Tony Fadell: Recently ousted Forstall 'got what he deserved' - Page 2

 

I agree for the most part, but I think all this talk of a "controlled" Forestall kind of misses the mark a bit.  What we want is a more mature Forestall, not a more controlled Forestall. Since when are any "controlled" workers, really productive workers?  Especially in creative endeavours.  

 

By all accounts, Forestall (at his worst) behaves much like Steve Jobs did in Apple's early days when he was an immature, angry egomaniac.  IMO it was his years in the wilderness and the spectacular "failure" of being fired that started Steve Jobs on the path to being a more mature, rounded individual.  If Forestall wants to be like Steve Jobs, he needs to focus on the lessons of "Steve Jobs 2.0" not 1.0.  He needs to grow up.  He needs to relax.  He probably needs some time away from it all.  

 

If all goes well, he might even come back in ten years and be a whole new person just like his mentor. 

 

Hopefully not just in time to save Apple.

Yeah, I'm a bit nervous that Scott Forstall is gone. The media seems to be giving him a lot of crap. "Mr. Skeuomorph is gone now." "The tyrant is gone now. Rejoice!"

Call me crazy, but I like tasteful skeuomorphism and more than one person would have called Steve Jobs a tyrant.

I'm very nervous. Scott Forstall wasn't just some chump; he was Steve Jobs' hand-picked leader of iOS development.

Fadell is the guy who gave us the iPod OS, but he lost out to Forstall when Forstall's team was able to deliver iPhone OS. I'm very nervous.

Love all the armchair-Apple employees in here who worked so closely with these guys.

 

It just may be Scott Forstall behaved himself when Steve Jobs was around and now that he's not, Scott's running amuck. This happens all the time after a mentor leaves and the apprentice attempts (assumes) to fill those shoes; usually by treating others with contempt as underlings. 

I tend to think that if his contributions were seen as that critical, he'd have many more supporters at Apple speaking up. (and maybe he does internally) That said, a little part of me wonders what will happen next.

 

I also don't mind a little bit of skeuomorphic design if it's tastefully done and adds to the user experience, but under no circumstances do I want time spent on unnecessary window dressing when there are more serious things broken or falling behind with the OS. You can put sprinkles on a stale, half-baked cookie, but it's still a stale, half-baked cookie.

FWIW, Fadell and Forstall offered competing OS solutions for the iPhone and they had very different approaches. Had Fadell's been chosen, the iPhone would not be the OS X- based pocket computer it is today.

Not saying that to discredit Fadell; just saying they were rivals at Apple regardless of how they felt about each other personally.

Scott would never praise Android. See Concern Troll.

Self love... the best kind.

I believe it is great wanking.

We comment as if we are gods and we are the better and every one else is inferior.

Yes we know best and everyone else is an idiot.

Steve Jobs was ousted once...

 

I'm not personally saying Forstall was "da man" for Apple's future - I have no real idea, however, the overall impression I get from all the reportage is that he was acting like he was without the title whether he had the quals to be or not.  And tails that try to wag dogs in big orgs often get their comeuppance. 

But to summarize his negative qualities with the word "disruptive".....?  Yeah, when did Apple ever benefit from that quality......???  

 

When an iconic founder/CEO leaves the org they willed into being against the odds, having the rest of "the staff" sit around in a happy unified circle singing Kumbayh is not necessarily a formula for continuing success.

My grade on the current team is an "incomplete" (with a few semi-botched mid-term assignments) until Apple releases its next device that's more than a mere iteration on the ones Jobs made real.   All markets mature and become saturated with good enough (or arguably better) versions.

Apple's whole upward thrust has been based on creating major markets for things people didn't even know they wanted until Apple rolled them out.  Resting on laurels and peace in the board room won't cut it in the long run.

And remember there would've been no Mac (and therefore no OS X, iPod, iTunes, iPhone, iPad, et al) if the company president in the early 80's hadn't holed himself and a team up in an area marked with a Skull and Crossbones flag to create it - with little support from the clinging-to-the-Apple II-board.
 

 

Reading the entrails - like any other detached rumor commentor, I also have at least a small sense of dis-ease about some recent developments. 

Fadell was ousted. He wanted to push Linux as if it had a shot at Apple. Being from NeXT and Apple let me put it this way: MkLinux was used to get Openstep boot loaded onto Mac PowerPC hardware and that is where it ended. The fact Fadell even thought Linux over the XNU [Mach Hybrid] shows just out of touch he was and misunderstood the history of Steven P. Jobs.

Yes, Scott is an aquired taste. If you thought he was abrasive worth calling out as a complete a-hole I can personally attest when you do that to him and you can back up what you have to say the guy showed nothing but respect for you from then on out. I had one confrontation with Scott and once he knew my backbone I never saw him remotely attempt to push himself as an alpha male over me again. He respected strong constitutions. He was less tolerant than I on those that don't have it and less artful in his language to put a person in their place [if warranted] but the man was highly respected for his intelligence.

I would submit that there seems to be a lot of whining about Scott's overbearing personality and not enough acceptance of whimpy personalities on behalf of other Apple executives who should have had no problem telling him off when he crossed the line. If he was this much of a disruption it is not hard to have dropped kicked his butt years ago.

Fortunately, we have Scott with enough brains to use OS X Darwin for the embedded space and the clear blind spot of Faddell for even wasting Jobs time on Linux. He and I are the same age. He arrived after I had left Apple and clearly he never got the memo that the attempts of getting Torvalds interested on working on a new kernel didn't end well when he pushed for Linux.

P.S. I'm writing this on Debian Linux which has steadily deteriorated over the past 5 years along with the stability of the Linux Kernel since the 3.x releases. When FreeBSD 10 arrives my systems are moving over to it.

