Forstall's firing reportedly met with 'quiet jubilation' at Apple - Page 3

Tallest, didn't you read the inter-cloister scroll?

Dualism is dead.

So you know people at Apple who have told you their worried about Ive's new role?

SF has been with Apple since the early 90s! That's 20 odd years - he looks very young for his age!

People, come on.

 

Enough with the romanticizing of Forstall's departure. Can we please put away the Steve Jobs metaphors already? Apparently, all you need is an "abrasive personality" to be a comeback story like Steve Jobs.

 

Steve Jobs' return to Apple in 1996 was never a sure thing, and it almost didn't happen. And I'll be damned if repeating Steve Jobs' comeback (and eventual success as iCEO) is that easy. If Forstall can pull it off someday, I'm completely happy to eat my words, and you people can gloat about how wrong I was ten years from now, but until Forstall actually does it, let's keep the Shakespearean fantasies from getting out of hand.

 

Steve Jobs was a very rare kind of talent, a combination of moxie, talent, people skills, stubbornness, passion to change the world, flexibility to admit wrong, spotlight magnet, tastemaker, and raw leadership skills. Is Forstall like that? Are you people kidding? He's maybe a tenth of what Steve Jobs was. Don't believe that puff piece they wrote about Forstall in Businessweek. I think a more likely career path for someone like Forstall is to do what Andy 'Andy-Andy' Rubin did and find another well-paying tech firm that wants him. But only he can decide where he fits best, and I wish him, and Apple the best. But it's too frickin' early--and way too presumptuous--to start calling him the next Steve Jobs.

I'm excited to see Ive tackle UI, too...and how quickly the ripples develop. Interaction Design is a growing field within the Industrial Design world, anyway. It's not outside of his wheelhouse.

 

Huh? Let's not tell people what they can discuss.

Scott used to code, now he is just a manager. Does anyone really think he did any coding in iOS or OSX?

He did what managers do, believe he is right and get the people below him to do what they are told.

A manager just needs to know how he wants it to look and perform and I think that Ive will be able to easily fit that role.

 

The coding team must be relieved that Forstall is off and they are being placed in charge of a calm and collected guy with better people skills and ideas.

 

Are you implying that every problem at Apple is Cook's fault and no one should ever be fired? This is Cook stepping up. Putting Ive in charge of software and hardware design shows true leadership. It's a brave move for Cook. He's putting the best designer I know in the world in charge of all design at Apple, where he should be. That's a good move. We'll see the results of this decision in iOS 7 - that I'm sure of. I'm excited!

 

Coverage and collaborate are not the same thing. Apple understands that the best design is about making decisions. Decisions MS is too afraid to make. The ultimate compromise for design is thinking you can make a product with no compromises. That's living in a dream world, that, despite Microsoft's ambition, does not exist. Back here on earth the best products will continue to me made by Apple.

 

No, but it seems in this case it probably does. Forstall isn't Jobs, and the Apple of today isn't the Apple of '85.

Maybe he should start an iOS development company and release a Maps.app to sell on the App Store.

 

He's not going to play 3rd fiddle at Google.  Maybe he'll pull a Marissa Mayer and go save a failing company.  Heh...CEO of RIM.

 

More likely to end up as a more successful version of Rubinstein or Gassee.

 One thing to keep in mind.  Ive might not be an engineer in any way.  But Jobs supposedly  wasn't one either.  But he did have something that made him different than most modern inventors or creator of modern tech.  He had a vision.   A while back I mentioned on another site that Microsoft needed someone new to come in and replace Balmer and all those clowns with a new visionary.  Especially with all that has changed in the phone/tablet market.

 Well now that seems to apply to Apple also, (to a certain extent, that will be more evident in the next few years).    The fact that Google and Samsung have stepped up to the plate, and have seemed to many to keep step with Apple in both of those things, speaks volumes.  It has have some people at Apple paying a little to much attention.  

  Remember that Cue showed Jobs the smaller tablets and mentioned how it was something they needed to consider.    Also now, you here that one of that most appealing benefit of the A TV was the mirroring of whatever your iPhone/iPad view on the TV.   But now, all of a sudden the Mirocast available on Jelly Bean can seemingly do the same thing.  

 Apple was supposed to be about 3-5 years ahead of all competitors.   A lot of people doubt that now.

 

  So now Apple is in need (or will be evident soon) of a new visionary of where they can differentiate themselves with whatever they come up now or some new things.   Perhaps they need another guy with a 'Reality Distortion Field' frame of mind.   Can that be Ive?   It may have to be.  One thing that makes him the prime candidate is that he knows how to make things 'look' different.  And more important more appealing and something that people will be willing to pay more for.  

