Put simply, the iPhone was a hugely botched product introduction for Apple on at least four fronts: launch-day logistical nightmares, antenna-gate, much-anticipated white model not ready, and production bottlenecks combined with poor demand forecasting. (The fact that the product is so far the largest seller for Apple is not very relevant. It should - and could - have been an even bigger seller.)
It was stunningly poor execution for a company that has been good at it in the past.
It is only fitting that the person in charge of the product take responsibility. Jobs at performance-oriented firms like Apple are not sinecures. I am glad that Apple is sending a clear signal that it will hold its managers accountable.
Yes, so botched. Let's see. How many CEM's today can "claim" to have moved 3 million product units into consumers hands in mere days that in fact INCLUDE depending on a THIRD party's sh*t infrastructure in order to PROPERLY operate? Right. You can't because it's unprecedented. Who in their right mind would expect such a launch of a product type of this calibor to go off without issues? Even multiple issues? No one except this guy.
My i4 has worked great from day 1.
But... Ask anyone I know.. When Apple chose to do business with AT&T I thought this relationship would harm Apples image... Those of us stuck with other AT&T products like home phone service or the BS Uverse know full well that AT&T and Apple are strange bedfellows. AT&T is by far a substandard, strife ridden company that is trying to toast it's loyal employees for the sake of newer lowered paid people and outsourced overseas workers.
Most of us level headed people know that Apple's dependence on a third party company like AT&T was a customer service nightmare for... Apple.
I'm in Hollywood Calif. And even today, today there are still spots here in this city that have NO AT&T signal service at all.
To imply that AT&T is not a major party to the faults in the functionality of the iPhones is lame to say the least.
Let's face it. No telecom company in the U.S. Runs a respectable business model that favors consumers. Sorry but Apples only mistake was getting involved with these corporate thieves and now they are getting burned and it hurts.
It had been rumored that Apple would use it's capital to run it's own cell network, perhaps now that wasn't such a bad idea after all.
Is it just me or was it a dumb idea to hire a guy from IBM for anything much less to run your most profitable division? Didn't IBM fail miserably at making PCs? They did make a really decent laptop loved by geeks and they turn around and sell it to Lenovo.
Thinkpads were absolutely HUGE in the corporate space... It was a benchmark of kinds.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pauldfullerton
Wake up America! It is primarily an AT&T problem...
Maybe Papermaster got axed because he did not handle the relationship (technical and otherwise) with AT&T as well as he could have, leading to a PR fiasco (whether justified or not) in Apple's very own backyard.
Apple as a company let this product out the door. did they do no testing? they are all to blame for this fiasco. Jobs stamps everything doesn't he? oh right, he claims the successes, somebody else gets the failures....
Do you actually have an iPhone 4? What disaster? It's the best phone out there! Ok I live in Europe and don't have to deal with third world carriers that might be the difference.
Is it just me or was it a dumb idea to hire a guy from IBM for anything much less to run your most profitable division? Didn't IBM fail miserably at making PCs? They did make a really decent laptop loved by geeks and they turn around and sell it to Lenovo.
Nah, IBM made great PCs until the end. They just saw the handwriting on the wall: margins on PC hardware sales were dropping. They got out of the PC business because they were spending the same amount of effort (or even more) and getting less from it.
In a similar vein, they also abandoned the cut-throat hard disk business; if I recall correctly, they sold this business off to Hitachi.
IBM still sells computer hardware, but it's the enterprise market (like blade servers) and most of the draw is tied to professional services.
What I do not understand is why somebody like Papermaster an expert with microprocessors, who was with IBM for 26 years would leave to join a mercurial company like Apple. No matter how talented he may have been, Apple is a totally different company and this guy was a 100% IBMer who spent all his time in Texas! It would have been different if this guy had a history of working with multiple companies, locations, etc even if was with IBM.
Yes, money could have been a reason, but as senior VP with IBM is was making a ton of money and is probably rich with their fancy stock plan. Anyway, if he got Apple stock in the last 2 years, he may have made a lot of money too on the average.
He would be a bad fit for HP too... they need somebody who understand services, applications... not just hardware.
I think I spot the flaw in this argument: all of it
You'd be more convincing if you care to elaborate.
Please make an effort to understand what I wrote one more time. You may find out that I am not making statements as to whether there is or there isn't a flaw, but simply noting that, if there was a flaw, Apple's actions would not have been much different from what I listed.
Also, your comment regarding the soundness of my argument is entirely off topic in this thread.
Do you actually have an iPhone 4? What disaster? It's the best phone out there! Ok I live in Europe and don't have to deal with third world carriers that might be the difference.
LOL I am in the "third world" and early indications from those importing the iPhone 4 is that the death grip cannot be replicated here, at least in major cities and towns.
What I do not understand is why somebody like Papermaster an expert with microprocessors, who was with IBM for 26 years would leave to join a mercurial company like Apple. No matter how talented he may have been, Apple is a totally different company and this guy was a 100% IBMer who spent all his time in Texas! It would have been different if this guy had a history of working with multiple companies, locations, etc even if was with IBM.
