That doesn't really seem to be so: Scott Forstall was only fired after Jobs had left, while Cook and Ive are not really shrinking violets either. And in fact it

That doesn't really seem to be so: Scott Forstall was only fired after Jobs had left, while Cook and Ive are not really shrinking violets either. And in fact it seems that some of the missteps of the post-Jobs era, such as the too-early Apple Watch, were the result of Ive's assertiveness. The central problem seems to be two-headed: Jobs' succession plan seems to have been to put in place a Forstall/Ive/Cook trumvirate, but that arrangement went the way of most triumvirates; and to the extent that one person is in charge at Apple, that person (Cook) wasn't a "product guy" in the Jobs era and seems unable or unwilling to take on SJ's role as hands-on product monarch. Add to that Ive's apparent (and fairly understandable) increasing boredom with having to iterate away on the same old core Apple products for another large chunk of his life, combined with his increased political untameability in the post-Jobs era (what will the stock do if he announces his departure?)