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Steve Jobs' appearance and an earnings miss buzz Wall Street

The leadership of Steve Jobs helped Apple become more than an iconic computer maker, by shifting it to a hugely profitable electronics business.

Joined at the cord, the iPod and iTunes turned Apple into a big money making machine, as fat margins around the iPod bulked up the bottom line. Apple's forays into new lines of laptops and the rollout of a revamped OS X built up power in the PC market.

Much of the credit goes to Jobs, the prodigal leader who returned to pull Apple out of its malaise. A different malaise concerns followers of Jobs, a pancreatic cancer survivor, and worries about the scarily thin technology icon have Wall Street concerned.

There's no mistaking the dramatic change in Jobs' physical appearance, characterized by weight loss that Apple spokespeople attribute to an unnamed illness and treatment plan, the New York Post said. His change became so pronounced that his faux alter ego, Fake Steve Jobs (aka writer Dan Lyons), retired from blogging from the Jobs' perspective over it.

While the loss of an edgy humor blog isn't a great thing, it's a minuscule drop in the oceans of economic profitability, where big ships pilot along Wall Street. They see Apple's value tied to the mercurial Jobs and want to know more about his health.

Apple isn't playing along, which may explain why shares of the company fell as Apple reported earnings today that fell a nickel short of analyst expectations of $1.24 per share. That ended a streak of eight quarters of Apple beating the Street's guesswork.

Analysts would rather not guess about Jobs' health, but despite his position atop Apple he is still a private citizen entitled to healthcare information protection like anyone else. If he really is suffering a relapse of that prior illness, Apple may try to keep that quiet for as long as possible, lest bad news triggers a selloff of the stock.