Has Jony Ive effectively inherited Steve Jobs’ mantle?

According to a voluminous article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has passed the mantle of design of Jony Ive, while Tim Cook concerns himself with overall strategy and the company’s now-prominent environmental and social activism. The article also notes that the much-rumored iWatch is due to be released in the fourth quarter, according to Apple employees, and will likely include a number of health tracking features.

Mr. Cook has not been wholly unengaged in the process of choosing new products, and some of his choices have proven to be highly successful. For example, he pushed for the creation of a smaller iPad, which eventually saw the light of day as the iPad Mini. The Mini has been an unmitigated commercial success, outselling the full-sized iPad and proving the rigid opposition of former Apple (AAPL) guru Steve Jobs to be wrong in this case at least.

Other choices of Mr. Cook have not been quite so lucky. For example, he greenlighted the iPhone 5C, the brightly colored plastic-cased version of the iconic smartphone which appeared in 2013. Intended to be a budget version of the iPhone, the 5C is too expensive for less affluent buyers to purchase it, and too cheap and garish for those who can afford to purchase an iPhone 5S. The 5C’s sales have been low enough to qualify it as a “flop.”

Steve Jobs oversaw his share of failures, and Mr. Cook’s performance has certainly not fallen far short of Mr. Jobs’ own thus far. Apple is still highly successful, an electronics industry powerhouse that sells its products globally and wins remarkably high profits on a regular basis. However, it appears that Mr. Cook is currently planning to focus mostly on strategy and activism, while the role of “tech wizard” is passed almost entirely to Jony Ive.

Mr. Ive has been behind many of the Cupertino firm’s successes in any case, and the current arrangement is more of a belated official recognition of reality than a departure from previous procedure. It remains to be seen if Mr. Ive emerges more into the limelight now that his importance to the company is being highlighted, or whether he remains largely enigmatic, working behind the scenes and having little contact with the public.

Mr. Cook appears to be amping up his social and environmental activism even further, building on the narrative – which would sound like a legend if it came from any less reliable source – that he gained his current drive for social justice when he attempted to stop an attack on an African-American family’s home by the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s.