but he was the catalyst for many things including the iphone. for example he is the one that said, "lets turn that touch screen into a phone" and voila, the engineers went to it.
also after he was fired from apple he started Next computing which is pretty much the basis for OS X and the next computer hardware was pretty much made into the imac. so as you see many of apple's successful products were steve's ideas. a lot of the philosophies behind the GUIs were also his.
but yes they still have awesome industrial designers like Yves, but even yves has seen much rejection and approval from steve. and yes they can be on a free leash and add all kinds of features to the existing products and invent all kinds of new things, but then they would just become the competition. an editing eye to what's vital and to what would sell is very important.
