rephrase: Under Steve Jobs, every decision had to go through him. Jobs and only Jobs made every single strategic decision that would affect the company. When Tim Cook took over in late 2011 following Job's resignation and passing, Cook restructured the company, and part of this restructuring included changing how the company's hierarchy worked. This means that Apple's VPs now have more autonomy, something which was greatly limited under Jobs. Apple uses a company structure that is commonly known as "functional organization". This means that the company has been organized around areas of expertise, rather than individual products. The products themselves are then worked on by individuals from across the different areas of expertise. Apple is split into focused divisions. Each division has their own upper management and vice presidents. As an example, this means that Apple has a Senior Vice President for Operations (Sabih Khan), one for Hardware Engineering (Dan Riccio) and one for Machine Learning (John Giannandrea)