An article by Peter Burrows on BusinessWeek today poses the question: “Is Steve Jobs Untouchable?” This, of course, relating to the recent and ongoing stock option scandal at Apple. The story notes that an internal inquiry has cleared Jobs of an wrongdoing. “In Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs is admired for many things: his storybook resuscitation of Apple Computer, his billion-dollar-plus fortune, his rock star status as the driving force behind iconic products such as the iPod. Near the top of the list is Jobs’s famed ability to spin what admiring techies refer to as a “reality distortion field” to win consumers over to the Apple view of the world. But will it work with government regulators? As Jobs prepares to wow the masses once again with his keynote at the annual Macworld trade show on Jan. 9, skepticism abounds among options experts, as well as techies, that the Apple chief executive is totally in the clear over his role in resetting start dates for company stock options.”
