re impact
I agree that transitioning to a world in which Jobs isn't carrying the water as the company's public face is good planning. I note that Apple designers and users appear in a number of videos about the products, and I suspect that getting engineers to talk about their areas of interest and expertise is probably going to be effective in highlighting new things to which attention should be given.
The natural interest of people in their own work is easily more genuine than Shiller's soda-pop-advert-style excitement about everything, every sentence, until you don't believe any of it is really exciting.
The fact that Apple has a huge public face in its retail stores is no joke; it's an opportunity to show products and demonstrate technology that used to REQUIRE a big event, and now is an everyday occurrence. I know folks who've bought Macs who never would have, because there was a store and they could use the product and see that it worked fine for what they needed. Much better than MacWorld (which preaches only to the faithful), and self-funding to boot.
Your last point is the best: if Apple had something to say, Apple could get people to appear on fairly short notice to film it and report on it, something that didn't used to be the case. I suspect that Apple's brand is big enough that's likely to continue even when Jobs' star-power isn't there to draw reporters. But the power of that draw shouldn't be understated; it's something to reckon with.
Take care,
--Tex.
