Steve Jobs announced this afternoon that he will be taking a medical leave, due to a mysterious ailment that has left him rail-thin and frail. And so It turns out that Gizmodo was right after all. Or at least partly right.

On Dec. 30, the “gadget-blog” published by Gawker Media reported that it had uncovered the truth behind the cancellation of Jobs’ keynote address at Macworld: “Allegedly, the real cause is his rapidly declining health.”

Because Jobs’ health has been a topic of interest since he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2003, the Gizmodo piece lit up the blogosphere, and later the financial pages.  A week later, Jobs released an unusually personal letter on Apple’s website explaining that his apparent weight loss was not due to the cancer, but to “a hormone imbalance that has been ‘robbing’ me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy.”

Jobs released another letter  today announcing that he is sicker than he knew, and that he will be stepping down for a five-month medical leave. The letter, which was posted on the Apple corporate website and addressed to his “Team,” was published on CNBC this afternoon.

During the past week I have learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought. In order to take myself out of the limelight and focus on my health, and to allow everyone at Apple to focus on delivering extraordinary products, I have decided to take a medical leave of absence until the end of June.

As of this moment, Gizmodo has not responded to the news, but its sister-publication, Valleywag, opines that the move is “the best thing for Jobs, and for Apple.”

Apple needs to prove it can thrive without Jobs. And Jobs, for the sake of his family and friends if not Apple’s investors, must show he can thrive without Apple. It will be a hard decision to make. And it will require far more honesty, with himself and with the rest of the world, than Jobs has demonstrated.