Sick Steve Jobs takes a break at Apple

After months of concern about his gaunt appearance, and a flurry of speculation two weeks ago that he may even be at death's door, Steve Jobs (pictured), the charismatic chief executive of  Apple, announced on Wednesday that he will temporarily relinquish control of the computer company he co-founded in 1976 due to his medical condition being much "more complex" than he and his doctors had previously imagined.

The announcement, delivered by email to employees at the Apple campus in Cupertino, California, is likely to feed some of the worst fears of the company's fans and investors who have struggled to make sense of conflicting rumours about the health of Jobs, 53, since he was treated for pancreatic cancer in 2004.

As reported here, speculation about his health took off midway through 2008 when his gaunt appearance made it clear he was rapidly losing weight. And this intensified when he was unable to give his annual keynote speech at Apple's annual Macworld expo in San Francisco earlier this month, which led to him issuing a calming statement saying that he had been diagnosed with a rare hormone imbalance problem that was "relatively simple and straightforward" to deal with.

In yesterday's email, Jobs revealed that the day-to-day running of Apple would pass to its chief operating officer, Tim Cook, before addressing the issue of his health: "Unfortunately, the curiosity over my personal health continues to be a distraction not only for me and my family, but everyone else at Apple as well," he wrote. "In addition, during the past week I have learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought.
 
"In order to take myself out of the limelight and focus on my health, and to allow everyone at Apple to focus on delivering extraordinary products, I have decided to take a medical leave of absence until the end of June.”

Reuters reported that Apple’s share price dropped by 10 per cent on the announcement – and raised the possibility that investors might seek to sue Apple for failing to reveal Jobs’s true health status earlier.
 ·