There is surprisingly little to be learned about Sir Jonathan Ive in this 17,000-word piece in The New Yorker, except this: The fucker gets driven to work in a Bentley Mulsanne, "a car for a head of state," as Ian Parker puts it.

That one detail says it all. If you want to know who wields the real power at Apple, look no further. The Mulsanne starting price is a tick over $300,000, and can go higher (like if you get the special Grey Poupon refrigerator, I guess) but the price is not the point. The point is the chauffeur. His name is Jean. There's no word in the article about whether Ive makes Jean wear a uniform, and if so, whether Ive designed the uniform himself, and if so, if he selected his driver by making a few dozen candidates line up and pose to see which one would look best in the uniform that Ive designed, and/or which ones would agree to have plastic surgery to make themselves look just so in that uniform and hat.

But you get the idea. Jon Ive is off the fucking rails and the only person who could rein him in is no longer among the living. You know how people like to say that "no way would this have happened if Steve were alive and running Apple"? Usually those people are full of shit, but this is one case where it's true. No way would Steve have allowed this article to happen. No way would he have allowed one of his employees to be deified like this. For that matter, no way would Jon Ive have dared to ride around with a chauffeur when Steve was alive, and no way would Steve have ever been so vulgar as to be driven around by a chauffeur in a Bentley, like a modern-day pharaoh. Steve drove his own Mercedes and parked in a handicapped space, like a normal sociopath.

Ostensibly the story is meant to tee up sales of the Apple watch, which goes on sale in April, but that's just an excuse. The point of this story is to crown Jon Ive king of Apple. The very fact that the story exists shows you that even Tim Cook doesn't dare to stand in his way.

The funny thing is that even after reading all of the thousands of words in this New Yorker article, you're left with the impression that there is a much bigger and much better story that was left untold — a Shakespearean tale about egos and kingdoms and battles for power after the death of a great king, and the kind of brawlers and bullies who get their way in the absence of a controlling power.

Jon Ive is 47 years old, secretly running Apple, and dangerously out of control.