Cook is paid more than anyone else at Apple, and he's the only executive allowed an outside board seat (Cook is a director at Nike). More importantly, he's humble enough not to push for a CEO job that can never be his as long as Jobs is in the saddle.

True, Cook is an operations expert, not a product genius like Jobs, but he could surround himself with Apple executives like Scott Forstall and Jonathan Ive to make up for that lack. Only one wild card: Mark Papermaster, the IBM chip executive whose recruitment by Apple has embroiled the companies in a lawsuit. if the hire goes through, Papermaster will report to Jobs, not Cook.

Cook’s deep knowledge of Apple’s operations and ready command of detail has won him the respect of the board of directors and the investment community. A bachelor with a passion for cycling, he’s as steady and low-key as Jobs is temperamental.

Of course, as any Apple employee will tell you, "steady and low-key" doesn't strike the necessary fear into their hearts like Jobs' legendary tirades.

Jonathan Ive, the wildly talented designer and crowd favorite for the role, is apparently even more soft-spoken, and too shy to carry the yoke of showman that he would inherit. However, secret plans not obtained by Valleywag have revealed Jobs' succession plans: A top secret project begun by Jobs while still at NeXT to take back Apple by force if necessary has been quietly resurrected by Ive, with Apple engineers working only on small parts so as not to reveal the true goal — an indestructable cyborg assassin capable of verbally abusing ten times the employees in a single day while still finding time to ignore his no-longer biologically related daughter.

I, for one, welcome my new Robot Steve Jobs overlords.

This is not good economics and it isn't good marketing. It is the ravings of a brilliant, talented and apparently completely delusional man. He tried this with the Mac, and thankfully failed. Unfortunately there was no one there to tell him how short sighted he was being this time.

He created a pen that had a ball and clip mechanism on top, for no purpose other than to give the owner something to fiddle with. "It immediately became the owner's prize possession, something you always wanted to play with...We began to call it 'having Jony-ness,' an extra something that would tap into the product's underlying emotion."

Who Is Jonathan Ive? [BusinessWeek]

• Apple doesn't make computers, it makes appliances. Nintendo doesn't make gaming systems, it makes toys.
• It'd be the Brangelina of technology — they're both so goddamn sexy, everyone fantasizes about them getting it on.
• In fact, the celebrity tryst aura (as explained on the Beeb show, Coupling: If enough people fantasize about two celebrities having sex, they'll be drawn to each other) makes iNintendo a certainty.
• Pixar's already an old toy — that's why Steve was willing to share it. Nintendo's new and shiny again!

But it's also not true:

• What happens when two beauties mesh? Hermaphrodite happens.
• Think it's annoying when every damn commuter is playing an iPod? Now switch those out for Nintendo DS thumbcandy. Mayhem.
• No, actually it has to be true. Steve Jobs needs to buy designer-and-surrogate-son Jonathan Ive a reverse Father's Day present.

Crave Talk: Is Nintendo the apple of Apple's eye? [CNET, illo stolen from there too]

No more NBC shows on iTunes
Worked out just peachy for AOL Time Warner, didn't it?
Apple's barely worth more than Disney

But also:

Disney owns the Muppets. Unfortunate Jobs-Grover resemblance
No more "Looney Tunes marathon" slumber parties with Jonathan Ive
Disney films need more sex in them

Is Apple looking to buy Disney? [Slashdot]

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