To play Ive's advocate here: Jobs probably wants people who speak at events to serve specific functions. The product visionary role is currently filled by Ste

To play Ive's advocate here: Jobs probably wants people who speak at events to serve specific functions. The product visionary role is currently filled by Steve. You only do a few of these a year and you aren't going to buzzkill the free pub by running the understudy up there if the lead is available. Edit: The above is in regards to Ive being a private person and not liking the public speaking gig. Of course for all we know Steve is a private person and may not like the public speaking gig but he does it because it's a necessary function. The strongest argument for Ive of course is that what set's Apple apart from other companies is that it's design/product driven. See Steve's comments re: what happens when The Sales Guy ends up running the whole show. http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/oct2004/nf20041012_4018_db083.htm http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/oct2004/nf200410... Obviously you can say "well Phil is The Sales Guy" (which is a bit of a dodge) and also that "Tim took over for Steve when he was totally unable to work" which is at least partially true (was he really doing everything Steve did?). So maybe Tim Cook can by a product visionary. Maybe Jon Ive can't. But if you start from this one small and very arguable given that Steve wants Apple to be led by a product visionary and not the sales/operations guy that leads you to Jon Ive being the best candidate. There's other evidence too of course, reports are the two are quite close on Apple campus although I imagine Tim Cook would qualify based on that criteria as well.