THE NEW IOS 7 IS RELEASING TODAY!

THE WHOLE WORLD IS WAITING FOR IT!

Apple is today releasing the much-anticipated iOS 7, and with it, the biggest overhaul of its mobile operating system since it debuted in 2007 with the original iPhone.

Most of the talk has been about the design overhaul of the product, but really, the biggest change is not a product one, but a personnel one. The change not only affects this particular software update, but the identity of the company from here on out.

For the first time ever, Apple is releasing a software product that was led by the same person who leads industrial design: Jonathan Ive. And it's an integration that underscores how, increasingly, Apple is becoming Ive's company.

"This is something that has never been done before at Apple," said Matt Rogers, co-founder of the smart thermostat maker Nest, remarking on the fact that one person is now in charge of the two very disparate departments. Rogers worked on software design for all of Apple's mobile devices until he left the company in 2010. "There's a public design philosophy at Apple and there's an internal one," he said.

The public philosophy, of course, is the familiar gospel we hear about minimalism and simplicity, white plastic and brushed aluminum. "The internal one is around just doing what Jony wants to do," Rogers said.

After a much-publicized executive shakeup in 2012, former iOS software chief Scott Forstall was famously ousted, and his duties taken over by Ive. Craig Federighi, who previously only led development for Mac OS, also took the engineering lead on iOS. The dust up between Ive and Forstall had been brewing for years, but it all came to a head after the release of the last iOS, when the newly designed Maps app tanked with users and was panned by the press. Cook issued an apology, and when Forstall refused to sign the letter, it "[sealed] his fate at Apple," Fortune reported.

The main design contention, though, had to do with the practice of skeuomorphism -- a design approach where software interfaces mimic the look of real world objects. Forestall, a huge proponent of the practice, along with the late Steve Jobs, believed skeuomorphism was a necessary part of getting users acclimated to a digital software environment. That's why the Game Center app was meant to look like the green felt of a poker table, and the Notes app resembled a yellow legal pad.