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Time snubs Steve Jobs

by on17 December 2009

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Not named man of the year


The
US IT press, which has a nasty habit of writing only good news about Steve Jobs, is aghast that Time didn't name the Apple CEO its “man of the year” for 2009.

There had been much speculation that Jobs was going to win after he made the editor's short list alongside President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, General Stanley McChrystal, Maine Senator Olympia Snowe, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, a gang of Somali pirates and a mob of Iranian protesters.

Unfortunately it depended on Apple fanboys being readers of Time magazine and giving him votes. Since this depended on Apple fanboys reading actual words rather than seeing nice icons, Jobs was doomed from the start. The readers gave him 86,729 votes, behind only the Iranian protesters and President Obama both of whom were about as useful as a chocolate teapot when it came to bringing about any real change.

The nomination of Jobs was a bit silly as he was only at work for six months this year. The rest of the time he was having a new liver installed. Since we last looked “surviving 2009” was not a qualification for the title “man of the year”. Managing editor Rick Stengel did his "reveal" on NBC's Today Show it was Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke who had been named Time Magazine's 2009 Person of the Year.

"Steve Jobs was an extraordinary guy, who influences our lives in all sorts of ways, but not person of the year," Stengel said. "Looking on the bright side, at least the ubiquitous Steve Jobs failed to win a gong, being beaten by a far more charismatic candidate - a banker no one's ever heard of."

Jobs was very nearly Time's 1982 Man of the Year, but Time decided to name the computer the Machine of the Year instead.
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