I think most of us just don't have enough insight into how Apple develops products to really nail this down (maybe you do; I certainly don't).
Does Jony Ive say "it must be this thin" (holds fingers apart) and then engineering has to go off and remove MagSafe and create a totally new keyboard? Or is engineering already working on new keyboard ideas, and they bring one to the table and say "hey what can we do with this?"
In any case, it's about how the team is operating. Jobs obviously had an impact on that, but where I disagreed with the GP was this idea that thousands of people at Apple just wake up every day and say "dwuhhhhh, what did Steve Jobs do" and then just dumbly do that. Let's give the folks there some credit--which also means holding them accountable for their own decisions.
> * Post-Jobs, the executive who could do that with Ive was Scott Forstall.*
Out of all the top Apple Forum, you are the only one I find who shares the same opinion as I do. So glad I am not alone.
Add to that is software design which Jony now also takes over, It was ( rumoured ) Tim Cook's idea to group the "Design" unit into one. And it was obvious hardware and software design has little in common, and Jony made a complete mess with iOS 7.
I don't know what went wrong. But I miss Scott Forstall. For some reason big companies has a tendency to force their best people out once their previous CEO mentor left their post, Patrick Gelsinger at Intel, Scott Forstall at Apple.
My own suspicion -- buttressed with some off-the-record comments with Apple folks -- is that it's actually Jony Ive who prioritizes thinness over all else. Steve Jobs may not have been an engineer or a designer, but he was often an excellent "editor," of the sort who'd look at a design and say "Why do you need this" or "If you add this it'll be a thousand times more useful" or even "You're focusing on the wrong thing, start over." Post-Jobs, the executive who could do that with Ive was Scott Forstall. Post-Forstall, there doesn't seem to be anyone who does that with Ive anymore.
I'm hopeful that the string of highly visible problems with this most recent iteration of MacBooks will, if nothing else, give someone else in the company power to start pushing back. I don't hate my 2017-era MacBook Pro and I haven't had any real problems with it, but the fact that I'm worried about having problems with it in a way that I've rarely been with other Apple hardware is a problem in and of itself.