That's a very interesting read. Forstall was put head-to-head against Fadell and developed iOS with just 15 other engineers and they tried to poach talent for each project. I'm glad they went with OS X and not iPod OS. It explains why Fadell feels the way he does if his last encounters with Forstall were ones of bitter competition.

It could be but that wouldn't explain Rubinstein and Fadell who were gone long before. It seems more like there's been a long history of bad feelings and it's just spilled over. Steve might have been able to sort it out but Tim has a different nature. We can see that from the apologies he sends out to customers. I think he would have tried to reach the scenario that stopped the complaints. That's not always the right way of course but it's his decision to make.

One thing I know for sure is that upcoming keynotes are going to be even less entertaining than they are now. I wonder if he'll make a last appearance before he leaves next year. He's been there for 15 years. Then on stage, he can just burst into tears and ask if he can stay. The whole world is watching, what are they going to do? They have to just all hug it out and everyone can get back to doing what they love doing. Get Fadell and Rubinstein in on it too and put the past behind them. They're all millionaires and successful in their own right, there's no need for this.

It just goes to show that only Steve was able to handle these personalities. The current executive are not smart enough to put someone like Forstall in his place. Notice these issue did not exist when Steve was around. Also as soon as Tim Cook was put in place he immediately put in a layer of management between him and people like Forstall, why, because he does not know how to deal with these overly creative technical people. Steve did since he was just like them.

 

I personally think this is bad for apple, they will bounce all these types and only be left with the sheeps.

You cabbit
You cannot control narcissists or sociopaths. They may be suppressed under "superior sociopaths" but that's about the best of it.

Edit: thanks for inserting your code in the middle of my typing. I wasn't calling anyone a cabbit, whatever that is.

Exactly right. I don't know and more about Jobs being a sociopath or a narcissist than Forstall, but there are lots of indicators in both cases, more with Jobs. Maybe he found his way with family near the end, but his reputation is well known in the business world. He's not a god or even particularly genius. He was very controlling and the computer industry is anything but controlled and guided. So maybe that worked. His ideas and ideologies for technology weren't geek oriented. Having the ability to force others into that path was good for the industry. My concern of his demise is that (aside from leaving a family without him) the control and non-geek ideologies needed to bring the computer industry out of its dark infancy are not present elsewhere, especially in a position of power and influence that will affect anything.

Or be happy and content with his ability to retire young and live more than comfortably wealthy till he dies. But that kind people are rarely capable of being satiated. That's what helps them climb. Sadly, it also brings them down when they're unwilling to cooperate with those around them they see as stepping stones.

^^
So it's other Apple execs fault that Forstall was a jerk and they didn't put him in his place? From the press release it seems quite obvious that Forstall was a barrier to collaboration. Maybe Mansifeld, Ive, Schiller etc. just wanes to do their jobs an not have to deal with political BS and corporate infighting.

1. So what? He's been gone for over 4 years. Your imagining doesn't make it so.
Apple is a notoriously secret company. Given their penchant for secrecy, you'd have to prove that Tony knows the reason - and his evasiveness and referring to an online blog as his evidence suggests that he doesn't.

2. No one at Apple likes Scott? Really? So you've interviewed every single Apple employee?

3. Your evidence for that is.....??? Again, you interviewed every single employee and found that they're in universal agreement?

The fact is that only a very small number of people know what really happened - and it is unlikely that any of them are posting here.

So was Gil Amelio. What's your point?

Most of us have worked for a "Forstall."

Scott's real contribution was having the guts to push an OSX based mobile OS.

The rest was the team of people that served under him. Many, if not most, are still there.

Not Forstall. He simply did what he knew Jobs liked and went in that direction. had no real vision or leadership of his own other than to be "ruthless," because that's how Steve was sometimes.

For Scott to have released iOS 6 the way it was, that was a big indicator of his own lack of focus. He could have had the team hold back until it was done or at least qualified the release as a beta.

Also, under Scott's watch, the iPhone has adopted some Android conventions that seemed tacked on and a bit unrelated to the rest of the OS from a visual standpoint.

The talent is still at Apple. The guy whipping them is different. That's all.

And from the sounds of things, Ive is giving the UI vision from a central leadership standpoint that the guy holding the whip will merely enforce. and the functionality will only get better from guys who actually care to see things clean and shored up before release.

Can't wait to see Apple get back to "it just works."

Forstall was not the guy for that. He simply repeated Jobs' ideals. That was great when Jobs was around. Sadly, he is not. And this is a new day with new needs. Forstall simply doesn't fit anymore. Things don't source from him. He is great at enforcement. But not sourcing vision.

Gil was just in the way.

 

Sooo... being an unbearable pain in the ass = corporate messiah?

IF ONLY IT WERE THAT EASY.

 

He did save Apple: He brought in exactly what the ailing company needed: a solid new OS and (unwittingly) a great new CEO.

As you can probably tell, I'm sick of the reactionary Forstall-lovefest that's based solely on some SUPERFICIAL reminder of Steve Jobs. "OMG, they both drive silver Mercedes SLs, that means Forstall's gonna come back in ten years and save Apple." PUL-EEZ. Do you people have that poor a grasp of the situation that you believe any fired Apple exec with a silver Mercedes and a bad attitude is the next Steve Jobs?

 

Oh... I didn't say that Gil wasn't a great CEO. He made Spindler look like an idiot (well, actually, Spindler did that all on his own).

 

... but when Steve came back, Gil was just in the way.

Forstall is the only guy that even came close to Steve's presentation skills and personal joy doing said presentations. I'm watching the 2011 iPad 2 presentation now. He is off the hook. And now, languishing because of some political BS within the "new Apple".

Sorry Apple, I really feel this is not how things should go.

Especially since Fadell is coming out of the well-known rift between the iPad and iPod (old) OS.