In fact, it could be argued that public confirmation of Jobs’s health since his return to the company was truly the most significant announcement of the day. As Morgan Keegan analyst Tavis McCourt quipped in a research note issued after the event, “Aside from a lack of a camera on the iPod Touch, everything announced was generally in line with expectations, although it all tends to sound much more revolutionary when Steve Jobs is spinning the story. It was clearly a positive to see him back on stage.”

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster felt similarly: “There was some debate over whether Steve Jobs would deliver the presentation at [the] event,” he said in a note to clients. “He did, and we see this as a sign that he has returned to work at near-full capacity following his health-related leave of absence. We continue to believe he is the primary spokesman and active leader of Apple.”

Munster went on to note that the event was otherwise a bit of a disappointment. Certainly, the lack of a new iPod touch with a built-in video camera, which was viewed by many as almost a sure thing, was a bit of a letdown.

“We were expecting a new iPod touch model with a video camera, which Apple did not announce,” Munster said. “The lack of a camera may be due to last-minute quality issues, or it may also be a strategic decision to differentiate the nano from the touch, and the touch from the iPhone. Ultimately we see the lack of a camera in the touch as a move to push users toward the iPhone and drive purchases of multiple devices per customer by segmenting the product lines.”

Or to position the iPod touch as a truly competitive portable gaming device. Certainly, that’s what appeared to be going on yesterday as Apple (AAPL) brought out Ubisoft, Tapulous, Gameloft, and Electronic Arts (ERTS) in quick succession to demo their upcoming new games. And then, there were the data points. Consider these:

• 20 million iPod touches sold to date
• Over 100 million iTunes accounts
• Over 1.8 billion apps downloaded to date. Impressive given that Apple passed one billion apps downloaded just last April
• Over 75,000 apps available
• 21,000 of those 75,000 are games and entertainment apps

So nearly one third of all iPhone OS apps sold to date are games and entertainment apps. Clearly, Jobs was on to something when he told The Wall Street Journal in November 2008, “I think the iPhone and iPod touch may emerge as really viable devices in the mobile games market.”

People familiar with the matter tell Bloomberg that Apple’s handling of the matter remains under scrutiny and that company directors Art Levinson and Bill Campbell had been briefed by Jobs’s doctors on his medical condition at the time of the January disclosures, but little else.

Now, the path from “Steve is suffering from a common bug” to “a hormone imbalance has been robbing Steve of the proteins his body needs to be healthy” to “Steve has undergone a liver transplant” is obviously something of an eyebrow-raiser. But whether it was material to Apple’s business and therefore required disclosure isn’t clear. After all, Apple (AAPL) did just fine while Jobs was on sabbatical; the debut of new Macs, iPods and iPhones is testament to that. Beyond that, there’s this: Apple’s stock posted a 59 percent gain while he was away.

“The issue is not going to be whether they needed to disclose the medical records,” James Cox, a securities law professor at Duke University, told Bloomberg. “It’s going to be whether they monitored the disclosures about his health, in relation to investor expectations that Apple would continue to be led by Steven Jobs….[Apple] did fine. Do you need to say more than, ‘Our CEO has health problems and he’s out on leave?’ The question I think the SEC is looking at is whether it’s material.”

Could it also be the day after Palm rolls out its new Pre handset? The latest rumors suggest it is, positing June 7 as one of the release windows for the Pre and noting that the company is casting a viral video campaign slated to run through that month as well.

It’s an intriguing thought, but would Palm (PALM) really do such a thing? It seems doubtful. Certainly, debuting a handset as anxiously awaited as the Pre a day before Apple’s WWDC keynote would be a bold move that would generate no end of jawing in the tech media and beyond.

But only for about a day. Because 24 hours later all eyes and ears will shift to WWDC and they’ll be watching not just for the next iPhone but for this mysterious new tablet device we’ve been hearing about, as well and in who’s hands those devices may or may not debut. If Steve Jobs delivers the keynote and announces them, the media’s focus will be on his health, Apple’s future and these new devices. If he doesn’t, the focus will STILL be on his health, Apple’s future and these new devices.

So for Palm to launch the Pre on June 7 would be sheer lunacy. To do so would be to set itself up to have its most important product release in years washed away in a deluge of Apple (AAPL) coverage. Better to launch the device well in advance of the next iPhone’s expected arrival or after it than be subsumed in the iPhone/iTablet monomania that’s ramping up. WWDC is already sold out.

Oh, one last thing–an interesting side note. My last message to Palm’s PR head, Lynn Fox, was met with an out-of-office message explaining she’s away on vacation until May 11. Resting up for the big announcement, presumably, which–given her return date–may fall closer to the originally rumored May 17 drop date than thought.

Not according to Sweden’s Youth Care Foundation, which has just finished a report that pegs WoW as the single most dangerous game on the market and the one with the highest risk of addiction. “There is not a single case of game addiction that we have worked with in which World of Warcraft has not played a part,” hyperbolized the report’s author, Sven Rollenhagen. “It is the crack cocaine of the computer game world. Some will play it till they drop.”

