would want his family to have him for as long as possible.
I also for sure would have donated my liver to Steve Jobs if I had the opportunity. It would have been an honor.
There are THOUSANDS of people that make greater contributions to human society but are lesser known because they don't pursue the profit motive. How about that teacher that donates her time to inner city children.. she needs a liver -- you honored to donate to her? (This scenario is fictitious to illustrate a point). Of course not.
Bottom line, Jobs leaped to the head of the line (hmmmm???) ahead of someone else that could have benefited, if he took his friend's offer. And all this bullpuckey about how "Steve didn't want to risk the future of apple by jeopardizing his hand picked leader." is absolutely obscene. Apple is so important that the person that should have benefited from the Job's "stolen" donation had to die? smh.
Clarification - he offered part of his liver. The liver is one of few organs that can regenerate.
I'm not denigrating Tim Cook's offer in any way, don't get me wrong. It's still a major operation and an incredible level of self-sacrifice. But Tim is correct, he would have been fine.
This one didn't have to. Steve himself admitted not acting aggressively when first diagnosed was a mistake. If he had, it's very likely he would still be with us today. Hopefully if nothing else his experience could serve as a warning to others in a similar position to not make the same mistake.
Please go back and read the quotes carefully. Tim Cook's life was never at risk here. And medical ethics would prevent it anyway if it was.
It’s surgery. Your life is always at risk.
Clarification - he offered part of his liver. The liver is one of few organs that can regenerate.
I'm not denigrating Tim Cook's offer in any way, don't get me wrong. It's still a major operation and an incredible level of self-sacrifice. But Tim is correct, he would have been fine.
Maybe. Any surgery has risk and major surgery has major risks. And when livers fail, they fail pretty fast so having part of your liver removed puts the remainder of your liver under big-time stress that can cause permanent damage, even though it can regenerate. Because of some drugs that I take, I have to have my liver checked every four months or so. The reason why it has to be checked so often is because of the speed at which the liver can fail.
So don't underplay this. Offering someone a piece of your liver is a very big deal. I have to say that if an ex-girlfriend of mine needed a piece of my liver, I'm not sure I'd make the sacrifice - at the very least I'd have to give it a lot of thought.
Cook's offer demonstrates just how much of a wonderful human being the guy is. And I think that Steve's rejection of the idea was also the right thing to do, although I suspect that he knew that another transplant wouldn't have helped (assuming that this was after the first transplant).
Fair enough - risk was probably not the word - danger of immediately ending, how about that.
I didn't think I was - as I also said in my post, I'm not denigrating his offer and also acknowledging it's a huge personal sacrifice.
The point I was trying to make is he wasn't offering to trade his life for Steve's as some seem to think. Hope that clarified my position sufficiently.