And perhaps in a bit of foreshadowing of power struggles to come after his death, Jobs said, "He has more operational power than anyone else at Apple except me. There’s no one who can tell him what to do, or to butt out. That’s the way I set it up."

A year later, I'm really liking the choices that Jony Ive has been making.

Apple's products are better than they've ever been -- and the future looks bright!

So is Jonathan Ive the new Steve Jobs?

Or do we live in a post-Jobs world where power is divided among Cook, Ive, and others?

The latter. Only Apple's founder can have that much power and do right with it; everyone else is a steward of the original vision.

Notice how they say "Apple's CEO, Tim Cook," as opposed to Apple CEO or The CEO of Apple. Small, but I think, important detail.

What's the difference between Apple's CEO and Apple CEO?

One is in service of the other; I suspect many corporations are truly run benefitting the top senior executives with pay packages, golden parachutes, and future career opportunities.

At Apple, from an outsider's view, it seems that the executives understand that it is they who are in service of the company.

In some ancient languages to be "king" or "queen" means to be "servant of all the people." Perhaps a dramatic example, but one does get the sense that Tim both figuratively and literally serves at Apple's pleasure (technically, the board, but I think in reality in service of the company, the employees, the customers, and the original founders' vision).

So wait, it sounds like at Apple software now reports to a hardware design guy:

Yesterday, he was given more responsibilities. CEO Tim Cook promoted him to lead the company's software design, or as Apple calls it, Human Interface. This means he's the lead designer for both hardware and software at the most influential technology company in the world.

Software reporting to hardware?!

In the next two years, we will see a Macbook and iMac with a touch or gesture controlled interface.

Mark my words. :)

It's obvious using a MBA after four months exclusively on an iPad why this has to happen; my MBA seems so slow, buggy, unnecessarily encumbered with extra features compared to my iPad. Even solid programs used to build things are simple: iMovie, Pages, Sublime, Terminal; but even looking at Safari on the MBA gives me nightmares and confuses me considerably compared to the iPad safari browser.

All boundaries are convention. The bigger change is with the Mac and iOS teams becoming one.

Wow, I've never heard MacBook Air referred to as slow and buggy.

If they can figure out how to let us gesture without touching, then they'll really have something special.

Then I could see a big-screen 42" or 50" or bigger as a television running Apple software.

It's all relative.

If I want to send/tweet/message an article in iOS 6, it's two clicks. From my MBA I literally have to look through almost every nav menu to see where it's hidden.

Voice will be the primary interface on mobile; Gesture will be the primary interface for desktop. A combination of touch and voice for tablet. But That's 5-7 years out, I think.