And indeed, some will. Last year, a 15-year-old Swedish boy did just that after a 20-hour marathon. But it seems a bit heavy handed to tar WoW for the incident. It’s not as if the boy suffered a temporary state of full-blown paranoid psychosis or ended up in a red-light district tricking for game time. He passed out. Had his dealersparents stepped in, the incident might never have occurred. WoW does offer a pretty robust set of parental controls.

Beyond that, there is little else to report. To wit, this first-hand account of the event posted to the Apple Insider forums:

There’s really nothing ‘material’ to report–even the usual gadflies (especially Mr. Ehrlich, the dude who disses Al Gore, the unions, and ‘socialist’ shareholders) trotted out the same old stuff.

The big event seemed to be the motley crew’s rendition of Happy Birthday to the absent CEO S. Jobs. The tenor was slightly different in that non-executive members-of-the-board (Levinson & Campbell) fielded questions at the behest of Tim Cook.

To me, the fact that few, if any, analyst-style financial questions were proffered shows that shareholders have little to wonder about the business of the juggernaut. This year, there was no barrage of product strategy questions by the likes of Prince McLean, which never really get addressed, per regulation FD and Apple policy, except enigmatically by Steve.”

A few quick highlights from the earnings statement and investor call before the official release, appended below.

• Apple sold 22.7 million iPods and 4.4 million iPhones during the quarter.
• It shipped 2.5 million Macs.
• Looking ahead to the second fiscal quarter of 2009, the company expects revenue in the range of about $7.6 billion to $8 billion.
• The release includes no mention of Jobs’s health.

During a call to discuss Apple’s latest earnings, Steve Jobs and his health were top of mind. Indeed, the first question of the call centered around this very issue:

Q: Well, since I’m going first, I guess I’ll ask how is Steve and hope he’s doing well. And I just wanted to know how, if you’ll run the company differently with Tim or the same and if need be, if Tim — do you feel like you would be the likely candidate if the worst case scenario were to happen if Steve was unable to return.”

Apple COO Tim Cook: There is an extraordinary depth and breadth in Apple’s executive team. And it leads over 35,000 wicked smart people. We believe we’re on the face of earth to make great products, and that’s not changing. We believe in simple not complex. We believe in deep collaboration. We have the self-honesty to admit when we’re wrong. These values are so embedded in the company that we will do extremely well regardless of who has the CEO Job. I strongly believe that Apple is doing the best work in its history.

Also the focus of some discussion the possibility of an Apple netbook. Is Apple considering entering the sub-$500 netbook market? Cook says not right now. “We’re watching that space, but from our point of view, the products are based on hardware that’s not very powerful, software that’s not that good and cramped displays. We don’t think that people are going to be pleased with that. It’s a category we watch and we have some ideas for it, but we think the products there right now are inferior.”

Here’s the official release:

Apple Reports First Quarter Results
Best Quarterly Revenue and Earnings in Apple History
iPod Sales Set New Record

“Even in these economically challenging times, we are incredibly pleased to report our best quarterly revenue and earnings in Apple history—surpassing $10 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time ever,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO.

Clearly, shaken investors are trying to divine just what, exactly, Jobs means by “complex,” which could mean anything from more rest and time with family to surgery, IV meds or whatever.

Sounds like Jobs is doing the right thing for himself, his family and the company. But all anyone can do is hope he gets well.

Team,
I am sure all of you saw my letter last week sharing something very personal with the Apple community. Unfortunately, the curiosity over my personal health continues to be a distraction not only for me and my family, but everyone else at Apple as well. In addition, during the past week I have learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought.

Steve

Coming as it does after Jobs’s disclosure last week that he had a hormone deficiency that had caused him to dramatically lose weight, this is very worrisome news for Apple and its shareholders.

As I noted that day, the timing of the rumor seemed a bit suspicious. With little in the way of news during the holiday week, Jobs’s decision to bail on the Macworld keynote issue still fresh in our minds and his health an obvious shareholder concern, it seemed a bit like an AAPL manipulator’s perfect storm.

Apparently, there may be a bit more to that armchair theory than I thought. Over at Traderhood, writers with far more stock analysis acumen than I, suggest that Apple shares were poised for a huge breakout in price the afternoon of Dec. 30, bolstered by a general upward trend in the market and their own ascending triangle (click on chart below) when they very suspiciously had the wind knocked out of them. “Amazingly at the very point where AAPL’s spike at the tip of the ascending triangle should happen, rumor was introduced and killed the setup completely,” Traderhood blogger Conschmillo explains. “I mean you can have things to happen unexpectedly. It happens all the time, it is a stock market, but to have them placed this [precisely] when everything else is taking off, AAPL included, makes me believe, there is more than meets the eye to why AAPL price is down. If this rumor was not introduced, AAPL would be somewhere around $93.”

So, a favorable technical set-up was thwarted at the moment the odds favored the opposite happening. Coincidence?

UPDATE: Apparently, it was a coincidence. Brian Lam, Editorial Director of Gizmodo, which published the rumor, tells me the site was tipped off well before Dec. 30.

[Image credit: Tin foil hat courtesy Patrick Daley]

(Thanks Barry )