Yes, money could have been a reason, but as senior VP with IBM is was making a ton of money and is probably rich with their fancy stock plan. Anyway, if he got Apple stock in the last 2 years, he may have made a lot of money too on the average.
He would be a bad fit for HP too... they need somebody who understand services, applications... not just hardware.
Well Apple was being ultra picky, as they usually are... It was always tough to fill the role.
Imagine who could replace Steve Jobs. That answer is pretty much: no one.
What I do not understand is why somebody like Papermaster an expert with microprocessors, who was with IBM for 26 years would leave to join a mercurial company like Apple. No matter how talented he may have been, Apple is a totally different company and this guy was a 100% IBMer who spent all his time in Texas! It would have been different if this guy had a history of working with multiple companies, locations, etc even if was with IBM.
Yes, money could have been a reason, but as senior VP with IBM is was making a ton of money and is probably rich with their fancy stock plan. Anyway, if he got Apple stock in the last 2 years, he may have made a lot of money too on the average.
He would be a bad fit for HP too... they need somebody who understand services, applications... not just hardware.
Again, as someone else pointed out, not all ex-IBMers fail at Apple. Tim Cook is a great example of an ex-IBMer who has flourished at Apple. While I believe that the differences in corporate cultures put more of a questionmark of ex-IBMers at Apple, by no means is it the death sentence.
I still think that Papermaster is talented enough to find a high-level position in a company that isn't International Business Machines. HP might be that company. Will he be CEO? I don't know, but he's certainly qualified and successful at being a senior hardware engineering manager.
HP wouldn't put Papermaster in a CEO role anyhow. The guy has never led a company. It's one thing for Papermaster to jump up to a startup or medium sized company CEO position. The HP CEO position is not like that. There are very few people qualified to do the job. HP has already struck out twice (Fiorina and Hurd).
Rubinstein proved at Palm that he is not CEO material.
I somewhat disagree with you. It was the former CEO of Palm, before Rubinstein, who ran into the dirt and left to go to Elevation. He was also the one who said that Apple won't just come into this business and dominate. He left Rubinstein holding the bag.
Rubinstein was the primary leader behind WebOS. Some can very reasonably argue it is the best mobile OS. The only black mark against him is that he was apart of the camp who thought the iPod shouldn't go touch which was a colossal mistake.
Ah, so many would-be soothsayers squatted around the fire pit. After burning the entrails of Papermaster to ashes, all they have to show for it is a lot of smoke.
Whoever thinks that papermaster is going to take up a major position at a tech company (such as CEO or head of product development) is crazy. He has a cloud hanging over his head. He is already known in the media, in a few hours, as the "guy responsible for the iPhone antenna issue" whether it's true or not regardless if you think there is an antenna issue.
No board is going to vote him in as a CEO and whoever hires him now will either get negative press or have many questions to answer regarding Papermaster's time at Apple. Right now it's best for him to sit back and let the heat cool down.
I somewhat disagree with you. It was the former CEO of Palm, before Rubinstein, who ran into the dirt and left to go to Elevation. He was also the one who said that Apple won't just come into this business and dominate. He left Rubinstein holding the bag.
Rubinstein was the primary leader behind WebOS. Some can very reasonably argue it is the best mobile OS. The only black mark against him is that he was apart of the camp who thought the iPod shouldn't go touch which was a colossal mistake.
I won't dispute the merits of webOS and Jon's contributions to that project but the fact of the matter is the guy was at the helm when the boat hit the iceberg. Rubinstein accepted the role of CEO: no one put a gun to his head. Either he knew about the company's dire position and still went for it and plainly failed, or he naively took the job showing a notable lack of analysis of the seriousness of the situation and his ability to handle it. Either way, he failed miserably.
Another strike against Rubinstein: he said that he had never used an iPhone. You are running a smartphone company and you don't even bother to spend any effort in competitive analysis by testing the dominant player in the market? That reeked of a complete lack of business sense. Jon might be a great engineering manager, but this comment alone showed a complete lack of business knowledge. He was at Palm when Apple wasn't a smartphone player and then let Apple overtake Palm, never once even touching the device that was pummeling his company. Palm had no respect for the competition and the competition just blew right past them.
Perhaps most damning was Palm's cat-and-mouse game with iTunes device spoofing, resulting in a disastrous instability in the end user experience. Will it sync or not? One day yes, another day no. Guess what? Palm was wrong. They complained to the USB group and they got rightfully told to shut their traps. That whole episode showed a blatant disregard for the customer; it was a testosterone-fueled p-ssing contest between Palm and Apple. Palm got smacked silly. This more than anything else showed the world that Rubinstein was not cut out to be CEO. That wasn't an artifact of the previous regime. That was Rubinstein's doing.
The Palm board of directors should have fired the entire senior management team after that debacle.
You'd be more convincing if you care to elaborate.
Please make an effort to understand what I wrote one more time. You may find out that I am not making statements as to whether there is or there isn't a flaw, but simply noting that, if there was a flaw, Apple's actions would not have been much different from what I listed.
