Steve Jobs is a finalist for Time's Person of the Year

Seth Weintraub
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December 14, 2009
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Time's finalists for Person of the Year 2009 include Apple's CEO Steve Jobs.  Jobs won Fortune's CEO of the Decade earlier this year and is the lone business leader on this year's Time list.  Here's their 'thinking':

Pro: Named CEO of the Decade by Fortune in November, Jobs has continued to show the rest of the consumer technology world how it's done. His iPhone App Store surpassed 1 billion downloads, proving that people will still pay for certain kinds of content, and a new version of the iPhone and its software kept improving on the original.

Con: Jobs spent the first six months of the year away from the daily management of Apple to deal with his health problems, including undergoing a successful liver transplant. While consumers continue to snap up the iPhone and its apps, more and more customers in major cities are griping about the poor wireless coverage that comes with it from AT&T. What's more, new rival smartphones like the Google Android devices and Palm Pre have started to give discerning techies a reason to at least consider switching from the iPhone.

Ironically, they mention that AT&T's coverage is a 'con' to voting Jobs in (like he can help that - or coming back from a liver transplant?!).  In fact, here's a fantastic FakeSteve post from Friday that illustrates both why Jobs should be a contender and why AT&T's mess isn't his fault.

At this writing, Jobs is currently in 3rd place in the reader voting behind the very significant Iran Protesters and Barack Obama (last year's winner).  Someone call 4Chan?

 

Comments (4)

Bees (not verified) | December 14, 2009 - 7:47am

Nothing against Jobs or what he and Apple accomplished this year, but the Iranian protests were simply massive in both scale and significance.

Erik (not verified) | December 14, 2009 - 7:50am

I can understand AT&T as a negative towards jobs. As the CEO he did not have to limit the device in an exclusivity contract, and then renew it amongst such disdain towards the carrier. And I don't think they are actually saying that his recovery from the liver transplant is the issue, but the fact that to be named person of the year when you were not in full capacity for most of that year seems a little of kilter. However, the flip of that would be that he accomplished more in less time to even be in contention. Not saying I agree with the reasoning, just that I understand why they would list them.

Violian (not verified) | December 14, 2009 - 10:43am

Jobs is a great leader. I think their Cons has its merits though. Yes, it is ATT's fault like the person above is saying, but being that Apple has so much power in the tech industry, and that Jobs is so influential, Jobs should've took (more) action on ATT for not being able to fulfil their part of the Apple experience.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | December 14, 2009 - 11:20am

Obama's got it in the bag...