I don’t really care if the decision came down from Steve Jobs, Tim Cook or another Apple executive, but the rollout of the new iPhone software was far less troublesome than last year. For one thing, Apple released it two days ahead of the unleashing of the iPhone 3GS (the space no longer is part of the name). In addition, they clearly tested 3.0 far more thoroughly, and it clearly doesn’t have all the ills that plagued the 2.0 upgrade.

As you recall, Apple had to deliver several maintenance updates before things settled down, and even then I was the victim of occasional application crashes that returned me to the Home screen. Sometimes I even had to force a restart, and that happened either in Mail or Safari.

That was yesterday.

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So it does indeed appear that Steve Jobs has returned to his CEO position at Apple. Whether part-time or full-time may not be terribly clear, but perhaps it doesn’t make much of a difference these days. You see, the real question is how much effort Jobs has really put into the company over the past five years.

In 2004, for example, Jobs temporarily relinquished his CEO duties when he underwent surgery for treatment of a rare form of pancreatic cancer. The day-to-day affairs of Apple were managed by COO Tim Cook, who is regarded as perhaps the best operations person in the business.

When Jobs took his six month medical leave early this year to prepare for and receive a liver transplant, Cook took the reins of command again, and evidently acquitted himself surprisingly well. He was confident, and Apple’s steady stream of new product introductions appears to have continued unabated. Sure, it’s certain Jobs was still being consulted via email and telephone (or iChat) for the big decisions, but it’s not as if Apple suddenly ceased to function.

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Ahead of this past weekend’s introduction of the iPhone G3 S, some analysts who should know better tried yet again to speculate upon how many units Apple would sell through Sunday. Most of the numbers were in the half million range, but were expanded to as high as 750,000 after AT&T announced they had receivedseveral hundred thousand preorders before the weekend madness.

As usual, the analysts were all wrong.

As you’ve heard, Apple reported over one million units sold through weekend number one, and that doesn’t include the $99 iPhone 3G. In fact, their official press release covering the announcement included quotes from Steve Jobs, still the CEO, despite what some analysts have also suggested.

Of course, the precise figures won’t be known until the latter part of July, when Apple holds its quarterly financial conference with analysts and details the numbers, more or less. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Jobs himself appeared just to show up the folks who thought he’d never return. Of course it doesn’t mean he’s putting in a 40 or 50 hour work week, but if he’s there for the key decisions, that ought to be sufficient to silence most of the skeptics.

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Although the crowds weren’t quite as large this weekend, it does seem as if hundreds of thousands of new iPhones were sold. AT&T along claims several hundred thousand preorders, and there were unknown numbers from Apple before the 3G S was released on Friday. By Sunday, however, the truth was out there. Steve Jobs himself, still Apple’s CEO, reported over one million units sold, way ahead of analyst estimates.

This time, Apple and its wireless carrier partners acted in an intelligent fashion. By taking preorders, they didn’t force customers to wait hours in front of the store in the hope they wouldn’t be too late to get a spanking new iPhone 3G S.

For the most part, the activation issues that plagued customers last year didn’t occur, although there were some instances where the final activation process seemed to take far longer than it should. However, the complaints shouldn’t be near as voluminous.

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