That is…not at all what this shows. Just because software engineers writing a file system don’t know what the final industrial design is going to be like doesn’t mean there aren’t people fully responsible for end user experience.
Giving out information on a need to know basis does not mean integration is impossible. It just means people that don’t need to don’t get to see the full picture.
Keep in mind that this kind of decide would be under development for many years, if you can keep the idea a secret until launch you’ll be years ahead of your competitors. But if it leaks your advantage is gone.
Uh, what? This makes no sense. It's not like the entire hardware and software teams were totally firewalled. Obviously higher ups and managers were in both circles and coordinated the development of both.
Yes, so if Apple were divided into separate hardware and software companies, then a third company X could order both these companies to come up with hardware and software solutions, and reach the same result. In this case, what you call management would be performed by the third company.
This is imho a better way of building things than having everything completely integrated in a single company. A fourth company could do the same thing as X and build an alternative iPod. And so could a fifth, etc.