The re-appearance of Steve Jobs in the corporate public eye has caused a stir in the media when he returned to the Apple (mmmm… Apples) stage, after a year off recovering from pancreatic cancer and a liver transplant.

Jobs, in his trademark jeans and black turtleneck, joked, “I’m vertical and I’m back,” at a press event in San Francisco to launch several new Apple (mmm… Pink Lady) products. “I now have the liver of a mid-20s person who died in a car crash and was forced generous enough to donate their organs”, he said wryly, before urging the audience to become organ donors.

Apple (mmm… Royal Gala) shares have risen steadily in the last year, since the company pushed peripheral manufacturers to create and launch new, more complicated and distracting, in-car ipod products.

Jobs didn’t dwell on the issue of his own health for very long. Minutes after the show kicked off, the Apple (mmm… Toffee) boss got down to business, jingling and flashing his fancy new, white ‘buy-me’s’ at the audience. The company has launched a range of new ipods with additional features such as pedometers, video cameras, heart rate monitors, organ evaluation software and a complete suite of diagnostic software to chart the quality and health of internal organs. Each ipod also now comes with a donor card laser-engraved on the back.