I have asked Tim Cook to be responsible for Apple’s day to day operations, and I know he and the rest of the executive management team will do a great job. As CEO, I plan to remain involved in major strategic decisions while I am out. Our board of directors fully supports this plan.I look forward to seeing all of you this summer.

However, Jobs could be facing surgery to remove his pancreas, according to Bloomberg News.

Is that fact or speculation? The story is apparently based on quotes from an Australian surgeon who hasn’t treated Jobs.

“Jobs had a procedure similar to a Whipple operation, which involves removing parts of the pancreas, bile duct and small intestine,” it says, going on:

“A potential side effect of this procedure is that the organ has to be removed to prevent pancreatic leak, and the patient has to be kept alive with insulin to regulate blood sugar, said Robert Thomas, head of surgery at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne.

” ‘You might have to take the rest of the pancreas out,’ said Thomas, 66, who first performed the Whipple procedure more than 20 years ago. ‘You’re on significant doses of insulin, and it’s not easy to manage. The person has the risk of severe diabetes’.”

No one wishes Jobs anything but the best of health. However, Apple is Jobs and Jobs is Apple and without him, it’s liable to become just another company, sinking into the relative obscurity it enjoyed before his marketing and PR genius pushed it into the limelight.

Is he seriously ill, or isn’t he? – shareholders and others who rely on the company must be wondering.  Is he facing another operation? Will he eventually resume his position at the head of the company? Or is his ‘leave of absence’  a prelude to another announcement that his continuing health will relegate him to the sidelines?

Meanwhile, “What they have done is the extraordinary accomplishment of coming out with a press release that is more opaque than the last one,” Bloomberg News has Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, associate dean of the Yale University School of Management, saying.

“They have now surrendered their credibility.”