Health fears as Steve Jobs skips Macworld

Gasps of horror among techies: Apple has announced that its iconic chief executive Steve Jobs (pictured) will not be giving the keynote address at this January's annual Macworld jamboree, reigniting speculation about the computer genius's health.

Macworld without Jobs is almost unthinkable: this is the annual San Francisco event at which Jobs, dressed in trademark jeans and black turtleneck, has introduced Apple devotees to his team's latest invention, such as the iPhone in 2007, guaranteeing worldwide publicity and sales. As Time magazine commented, the announcement "was about as shocking as hearing that Barack Obama would be skipping the Inauguration and sending Joe Biden in his stead".

There have been fears about Jobs's health ever since an operation in 2004 to remove a rare form of pancreatic cancer. Last summer, he appeared thin and emaciated at an Apple event, raising worries that he had suffered a setback. In September, he did his best to laugh off the health scare - and the subsequent gaffe when Bloomberg mistakenly published his obituary online - appearing on stage in front of a giant screen that displayed the words: "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated".

But when Apple spokesman Steve Dowling made the Macworld announcement yesterday, he deflected all questions about Jobs's health. He announced only that the January keynote address would be given instead by Apple's marketing boss Phillip Schiller and that - more gasps - this would actually be Apple's last ever Macworld event. The company was scaling back on trade shows because they were "no longer relevant" now that Apple can reach its customers through its retail outlets and its online Apple Store.

Schiller has been mooted as a possible successor to Jobs, but as The First Post's tech correspondent Linton Chiswick commented at the time of the last health scare, neither Schiller nor chief operating officer Tim Cook, another contender for the crown, have "anything like Jobs's credibility or charisma - particularly in the eyes of the zealous legions of Apple evangelists who adore the man as much as the product."

Shares in Apple fell nearly three per cent yesterday following the news that Jobs would not be at Macworld. As Chiswick said, "The problem is that an Apple without Steve Jobs is almost unimaginable."