  You have to believe that Ive's team has probably got a lot of ideas they wanted to use with the Liquid Metal stuff.  Perhaps Forstall kept fighting that.

  There will come a day soon when the subsidies for the iPhone will start to dry up and Apple will not make the amounts of money that they have been making.    

  They should be alright by then anyway.   Surely Google will have the HTC's & Samsung's broke by then convincing them to give their hardware away for free since they do that with Software.

Tim could worse than getting Jon Rubinstien back in the fold.

The real reason Forstall is out, is his dire dress sense. His shirts make Phil Schiller look a sharp dressed man. 

There is a lot more to management than that. A lot more.

 

 

Jony Ive is not known for his "people skills". Though not abrasive, he is reputedly reserved and prefers to work in small groups. The iOS team is rather large. But lest we forget, he is not taking charge of the iOS team. This sounds like a matrix org in the making.

Really?

 

Possibly.  Or Faddell. It's not meant as a criticism when I say Forstall isn't likely to come back and save Apple. It means to say that Steve Jobs was an extraordinary entrepreneur doing something that is by nature extremely hard to succeed at.  Forstall's situation only resembles what happened to Steve in 1985 in the most superficial way. I suppose I should expect that from the forum crowd here. The people and circumstances are otherwise completely dissimilar, and that makes a the difference.

 

That said, if (as some posters allege) Forstall "had a lot of great ideas" for iOS, then he could do well as an innovator/entrepreneur. If not, and he's only capable of advancement through politics and "power grab," then he'll likely join another large tech firm and try to claw his way to the top again. Or he could retire and never work again.

 

This is a ridiculous comment.  The "coders" aren't necessarily the ones who do the work.  Machines can "code," and "coding" isn't necessarily even a creative task.  

What's important are the ideas not the code and Forestall came up with or helped to come up with, most of the ideas behind iOS.  

 

You fairly obviously have a HUGE bias towards "coders" as being some kind of central figures in the creation of things.  They aren't.  

The best "coders" couldn't design a useful UI to save their lives.  

My hope is that you will not stick around to see how wrong you are.

and now guys.... who is going to take the stage for iOS next time ?

Federighi ? His style is ok for OSX demos, but for iOS ?

Maybe he can convince me.

 

...Or Cook in general wanted to drag iOS away from the freaks corner.

Forstall looks very young and kind of a hipster. It could well be that Cook wants to address different segments in a better way. Forstall may not be guy to impress 50+y olds.

 

Still I see Forstalls departure a great loss for Apple. On the other hand who am I to advise Cook what to do. He should have and surely has a plan and knows better than all of us what to do.

Skeuomorphic design can sometimes go a bit too far, a perfect example being the stitching and torn pages on iCal. It's excessive and unnecessary. I don't mind the notebook feel however on Notes. Either way, the user should have some degree of customizability options depending on their preference. Overall though I personally like a consistent UI design and feel.

We won't mention iBooks and how that UI is "borrowed" from another designer/developer.

The distaste I have over the iOS maps thing is that Apple decided to remove applications from my device (add YouTube to this list). That isn't cool with me. It's doubly uncool that it's an unfinished product and doesn't have some of the same features as Google Maps.

Truly, there's no need to apologize for it. An apology is for the most part worthless. Just fix it and get out the fix quickly. I see Forstall as the type of guy that doesn't apologize for anything regardless, and with Cook being a guy who is apparently driven by a lot of passion, I can see how their personalities conflict.

though forstall is no jobs, apple met with quiet jubilation after jobs left apple. jobs was PIA at apple at the time.

 

Since you repeatedly put "coders" and "coding" in quotes, I'm curious what you mean by statements like:

 

 

 

 

What?

Edited by Tallest Skil - 10/30/12 at 2:30pm

You know, I was also thinking in that direction.

Tim hasn't got Jobs' confidence. In his trial CEO stints, he had Jobs to look over his shoulder. Now he is on his own. And i think he is not too comfortable in that role. His iMap apology was overdone, and he broke Apple's regular product refresh cycle for iPad to steal the thunder from Google and MS, even if he had iPad Mini already. Job's Apple didn't care about what others were doing. Job's Apple was doing their thing and let others worry about what Apple is doing.

I'm wondering if Tim really is Jobs' choice, or was he board's choice. I know that Jobs did (officially) welcome Tim's election, but that can also mean that he didn't want to create bigger problems (than his departure already created), by opposing Tim's election. First of, he loved Apple, and second, he had other things to deal with.

