Tonight:
4°c
At the end of a positively fatal month for famous Americans, things are looking up for Steve Jobs. For one thing, he's back to work.
Well, he probably is. Jobs was reliably spotted at Apple's Cupertino head offices bang on the date the company said he'd return after his medical leave of absence.
That absence, of course, was billed as allowing him to correct a "hormone imbalance" but turned out to involve a major organ transplant.
Apple's PR people say Jobs will only be in the office "a few days a week". So maybe he's still not completely recovered. But then who says you have to be in the office all the time to be effective. As usual with Apple, the real answer is "who knows".
What's clear is that the market's been pretty happy about how things were run while Jobs was out. Apple's stock has risen from $94 on the day he announced his leave in January to over $140 this week, handily beating the Nasdaq and S&P by wide margins.
Does that mean Apple would be just the same without Jobs? Local sentiment says no. But forcing such a famously hands-on leader to let others run the day-to-day show has us almost believing that Apple really could, when the time comes, survive just fine without him.
Meanwhile, Apple's new 3G S iPhone has bought it valuable breathing room in the increasingly competitive smartphone market. Consumer Reports (the American Which?) has just rated the 3G S and the original 3G iPhone the top two smartphones in the US and insider Valley blog VentureBeat reports that Apple's having a hard time keeping either phone in stock.
Even Jobs' epic housing woes appear to be abating. A local VC has just signed a deal with Jobs to take his crumbling but historic house in leafy Woodside off his hands. Once the pair get the old building moved to a new site, Jobs will be able to build his dream home at last.
It seems Tesla motors will receive the government loan for which it has been desperately waiting. The local car company gets $465 million (£282 million) to build its more affordable (but still pricy) Model S sedan in the US, and to manufacture electric powertrains. Without the loan, Tesla was looking vulnerable. Now we're going to have to take the company just a bit more seriously.
Facebook has hired its new chief financial officer, David Ebersman, former CFO of Bay Area biotech giant Genentech, which was bought earlier in the year by Roche for $46.8 billion. Does that mean the countdown to a Facebook IPO has started?
