Techmeme: Can Apple's Stock Withstand the Absence of Steve Jobs? (Mathew Ingram/GigaOM)

1:15 PM ET, January 17, 2011

Top Items:

Apple Media Advisory — Apple CEO Steve Jobs today sent the following email to all Apple employees: — Team, — At my request, the board of directors has granted me a medical leave of absence so I can focus on my health. I will continue as CEO and be involved in major strategic decisions for the company.

SAI: Silicon Alley Insider:

STEVE JOBS GOES ON MEDICAL LEAVE OF ABSENCE — Apple CEO Steve Jobs is going on a medical leave, the company announced. — “At my request, the board of directors has granted me a medical leave of absence so I can focus on my health,” Jobs said in an email to Apple employees.

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Can Apple's Stock Withstand the Absence of Steve Jobs? — Steve Jobs announced on Monday that he is taking another leave of absence from the company — of unspecified length — to deal with his health. Although he will remain CEO, Apple's chief operating officer Tim Cook will be running things in Jobs' absence.

Discussion: 9 to 5 Mac, Digits and SiliconANGLE

Larry Dignan / Between the Lines Blog:

Apple's Jobs takes medical leave, remains CEO; Succession planning in focus — Cook takes over day to day as CEO Jobs takes medical leave. — Apple said Monday that CEO Steve Jobs is taking a medical leave to focus on his health. He will remain CEO. — As Jobs takes his leave …

Discussion: paidContent, GigaOM and App Advice

John Paczkowski / Digital Daily:
Apple Shares Down Nearly 8 Percent in Frankfurt on News of Jobs's Medical Leave

Discussion: Forbes, Cult of Mac and Electricpig.co.uk

Jonathan S. Geller / BGR:
Could Steve Jobs' leave of absence be more serious this time around?

Discussion: SAI

Aaron Lucchetti / Wall Street Journal:

Goldman to Offer Facebook Shares Only to Non-U.S. Clients — Goldman Sachs Group Inc. decided to exclude U.S. clients from the private offering of as much as $1.5 billion in shares of social-networking company Facebook Inc., citing “intense media attention.”

Discussion: SAI and New York Times

Daniel Eran Dilger / AppleInsider:

Apple expected to pack ultrafast, dual core SGX543 graphics into iPad 2, iPhone 5 — Apple's next generation iPad and iPhone, both due the first half of this year, will pack a new version of the company's custom A4 chip, with dual, faster graphics cores capable of supporting a Retina Display iPad …

Arn / MacRumors:

iPad 2 LCD for Sale Already? iPad 2 to Include Vibrating Motor? — iPhone and iPad parts vendors have been a big source of leaks for Apple's upcoming devices. MacRumors reader @Frafoso has found a couple of very interesting parts on the website of GlobalDirectParts.

Discussion: AppleInsider, The Apple Core Blog, The Tech Report, 9 to 5 Mac, iLounge, SlashGear, Fonehome.co.uk, MacDailyNews, Softpedia News, VG247, TUAW, TiPb, PhoneReport v2.0, Phones Review, PadGadget, MacStories, iThinkDifferent and Go Rumors

Tarmo Virki / Reuters:

Nokia pulls plug on free music in most markets — (Reuters) - The world's top cellphone maker, Nokia, is ending its bundling of free music downloads with cellphones in 27 countries, where it has gained little traction since its 2008 launch. — Nokia will continue to sell phones …

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:

Blog Fight Rules Of Engagement — Blog fights happen. Sometimes for attention, but most of the time because someone is really pissed off about something. And don't count out big media, they jump right in too when they feel it. — No one's ever written down any rules for blog fights that I know of.

Discussion: New York Times and Peter O'Kelly's Reality Check, more at Mediagazer »

Joshua Topolsky:
Dear Michael Arrington

Discussion: SAI, Thanks:keithdsouza

Jay Yarow / SAI: Silicon Alley Insider:
AOL'S CIVIL WAR CONTINUES: Mike Arrington Tears Into Engadget Again

Discussion: Pluggd.in

USA Today:

Maria Bartiromo interviews Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer — A: If you want to know where is the consumer heat, the things that people want to get their hands on, it's Xbox and Xbox Kinect. I think about my own family. My wife used to say, “No, no, that's the machine the boys use,” and now she says, “Yeah, I want to go watch movies.

Discussion: TechEye, New York Post, The Next Web, SlashGear, WPCentral.com, VG247, ITProPortal, IGN Xbox 360 and Pocket-lint

Horace Dediu / asymco:

More than 60 apps have been downloaded for every iOS device sold — The iTunes App Store is about to reach 10 billion downloads. That makes this a good time to revisit app growth metrics and compare them with the other digital media store that we have data for: the iTunes Music Store.

Horace Dediu / asymco:
iTunes has paid over $2 billion to app developers and $12 billion to record labels

Discussion: Fortune

Ryan Radia / Ars Technica:

Why you should always encrypt your smartphone — Last week, California's Supreme Court reached a controversial 5-2 decision in People v. Diaz (PDF), holding that police officers may lawfully search mobile phones found on arrested individuals' persons without first obtaining a search warrant.

Discussion: Technology Liberation Front and textually.org

Jeremy W. Peters / New York Times:

For Magazines, a Bitter Pill in iPad — The frustration that the country's magazine and newspaper publishers feel toward Apple can sound a lot like a variation on the old relationship gripe, “can't live with 'em, may get left behind without 'em.” — Since Apple introduced the iPad last year …

Discussion: AppleInsider, The Business Insider, 606 Tech Forums and Beet.TV, more at Mediagazer »

MG Siegler / TechCrunch:

Awards In Hand, The Social Network Filmmakers Heap Praise On Zuckerberg — One of the standout scenes at in The Social Network happens in the first five minutes of the movie. Erica Albright (Rooney Mara) is sitting in a bar with boyfriend Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) when she says the following to him:

Discussion: GigaOM and NBC Los Angeles, more at Mediagazer »

Gregg Kilday / Hollywood Reporter:
‘Social Network’ Wins Best Picture, Three Other Golden Globes

Discussion: New York Times, Mashable, TechCrunch, MTV Newsroom and SAI

BBC:

Wikileaks given data on Swiss bank accounts — Mr Elmer said he took responsibility for the data he was handing over to Wikileaks — A former Swiss banker has passed on data containing account details of 2,000 prominent people to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

Discussion: Reuters, New York Times, Telegraph, This Just In, The Register, Mashable!, Agence France Presse and The Next Web

Dave McClure / 500 Startups:

Top 10 Tech Investing Trends For 2011 — I bring you the top 10 tech trends for 2011: 1. (Way too many) Groupons, social games and photo-sharing apps Unimaginative VCs — which is to say, all of us — tend to start the new year off throwing good money after bad on last year's tired and expired ideas.

Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft Blog:

Microsoft makes CRM Online 2011 available worldwide — Microsoft is making the latest version of its hosted CRM offering available worldwide on January 17, three days ahead of the official “global launch” of its CRM 2011 product family. — Prior releases of Dynamics CRM were available only in North America.

Discussion: Microsoft, Seattle Blogs, eWeek, Computerworld, CNET News and MSDN Blogs

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