For Jobs, it was defined by the intersection of technology and literal arts: two seemingly disparate disciplines that, when combined, could yield "the result that makes our heart sing." In other words, it's not purely about the specs of device, but about what products can do to, in another of his commonly used phrases, "surprise and delight" us.

With that as Jobs's focus, it's easy to put the pieces together and see that the people he brought into the company were all attempts to bolster this philosophy. Jobs notoriously picked specific elements of design or materials that helped define what an Apple product was--it's no surprise that the same level of thought and purposefulness went into the people that he selected to help lead the company he founded.

While Steve Jobs's impact will always inform the company to a certain degree, that doesn't mean Apple is dogmatically following the example of its late CEO. And that may have been by design all along. According to Cook, Jobs once told him how Disney employees would ask themselves what the company's late founder, Walt Disney, would do in certain situations. "And he looked at me with those intense eyes that only he had, and he told me to never do that, to never ask what he would do," Cook said . "Just do what's right. And so I'm doing that."

Regardless of how you evaluate Jobs as an executive or as a person, it's clear that he was a savvy businessman who knew how to get the best out of his company. Suggesting that he would fail to plan for the future of Apple, especially given what he knew about his own health, seems to go against the very thesis of the "that's not what Steve Jobs would do" meme that's so popular these days.