You could almost feel his departure, not just in marketing but in product conception, in far too many ads appearing in following years.

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And if his more creative folks such as Jony Ives, senior VP of industrial design, can continue carry on the design and product conception brilliance of Jobs, that could continue to keep Apple humming.

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Called "product lifecycle management, " or PLM, the software links manufacturers with their suppliers and customers to share data about a product--from conception to junkyard.

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