Who can say that Scott wasn't, actually, Jobs' intimate choice for succession? And that Tim wasn't feeling threatened by Scott to such level that he used first available excuse to cut him? Or that Scott didn't try to stage some sort of coup in order to claim his "birthright"? Even the fact that Tim made Scott his advisor might mean nothing else than "keep friends close, and enemies closer".

This is not only about who is douche, this is about who is best for Apple. Jobs was douche and hardly loved by everyone, but he was capable. Only time will tell if Tim is the best for the Apple, or is he here to protect interests of specific group of people (someone Jobs was capable of keeping in check), which are not Apple's best interests... and if Scott was not sacked for trying to prevent that from happening..?

 

What like contacts and ical. Please....

Thank god Ive is now in charge as iOS was going down the pan. At least with a European in charge there should be much better design standards and quality control. It doesn't matter about whether or not he is a software designer it matters that he knows about design after all he made Apple what it is today, in many ways just as much as Jobs did.

 

There is no possible explanation that you can give that would explain why you could believe this. 

 

Go away.

What is wrong with you?

Look, the maps app is crap, and it should never have been released. Apple should have worked with Google to bring turn by turn to the Google maps app on the iPhone, we know they are capable since Android has it. The Apple app will probably never have street view, and will never be as accurate as Google maps. Apple isn't a mapping company, and never will be.

And the iPhone 4 has an antenna problem. It's real, I've seen it happen myself - it happens whenever you bridge the case sections, which you do if you're holding the phone to your ear normally.

Apple makes some great stuff. But they're not perfect, they screw up sometimes. And these two things were big ones. Suck it up, and accept that.

Wrong.

 

Google wouldn't let Apple have that.

 

Good.

 

 

Said of Google, by Yahoo!, in 2004. 

 

 

Can't wait to laugh at this in a year.

 

 

Nope.

So does Ive now have software teams reporting to him? His bio in Apple's website says he provides "leadership and direction". Do these HI teams actually report to him or do they report to Federighi and just consult with Ive?

SPECULATION: But he also could have been fired because he misrepresented the readiness of Maps and/or Siri to Cook and other higher ups.  He might have been gambling that his engineers could fix the shortcomings he was well aware of in time for the scheduled release date.  

Or he might have had a little too much disdain for the customers and thought that Maps was good enough for them.

Or he might just be a destructive presence within the corporate culture and as others have said "wore out his welcome."

Or he might have taken to playing Die Antwoord at 120 dB in the engineering lab all day long resulting in engineers involuntarily skeuomorphing.

Whatever the real reason, we'll most likely never know.

That story from the front is a total bs.

Look at it a bit deeper. A decision like this is not made overnight.

Gosh, he didn't need to wait the official shipment date of a product to know the Maps won't work well! In May 2012, Forstall cashes in 95% of his Apple shares, worth some $36 million or so.
Hey, 95%! What that tells you? He's leaving the boat.

iOS 6 features were nailed down long before the product was shipped, and the decision to switch from Google maps to Apple's own was a strategic move from the very beginning of iOS 6 development plans, a calculated risk and the CEO has blessed it. Perhaps even enticed it.

Now, why would Forestall apologise for the 'blunder' of Maps? First of all, only CEO of the company has to apologise publicly, he or she is company's public voice -- not some VP no one knows about.

But as a VP and a head of the iOS development, I bet Forstall was against such a move at that stage of the iOS 6 application development -- because he knew that for such application to function well a huge engineering infrastructure is required, which Apple has only partially completed. He'd need pushing engineers from different depts.

So what the consequences will be? Knowing it, and being a perfectionist himself, he probably didn't support such decision -- it's his department that must take responsibility and shame for company's own strategic agenda. So he knew that well ahead, and prepared himself.

The whole MAP app thing is a smokescreen, a total bs. And that decision could be just one of many company compromises that, in his mind, should never happen. Perhaps he is of SJ's own mentality -- and wanted to push other departments too to deliver results in time, like SJ would, and refused to be 'calm and peaceful'. So perhaps, he decided to stop pushing, stop arguing in the new climate of the company, and turn another page in his life.

Forstall himself weights now as much as some countries' premium lottery jackpot! He can do whatever he wishes. I wish him luck.

Tim Cook is ten times any of the executives that were in charge after Jobs left.

And that is alarming because Jobs love to work with the best. Looks like Tim doesn't.

 

Why not start from his first stint as CEO?

you make some good points here...some of which i've been pondering for about 2-3 years now.  The next big thing from Apple is What?  And I think I know where they could go that would really Shake things up, but they need to do a LOT of revolutionizing in the way the company feels about internet based services.

