Steve Jobs gets upgrade: now features 20 billion dollars
By Ryan Block 
posted March 26th 2007 6:43PM
posted March 26th 2007 6:43PM
posted March 26th 2007 6:43PM
A look back on popular stories from today in a specific year.
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
Your "Mac tax" dollars at work.
Can I come to dinner too?
He's cashing out? Somebody stop him! Nothing truly innovate has come out of apple in years. This five year status quo from Apple's R&D department is putting me to sleep.
Uhhh...The article says that that's how much Stevie is worth to Apple, i.e. how much Apple would lose, in stock prices, if Jobs left. The article makes it clear that Jobs isn't worth that much in real life. But who knows.
Yeah, Scooters right. The article talks about how much Jobs contributes to apples Market Cap...Not what hes worth
.... and how much does he donate some of this to charity?
That's the point I was going to make. While Gates is helping charities out left and right, Jobs is sitting back and buying more tight fitting jeans, and paying more and more to cover up the fact that he has an illegitimate son.
Losers. Learn to read before spouting off your predictable anti-Apple bullshit. Yeah, Jobs is an arrogant prick. And Gates is an angelic loverboy. They're all the same. Get over yourselves.
Actually Gates is a pretty famous humanitarian.
Lets see you donate half your worth to charity.
Do you have an inferiority complex or something?
I never mentioned Gates in my comment clown. Typical SJ cult member.
WHAT? Who read JUST the headline and then hurried along to blog about it? Ryan Block. This is some real lousy blogging. Like two sentences after the headline it clearly states he's NOT "up from his previous estimated net worth from between 3-6 billion", to quote Ryan Block, but the 20 billions is what he's worth to Apple.
When people shout about how 'humanitarian' they are, I have to question their motives - is it just self-serving?
Surely Gates (or anyone else) could donate billions to charity without trying to gain karma by telling everyone what they're doing.
I want to know who made the graphic - or where it was found?!
My God... thanks, Scooter. This is one of the worst interpretations of an article I've come across. I was going to suggest that Ryan take a simple finance class, but, maybe even just reading class would help. Big difference between one's value to the company, and one's net worth.
Personally I have no opinion on Steve Jobs but aside from the obvious mistake with regards to the valuation (I must ponder over how this happened considering that a) It has been in the news for some time and b) It states in the first LINE of the article quite clearly that it is with regards to Jobs' worth to Apple), I must say I am ever so slightly appalled that you consider it acceptable to make an unfounded allegation with regards to someone (Steve Jobs) committing fraud, yes it is crossed out but the intention is clear. Does someone who can't read an article really have any place in making baseless judgements and taking part in any form of journalism? Just remember that there are very good reasons as to why the media should remain neutral and the two words that spring to mind are fair and trial.
someone at engaget probably made it in 30 seconds, all they did was red out the background and type some new stuff on it
Wow! I see that its been said here before- but dear author Ryan Block, did you even read the article your stub links to!!!???? Or did you just write what must have been a witty run-on paragraph in your mind based on the headline only?
You've linked your story to a news.com.com article by Tom Krazit on CNet, a guy who covers tech stuff, but who didn't totally mess up the basic one-paragraph reporting as you did.
So I know you didn't read the original article in Barron's, but apparently you didn't even read the CNet piece by Tom Krazit!!!! Here's a hint, click the 'read' link right under the text of your own stub here on Engadget. (wow, this is ridiculous, I'm telling the author how to read the article he's supposedly referencing.)
The article says that Barron's estimates Steve Jobs is worth $16 billion to Apple's market capitalization- which is a totally out-of-the-air number to say that might much be lost in Apple's stock value if he left, based on stockholder reaction. (selling due to that being perceived as a bad thing) In the CNet stub, Tom Krazit goes on to quote a video featuring Andrew Bary where he says (verbally) it could be as much as $20 billion. Please e-mail me if you continue to have difficulty understanding these statements and how they are distinctly different from anything to do with Mr. Jobs' actual worth (i.e. the value of his stock in Apple and Disney plus other assets).
Even with his stock and other assets at present day share prices, I'm sorry to say his personal net worth is still much shy of $10 billion.
The statement that "While only Steve knows how much he's really worth" is also very misleading. Anyone with a little time and interest can figure this out very simply- the number of shares he currently has in Apple and Disney is public information, as is this data relating to all officers and large stake owners in all public traded companies in the U.S. Try yahoo finance...
Please, please, please... you are making me seriously question reading anything on Engadget anymore.
Depends why you read Engadget. I read it because it's funny and has hilarious comments.
All you Jobs-haters out there: go watch 1983 and 1984 keynotes addresses on YouTube. The most talked about Super Bowl commercial (to this day) and then worldwide Macintosh Introduction/Demo. If you don't realize the gravity of those moments (and it doesn't give you chills watching it) at least consider what YOU were/will be doing at that age? Probably nothing to do with shifting the path of technology for most of the modern world, I would guess. I don't care if he, or Apple, doesn't invent anything worthwhile ever again. He's made his mark. What's yours? Some stupid comment to a story… but seriously, tell me again how stupid Steve Jobs is? He’s taking me out on his Yacht this weekend; I might let him know what you think.
