By Anna Valmero
INQUIRER.net

APPLE CEO Steve Jobs won’t be delivering the keynote in this year’s MacWorld event (January 5 to 9).

The iconic Apple CEO has recently confirmed the cause of his weight loss, disproving speculations that it was due to cancer.

In a letter, Jobs said everyone can relax and enjoy the MacWorld event, as he stressed that doctors have found that a hormone imbalance has been causing his continuous weight loss.

He wrote:

The remedy for this nutritional problem is relatively simple and straightforward, and I’ve already begun treatment. But, just like I didn’t lose this much weight and body mass in a week or a month, my doctors expect it will take me until late this Spring to regain it. I will continue as Apple’s CEO during my recovery.

He called for the Apple community to support him in his recovery.

To read his full letter, click here.

Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs is far from sick, as he launched the new line of iPODs, Agence France-Presse reports.

Excerpt:

Apple chief executive Steve Jobs on Tuesday unveiled new iPod models and iTunes stores upgrades for the coming holiday season as he brushed aside reports about his health.

Jobs kicked off a theatrical press event in downtown San Francisco by poking fun at persistent rumors about his health.

Let’s stop talking about the iPhone3G for a minute. Did you get a good look at Steve Jobs at the WWDC Keynote yesterday?

See the pic above: on the left, Steve at the keynote for iPhone 1.0 over a year ago, and on the right, at yesterday’s presentation. They say black mock turtlenecks really are slimming, but this is a bit much.

Ever since he came onstage yesterday at Moscone West, the web has been as much abuzz about Mr. Jobs and how frighteningly thin he’s become since we last saw him as much as the new iPhone itself. Google his name today and you’ll likely get news items like this at the top of the search list.

Jobs came out in 2003 to disclose his ongoing battle with a rare form of pancreatic cancer, which has since been successfully treated, or so he says. It’s hard to tell because, as we all know, Apple and Steve Jobs seem pretty good at keeping secrets.

If something’s amiss with The Steve, it’ll have tremendous impact on the future and direction of Apple, because face it—the man is Apple. More than any other company in recent history, multi-billion dollar Apple Inc. is the one whose fate is most intimately intertwined with the vision of its leader. Let’s hope that he’s just been spending too much time with his Wii Fit balance board thing.

Seriously though, let’s pray that things are all right for Steve Jobs.

Video-on-Demand from the Apple site here. Quicktime required.

UPDATE: Now available as a free 1.18gb video podcast download from the iTunes Store.

Non-Filipino readers might find this post’s title odd, but it’s just Taglish for “I’m mobile”, which for this blogger is a clumsy play on the rumored new name for Apple’s .Mac service (and for the purposes of this blog will be referred to as DotMac, to retain the sanity of my word processor’s autocorrect feature.) It’s also a play on the current and more-than-annoying marketing campaign of local telecom provider Smart Communications called “Me na Me” presently irritating us silly here in Manila for their Smart Buddy service.

Ok. So there I go ruining the whole structure of the post just so I could have my silly title. Let’s just have it out then: According to rumors, Apple seems to be set on renaming their DotMac service, that US$99 one-year thing where you get a paltry amount of online storage and a snotty email address that ends in “mac.com” (and some other stuff), to Mobile Me. Ugh.

Dunno about you, but the fact that you can get everything DotMac is offering for free elsewhere online seems to me a testament to the lengths fanboys will go to for their mothership. (Full disclosure: I used to be suckered into this thing too, and had a DotMac account for three years or so until I wised up and saved my money instead to buy more useful things like food. And beer.) But apparently it may be time to come back to the fold.

According to many archived reports, Apple trademarked the name Mobile Mac on Jan. 5, 2006, and while much was made of it at the time as Apple folk are wont to do, nothing happened and people forgot about it. Now though, people poking through the code of the recently released 10.5.3 update of Leopard have come across considerable evidence that Apple is finally going to use the two-year-old name, presumably after the relaunching announcement to be made at Steve Jobs’ WWDC keynote on June 9.

A rose by any other name, blah blah. What’s more important is what new stuff it will offer for the hundred bucks (or however much they’ll be charging for it), and right now all we can do is make educated guesses. Obviously it will tie in with the new 3G iPhone and include stuff like push email, wireless syncing and things Blackberry fans have been enjoying for years. We’ll just have to add Mobile Me to our list of things to wait for during the keynote. If it had really useful features, I wouldn’t be averse to signing back up again and resurrecting my old DotMac address.

Which also means most of us renegade iPhone users will have to formally sign up with Globe Telecom when it finally releases the phone for my country (sometime in September, if rumors are to be believed). Obviously my non-3G first-gen kracked-and-jailbroken iPhone won’t do, so I’ll have to pony up for the new one. Life is hard. Ah, well.

(By the way, is it just me, or does Mobile Me really sound like an embarrasingly jejune name for an Apple service? It even sounds …Microsoftian, like something Gates and Ballmer might’ve thought up. Sheesh.)

[Box art mock-up via TUAW]