TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

At WWDC this year, Apple announced the most dramatic update to iOS since iOS 2 introduced the App Store and SDK for developers. The update is also the most controversial.

In 2012, Tim Cook fired Scott Forstall, Apple’s senior vice-president (SVP) of iOS, and distributed his responsibilities among Apple’s executive team. Craig Federighi became SVP of software, unifying the iOS and OS X teams under one leader. Eddy Cue received the title SVP of “Internet Software and Services,” unifying Apple’s iTunes, iBooks and App stores, iCloud, Maps and Siri. And in addition to hardware design, Jonathan Ive assumed responsibility for Human Interface design as well in the shake-up.

At the time, Adam Lashinsky reported that Forstall refused to sign an apology for iOS 6′s Maps release, and that sealed his fate. While his refusal may have been what precipitated his firing, Lashinsky says that Forstall didn’t get along with Ive. I’ve heard similar things as well, and that those difficulties were not isolated with Ive.

I don’t think Cook decided to fire Forstall simply because he didn’t get along with others in Apple’s management team, or because he refused to take public responsibility for Maps’s issues. Rather, I believe it was a result of Cook re-organizing Apple’s management structure to reflect his becoming CEO. Cook is not Steve Jobs, and he does not pretend to be, so he decided to change Apple’s structure to reflect that.

Jobs fulfilled a rather unique role as CEO of Apple. Rather than oversee and manage the work of others, Jobs was intimately involved in product and product design decisions. No detail was too small for Jobs’s attention. Jobs both originated product ideas and took part in iterating on them, but more importantly, Jobs acted as a filter for Apple. All product decisions ultimately passed through him; he approved new products and new directions, and vetoed them, too. As a result of this role, collaboration among his lieutenants and teams wasn’t as important; indeed, Jobs was known to foster competition and even conflict among individuals and teams to try to elicit their very best work, and then he would choose what he saw as the superior work and direction for Apple.

Cook, as far as I know, doesn’t scrutinize each pixel of an application’s design. He doesn’t have Jobs’s ability to understand what makes for a good product. Jobs was one-of-a-kind, and Cook recognizes that. Recognizing that, however, means that he couldn’t continue Jobs’s management style. Instead, Cook needs to rely on his management team to replace Jobs’s role. Each member must take absolute responsibility for their area of focus and must be incredibly talented at managing it. Most integrally, though, because Apple no longer has the singular filter that all larger product decisions pass through, that management team must work together. Apple could withstand conflict and islands—even benefit from it—with Jobs because each area ultimately ran through him, and because he directed each area. Since Cook can’t fill that role, he needs supremely talented people in charge of each area working with each other to set Apple’s direction. Jobs’s Apple could feed off of discord, but Cook’s Apple must feed off of collaboration.

In Apple’s introduction video for iOS 7, Jonathan Ive says that “We see iOS 7 as defining an important direction and in many ways, a beginning.” While Ive may have meant they saw it as a new beginning for iOS, iOS 7 also marks the beginning of Apple’s new management structure.

When Cook fired Forstall last year, it wasn’t clear what it meant or whether it was for the better. Embarrassingly, Cook hired John Browett to head retail in April 2012 and fired him in October along with Forstall. One way to read that—and many did—was that Cook’s leadership was failing; he had hired an obviously bad fit for retail and was forced to get rid of him in six months. In that light, Forstall’s firing and Apple’s management restructuring looked like it could be the result of a struggling management team.

Until WWDC this year, it wasn’t clear whether that view was correct, or whether it was a part of Cook’s reorganizing Apple to work best under new leadership. Today, though, I think it’s clearly the latter view that was correct.

With that out of the way, I believe that this year’s keynote was meant to establish the foundation for Tim Cook’s Apple. In episode 19 of the Accidental Tech Podcast, Marco Arment, John Siracusa and Casey Liss discuss the keynote introduction video, which explains Apple’s motivation. Siracusa says that while he liked the video, he thinks that it suggested they were about to introduce something groundbreaking, and that OS X Mavericks, the new Mac Pro and iOS 7 didn’t live up to that. Siracusa might be right, but I think he misses its intent. This wasn’t meant to congratulate themselves for being great; rather, it was meant to affirm Apple’s motivation for what they do. Along with their “Our Signature” ad, I think they are the equivalent of the “Think Different” campaign for the Cook era.

Famously, Jobs said that the people at Apple shouldn’t try to make decisions by asking themselves what he would have done. Instead, he said, they should just do what’s right. Clearly, Cook took that to heart. This is Cook’s Apple, and they are not constraining themselves by what feels Jobs-like. Cook hasn’t confused the trappings of Jobs’s Apple—how Jobs managed the company—for its heart: an irrepressible desire to make insanely great products that improve people’s lives and give them joy.

Apple, then, has changed significantly since 2011. Things are quite different at the top than they were then, and to my eyes, Apple seems more open to the world than its ever been in important ways, too. But those changes have all been made so that Apple can continue doing what they always have. This may be Cook’s Apple, but the core is just as it’s always been.