Oh really? And whats gonna happen on this Yacht? You gonna juggle his precious iBalls in your mouth?
Well before you get your knees dirty go watch the 1997 keynote where your beloved SJ is kissing Gates a$$. That should be entertaining for both you.
Haha. I thought I would point out that you made a spelling error on the sign. Not to be a douche or anything but when placing apostrophes after s you dont add a s. It would just be Steve Jobs' not Jobs's.
It's a personal preference, actually - both to add an s and to leave it as just an apostrophe are gramatically correct.
$20 billon and only wears turtle necks and tight jeans. Even I dress better than that
@Chris Murphy
"Haha. I thought I would point out that you made a spelling error on the sign. Not to be a douche or anything but when placing apostrophes after s you dont add a s. It would just be Steve Jobs' not Jobs's."
Actually, Jobs's is accepted by many as the correct form. Check out The Elements of Style =]
Doesn't matter who accepts it. It's wrong! You make a word ending with an s plural with an an apostrophe BUT NO S. At least he wasn't trying to make it plural, though; see that one alot!
Net worth for any executive of a large company - especially when you get into the billions range - is really meaningless. Sure, he might have stock worth 20,000,000,000, but try to cash that out and suddenly the stock is selling at pennies a share after you flood the market. 20 billion converts to - roughly - 210 million shares of Apple, and there's no way an large portion of that could be converted to liquid assets without Apple suffering a MAJOR stock price drop.
Ballin'!!!!
The sole reason I read this set of comments was to see who would (mistakenly) complain about the apostrophe-S on the end of "Jobs". I was 100% sure somebody would!
You only use an apostrophe without the "S" when the word is possessive AND plural. If we're talking about the Jobs family, for example, we'd say the Jobs' house. But if we're talking about something that is singular (and especially in the case of a formal name) it should be _'s_ on the end. And as the fanboys here will tell you, there's only ONE Steve Jobs!
ps: "alot" is not a word.
I love how people always play the "Gates gives to charity" card when talking about Jobs.
You don't know how much Jobs gives to charity. Just because Gates flaunts it, doesn't mean that everyone does. Jobs might give 80% of his income to charity, but do it all anonymously. Who knows?
Gates doesnt "flaunt" it. He sets up organizations, and dedicates the rest of his life to running organizations that give back to people that need it.
Promoting his organizations is better than promoting elitism and arrogance which is what Jobsy does.
Go play with your iPod.
You hardly sound the humble and dignified sort yourself.
Jobs did his part; he got the Apple I off the ground, he spearheaded first the Lisa, then the original Mac, the mouse, and the UI (which he licensed from Xerox), then NeXTStep from whence the web browser and Doom was born, and finally released an MP3 player that anyone could use. He's earned some kudos, don't you think?
That depends what kudos we're talking about here. He's a great business man. So if you want me to give him kudos for that lets meet over at the Forbes forum.
But he's not some kind of tech god that magically creates visionary gadgets. He doesn't get his hands dirty, he's not an engineer or programmer. He's a sales man. Thats it. He approves products that people wanna buy. Don't make it sound like he single handedly put all those technologies together.
If it wasn't for Wozniak he'd probably be managing a Wal-Mart somewhere.
It's not Bill versus Steve anymore- It's Jobs versus Ballmer.
I personally say...
Screw 'em. Go Torvalds!
It's not all about money anymore. And those that don't get that are getting pretty pissed off at the entire OSS movement. Did Steve, or did he not, through the chair?
And now for my signature thingy:
If anyone needs basic help getting a Linux system working, picking a distro, understanding OSS, or finding Open alternatives to closed source software packages, I'd be glad to help- ethana2@gmail.com
Also, if any OSS developers see this, I need help getting started with GTK+ and C++...
Gates isn't crowing out about how humanitarian he is or just trying to look good. I mean, with that much money, why would he have to give a darn about anyone else's opinion?
I'm just going to take a wild shot here and say that by being public, he's trying to grab some public attention on the topic and encourage more people to donate their time and effort to good causes.
Plus Gates didn't want to just drop all the money onto other charities. He wants to manage it himself, and set something up that will last far past his lifetime as well. It's difficult to dispute that he knows how to manage things and get good business results, even though I know someone's screaming about how he stole DOS.
Oh, and we know Stevie isn't chippin' in. Tax records can show a lot of things. The RED products seemed more about the publicity than donating to charity.
So, when will people start jumping on the "I hate steve jobs cuz he has become so rich" bandwagon?
Maybe he will start a world benefit so big that Bill Gates will want to give him all his dough to make the world a better place, just as Warren Buffet gave his money to Bill Gates.
Wikipedia reports that his net worth has risen to $20 billion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_jobs