John Gruber of Daring Fireball just published a great, in-depth look at the whole rather odd scenario of how the story of Steve Jobs’ liver transplant broke, or how it may have broken.

While I did put a couple sentences about the opportune timing of the story in my post on it, that was the most immediate thing that jumped out at me when I first heard it. But I really didn’t want to fully go there. To be honest, I have never felt all that comfortable covering someone’s health woes (though I do agree that in this case, it is news). But Gruber does a classy job at dissecting this situation.

I have absolutely no knowledge about this situation beyond what I’ve read or heard from third-parties, but in my mind there is also no doubt this was leaked to WSJ, by someone involved with Apple in some way. The timing was just too perfect.

It was late Friday night. Just hours after the iPhone 3G S had a very successful launch. And hours after the stock shot up. And with the market not opening again until Monday, it gives optimal time for everyone to freak out about this, then calm down when they realize that the bottom line is that Jobs is going back to work within days. And even if isn’t returning at a full capacity, it gives people a chance to remember that Apple has been kicking just as much ass with Tim Cook at the helm.

Gruber lays out 3 scenarios of how it may have went down: A doctor leaked it, Apple leaked it with Jobs’ knowledge, or an Apple board member leaked it without Jobs’ knowledge. He seems to favor the third in thinking that Jobs, who is very secretive about his health, wouldn’t want anyone to talk about this.

But I would guess it was something more along the lines of (and this is all speculation, of course) the Occam’s Razor answer: Everyone at Apple knows this is going to get out eventually, and they know there will be no better timing, so someone at Apple was instructed to tell the WSJ but only give the very basic outline of what went down. And the WSJ went digging from there to try and connect the dots backwards for a story it knew to be true but had basically no details beyond: This happened, here’s around where it happened, and here’s around when it happened.

And in connecting those dots, the reporters talk to some unrelated doctors who give the juicy details that such a surgery isn’t always effective, and even somewhat imply that it may not have been fair for Jobs’ to get the new liver. And so they have to mention that, but don’t really want to (or have time to) delve too deeply into it, and away from the already huge story they have. And maybe Apple even asked that the on-the-record comment be a basic no comment, which it was.

Again, that’s all speculation, but that would be my guess. This whole thing is odd. But admitedly, facisinating.