Just because you’re on medical leave doesn’t mean you can’t have dinner with the President of the United States.

That’s exactly what Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, has been doing this week, after Barack Obama invited a number of tech head honchos to dinner at the White House - presumably to talk about Android vs Apple, Facebook vs Google, or what TV to buy. 

On the guest list were Google Chairman Eric Schimdt (no doubt getting over his jetlag from Mobile World Congress), Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, who looked a little starstruck for parts of the evening, and Larry Ellison, the head of Oracle.

One of these is the most powerful man on Earth, and the other is Obama

Also at the table were Cisco's CEO, John Chambers, Kleiner Perkins partner, John Doerr, Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings, Yahoo CEO, Carol Bartz, and Twitter CEO, Dick Costolo. Interestingly, Microsoft seemed to have been shunned as neither CEO Steve Ballmer or founder Bill Gates were present.

However, it was Zuckerberg and Jobs that got the best seats in the house, sitting both right and left of the President respectively.

Unfortunately, we can only see the back of Steve Jobs’ head (if you're looking for him he is the one next to Obama on the left), but at least it proves that he isn’t bed-ridden - or only has “six weeks to live” as some US papers are reporting.

Obviously, we couldn't make it as we had to write our hands-on pieces of the Samsung Galaxy Gio and HP Veer. Maybe next year.