"This puts an exclamation point on Cook's decisiveness," said Moorhead. "This was not tentative. This is Tim Cook's company as of that call [to Forstall]. You can attribute the iPad Mini, the iPhone 5 to Jobs, but this is clearly Tim Cook."

What the changes won't do, analyst said, was change Apple's short-term plans or impact sales.

"For consumers, this doesn't really matter," said Carolina Milanesi, an analyst at Gartner. "They're not going to buy an iPad because of this."

"I don't think this much changes the cadence of releases," said Moorhead. "After all, it takes time to make any changes, it's going to take Ives time to make changes."

Apple is now down two execs after a Monday culling of the heads of iOS development and the company's retailing. (Image: Apple.)