Apple have always planned several years in advance, nothing new here and I doubt it's related to Steve Jobs' knowledge that he was shuffling off this mortal coil.
I read somewhere that the iPad and iPhone had been planned and in development for over 4 or 5 years, much of that was waiting for the technology to catch up with their ambitions. Mac OS X development has also been mapped out to at least 10.9 - OK, certain features will evolve and be added as time goes on, but they will undoubtedly have a definite timeline of how Mac OS X is mapped out. They will probably be also working out what happens after they reach 10.9 (or run out of big cat names!).
Er, delayed? As far as I'm aware, Apple have always said iCloud would be arriving in the autumn... October is autumn, so how is that delayed?