It has been suggested over the past year or so that the iPhone 5 was the last device to receive input from late Steve Jobs. Moreover, it has also been said that it was Jobs’ last project, which he worked on as the rest of the company focused on the largely unchanged iPhone 4S, and a feature-length post over at Businessweek sheds some light on this.
The article mulls over the changes made over at Apple post-Jobs, many of which have been well-documented in the public domain, and while the focal point of the feature is the vastly different styles of management of Jobs and his successor, Tim Cook, it also taps into how the brand-new iPhone 5 was the last Apple smartphone to get Jobs’ approval before being produced.
In the piece, Businessweek cites a couple of folk “familiar with the phone’s development,” both of which are said to claim the hottest gadget on the planet was the last iDevice to get any detailed input from the late Jobs. Further sources, which Businessweek naturally neglected to name, indicate Apple hasn’t yet released a product Jobs “didn’t personally bless,” which adds extra fascination to the Cupertino company’s next product, which looks as though it’s going to be the iPad Mini later this month.
The next iPhone will be the very first not to have been blessed by Steve Jobs, and it will be intriguing to see how much different the device is without the input of the Apple co-founder and former CEO.
It’s natural the company will change slightly given the hierarchal shift from a dogmatic leader in Jobs to the placid character of Tim Cook, but what remains to be seen, is how the products will change without the influence of Jobs.
Will Apple manage to keep up the momentum in the smartphone and tablet markets? It’s a question yet to be answered, although so long as Apple keeps Sir Jony Ive on board and designing its products, one suspects the traditions and ethos of Jobs’ Apple will not be lost. Jobs once described Ive as the man with the most power and influence within the Cupertino company “besides himself,” and from within his mysterious lair at Apple HQ, the British national will undoubtedly be plotting features of the next iPhone.
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