 

To me, the Cell phone industry is sadly clinging to voice/text services, when it's obvious things are going to go all digital in the future.  I think it's time that Apple starts to think about the longevity of voice/text services.  They already have broken the seal with iMessage and Facetime.  It won't be too long before (i predict) we see Apple drop Voice and text completely from the iPhone and just go all Cellular Data with all services.  Sure, that's going to piss off a lot of people in the cell industry, but so did dropping the ODD and HDD.  If anyone is going to do it', Apple will probably do it first. Sure, it will probably be something like Google Voice at first, with some limitations, but I think it's totally going to shake-up the Cellular industry for the better.

 

The Next thing I really wish Apple would focus on is internet services.  It's been the "Achillies Heel" of the compnay for over 10+ years and they really need to compete.  Siri, Maps, iTunes Sync, iCloud are getting better and do have great UI's, but Search is the backbone of those technologies, and they're still relying heavily on 3rd parties to help them out.  They're about 5-8 years behind all the other search giants.  If they really want to compete and keep customers using their products they need to conquer that Everest.  It HAS TO HAPPEN.  If they spent $1B of the over $100B they have in the bank, I wish it be for hiring an army to tackle the internet services and Search.

 

The 3rd thing I'd love to see them do is tackle Photography.  Right now, it's arguable that the iPhone camera is the best point-and-shoot camera out there.  However, If you took that camera and made it a stand-alone P&S...I think it's very likely it would not receive the same glowing reviews.  In fact, I think serious camera review sites would probably give it a "pass" or at best that it has a few really nice features but is no more than a toy.  I have a Nikon 7MP camera from 2005 that's smaller than the iPhone and has a much better image quality to the photos taken.  I'd say the only thing the iPhone camera does better is the new Panorama feature, and the simplicity of the UI.  If the iPhone Camera wasn't integrated into an iOS device, it would be pretty pathetic.

 

After reading that Jobs had a vision to "revolutionize" the photography industry, that made me really excited.  I'd love to see a dedicated iOS camera.  Just give me great image quality, ease of use, up-loadable instantly to iCloud or Flicker/Twitter/Facebook and I'm hooked.  I could care less about a camera that was fully integrated into my phone.  I have no problem carrying a camera and my phone.  The only way Apple is going to improve the photo quality of their current camera is A) get a MUCH BIGGER image sensor, and B)install a MUCH BIGGER Lens.  Since we've seen the iPhone & iPod Touches only getting smaller, I can only see one solution to this issue.  Make a dedicated iCamera.  I think the DSLR industry has proved that it's not for everyone, but the Compact SLR is a new industry, or at least coming back now from a 20 year hibernation.  People want DSLR quality photos from a Point and Shoot.  Problem is, there is not technology out there that replicates it well in a slim body.  If anyone can do it, Apple can.  I dream of a day that I can buy an iCamera that was as simple to use and took as great a photos as my '79 Nikon EM.  It was great, Apeture Priority only, Focus, shoot.  That's it!  No flash required, just a steady hand and a beautifully big lens.  Sorry gang, the iPhone Camera just doesn't cut it.  It's great in a pinch when the battery dies on my Nikon, or when I'm out and want to take a quick snap on the go...but Cameras should last longer than the life of a phone.  Leica as the right idea.  Make it built to last a lifetime.  I sure hope Jonny Ive is learning something from his time with Leica.

 

If they thought of the iPod as more than just a massive storage and playback media device and added recording of media to the device, they might just have a 2nd life for the line.  But I'm sure if there is such a thing as an iCamera in Team Ive's nest, it will be something totally new and different.

 

BTW, does anyone know what the camera is on Apple iMac Site?  There's a image of the iMac conneted to a massive RAID hard drives and on the left is a camera that looks like it has a Leica badge on it, but I've never seen that model before?  Anyone know what I'm talking about?

 

Anyway, just figured I'd throw in my 2 cents on where I think Apple could go.  I still think Jobs had a few ideas that he's only shared with a select few that we haven't seen yet.  If anything, he did a really good job of preparing the company to move forward now that he's gone.  I see it the wisdom of choosing Cook as CEO more and more each month that passes.  Not sure if Jobs would've fired Forstall, but I think only Jobs could control a guy like him, or so i've read.

Edited by antkm1 - 10/30/12 at 7:51pm

I don't particularly insult people personally, so I decided not to do it.

 

For your information, I consider the fact that you just wrote my antenna issues with iPhone 4 were "made up bullshit" as a personal insult, as you just called me a liar, and a bad one at that.

In a world (happily) gone by, I'd have gotten the choice of weapons over that.