So he's a supply-chain dynamo. Vastly different skill set than that of a strong-willed and opinionated designer. You are right though, he is delegating the 'vis

So he's a supply-chain dynamo. Vastly different skill set than that of a strong-willed and opinionated designer. You are right though, he is delegating the 'vision' parts of his assignment to his inferiors and Apple suffers for it. I don't know if you have ever hang around supply-chain people, but with the ones I know, I would not want them designing stuff. You make it sound as if he single-handedly sold over a billion phones. What else helped sell over a billion iPhones? Saccharine, simplified, cheery, brain-dead UI; an army of Apple loyalists, explainers, and apologists (still mourning the loss of their Beloved Leader); several metric fuck-tons of marketing and advertising spend, a panoply of factors that result in a once-per-year or once-per-every-other-year purchase cycle, and a phalanx of impeccably-decorated retail locations, among other things. Sure, Mr. Cook plays his role, and Apple's SCM is best-in-the-world, but I think there are more Tim Cooks out there than Steve Jobs.