But rather than exemplifying the supposed mess that is post-Jobs Apple, the issue itself--and the company's reaction to it--come directly out of the Steve Jobs playbook. Continuing to distance itself from Google is an Apple business strategy championed by Jobs, whose relationship with the search giant turned mighty sour upon the release of Android, which Jobs felt shamelessly cribbed from the iPhone.

And the motivation to ship products aggressively early, even if the transition would feel tough for Apple and its customers alike, is again in Steve Jobs's image: Remember that his Apple dropped the floppy drive, killed OS 9 in favor of OS X, migrated from PowerPC to Intel chips--and made all of those moves unapologetically.

And it was Jobs's Apple whose MobileMe launch turned into a disaster--. Jobs apologized when Apple dropped the price of the original iPhone, angering some early adopters. And he penned public notes on Apple's website about digital music, about Flash, and so on. Cook appears to be picking up right where Jobs left off.

Apple under Jobs pushed for a new connectivity standard, perhaps ahead of its time, with Thunderbolt; Apple under Cook is making a similar push with Lightning on the iPhone 5. Apple under Jobs obsessed over build quality and minor details; Apple after him seems no different: The iPhone 5 has been hailed as the loveliest iPhone to date.

We may never know how much of Apple's product roadmap had been shaped before Jobs's death in October 2011; that's not the kind of detail the company shares with the public. But whether Jobs was involved directly in their planning or not, Apple's future product releases will bear his fingerprints for years to come. That's because no single product--not the Mac, not the iPod, not the iPhone, not the iPad--benefited more from Jobs and his influence than Apple the company.