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With Steve Jobs already absent with illness, it is rumoured that Apple could soon be hit by another serious blow.

The web is alive with rumours that design chief Jonathan Ive is about to hang up his boots and come back to Blighty.

Apple chiefs are said to be unhappy about this prospect, feeling that Ive is too valuable an asset to work remotely, and are believed to have made it clear that if he goes, he goes.

With shares and options estimated to be worth somewhere north of $100m, it's unlikely that Ive will be signing on anytime soon. As the man behind the design for iconic products from the original iMac to the iPhone, he won't be short of offers of work. But this would be another big loss for an organisation that is looking a little bit less than its normally perfect self following its apparent falling out with Google. And it would mean the break-up of the Ive/Jobs dream team that has driven the Apple brand forward for so many years. A team whose relationship was based on a deeply shared focus on the need for perfection in everything they built together.

I remember someone veery close to Ive telling me once that, as the second iMac was poised to launch, with a working prototype under wraps in the lab, he received an anguished summons from Jobs in the middle of the night. A couple of hours later, after walking round and round the tycoon's garden deep in thought, the design was scrapped and the project restarted from scratch. That's what I call perfectionism with a purpose.

Mashable dug up a quote from Ive yesterday in an interview he gave to the Design Museum that might shed some light on what drives  - or at least what used to drive - him: “Apple stood for something and had a reason for being that wasn’t just about making money.”

Is that still true, or have times changed? Only time will tell...