Steve Jobs won't attend Apple's shareholder meeting. He may have stopped using his computer altogether. No surprise, since the Apple CEO is on medical leave. But people just can't stop talking about him.

This is as much our fault as it is his. Since he returned to Apple a decade ago, he made himself the company's indispensable man. Since he had a brush with pancreatic cancer in 2003, he has reminded us all of De Gaulle's saying about indispensible men — that the graveyards are full of them. The panic that ensued after he appeared gaunt and unwell at an Apple event last summer, his subsequent skipping of his Macworld keynote speech, his disclosure of new medical problems, and his decision last month to take a six-month medical leave have all done nothing to relieve people's worries about what the state of his health will mean for Apple as a business.

The latest tick-tock of concern: A report by tech columnist Robert X. Cringely that Jobs has stopped logging into his IM client. Cringely dug further and confirmed that Jobs has been completely offline for weeks. The always-on generation instantly grasps the meaning of this: If you're not in constant communication with the rest of the world, you're as good as dead to them. People are taking the IM thing more seriously than an earlier report, from a hospital worker, of Stanford Hospital prepping to host Jobs for surgery.

Is the fascination with Steve Jobs's health morbid? As surely morbid as it is necessary. Jobs has not stepped down as Apple's CEO. After the surgery report surfaced, some blogs reported Jobs had been at Apple for meetings. Is he in? Is he out? This nonstop dance has the effect of keeping Jobs at the center of any talk of Apple even when he's ostensibly removed himself from its daily affairs.

Only someone with an overweening sense of self-importance would allow this to continue. Unfortunately, that describes Jobs.

Which is why he needs to step down, for good. Apple is too important a company, its employees and shareholders too dependent on its health, to rely on one raging egotist's welfare. We all need to learn what it means to have an Apple running without Steve Jobs. The sooner we take Jobs off our collective buddy list, the better.