Also, your comment regarding the soundness of my argument is entirely off topic in this thread.
LOL. First of all, when is responding to a post considered "off topic"? You posted it, so it's fair game. Don't arbitrarily apply the "off topic card" to criticism of your post.
Here's what your "argument" boils down to: If A then B. B is true. Therefore A must be true. In this case, A = "there is a flaw" and B = "Apple would take these 5 actions". That's a logical fallacy. And it proves nothing.
Congratulations. I've given your unsound arguments more of my time & attention than it rightfully deserves. You should be honored that I took the time, just for you
The news immediately stoked speculation that Papermaster's departure might be connected to the negative media attention devoted to the iPhone 4 antenna, but Apple did not indicate whether Papermaster left on his own accord or was asked to leave.
I'd have thought that the culprit was Jon Ive as VP for Industrial Design, has Papermaster made a scapegoat instead?
I won't dispute the merits of webOS and Jon's contributions to that project but the fact of the matter is the guy was at the helm when the boat hit the iceberg. Rubinstein accepted the role of CEO: no one put a gun to his head. Either he knew about the company's dire position and still went for it and plainly failed, or he naively took the job showing a notable lack of analysis of the seriousness of the situation and his ability to handle it. Either way, he failed miserably.
Another strike against Rubinstein: he said that he had never used an iPhone. You are running a smartphone company and you don't even bother to spend any effort in competitive analysis by testing the dominant player in the market? That reeked of a complete lack of business sense. Jon might be a great engineering manager, but this comment alone showed a complete lack of business knowledge. He was at Palm when Apple wasn't a smartphone player and then let Apple overtake Palm, never once even touching the device that was pummeling his company. Palm had no respect for the competition and the competition just blew right past them.
Perhaps most damning was Palm's cat-and-mouse game with iTunes device spoofing, resulting in a disastrous instability in the end user experience. Will it sync or not? One day yes, another day no. Guess what? Palm was wrong. They complained to the USB group and they got rightfully told to shut their traps. That whole episode showed a blatant disregard for the customer; it was a testosterone-fueled p-ssing contest between Palm and Apple. Palm got smacked silly. This more than anything else showed the world that Rubinstein was not cut out to be CEO. That wasn't an artifact of the previous regime. That was Rubinstein's doing.
The Palm board of directors should have fired the entire senior management team after that debacle.
I won't disagree with you over The Palm and iTunes situation. It was disgusting to see a company act like children and hacking into a another company's app.
I will say it's unfair of you to blame Rubinstein. Just because a company went under during his tenure doesn't make it his fault. He was put in that situation with no options left. Rubinstein is no Steve Jobs.
As for Rubinstein saying he never used an iPhone, he has to say that. He was the CEO of a company. You can't have the CEO of another company saying he's used a competing product. It is asking for bad press. Ballmer and Gates have said they, and they're families, never used Macs or iPhones but it's funny how much they copy those devices.
I hate to break it to others in this forum but WebOS is the best mobile OS. Apple has an advantage interns of app support and customer trust (which is well-deserved) but WebO still has a ton a features and access that some access that Apple has still not built into the OS.
With the backing of HP, the biggest Windows hardware maker and most popular printer manufacturer, Apple should be concerned.
Android is garbage compared to these two OS's but the average person doesn't know any better.
Comments
Put simply, the iPhone was a hugely botched product introduction for Apple on at least four fronts: launch-day logistical nightmares, antenna-gate, much-anticipated white model not ready, and production bottlenecks combined with poor demand forecasting. (The fact that the product is so far the largest seller for Apple is not very relevant. It should - and could - have been an even bigger seller.)
It was stunningly poor execution for a company that has been good at it in the past.
It is only fitting that the person in charge of the product take responsibility. Jobs at performance-oriented firms like Apple are not sinecures. I am glad that Apple is sending a clear signal that it will hold its managers accountable.
Yes, so botched. Let's see. How many CEM's today can "claim" to have moved 3 million product units into consumers hands in mere days that in fact INCLUDE depending on a THIRD party's sh*t infrastructure in order to PROPERLY operate? Right. You can't because it's unprecedented. Who in their right mind would expect such a launch of a product type of this calibor to go off without issues? Even multiple issues? No one except this guy.
My i4 has worked great from day 1.
But... Ask anyone I know.. When Apple chose to do business with AT&T I thought this relationship would harm Apples image... Those of us stuck with other AT&T products like home phone service or the BS Uverse know full well that AT&T and Apple are strange bedfellows. AT&T is by far a substandard, strife ridden company that is trying to toast it's loyal employees for the sake of newer lowered paid people and outsourced overseas workers.
Most of us level headed people know that Apple's dependence on a third party company like AT&T was a customer service nightmare for... Apple.
I'm in Hollywood Calif. And even today, today there are still spots here in this city that have NO AT&T signal service at all.
To imply that AT&T is not a major party to the faults in the functionality of the iPhones is lame to say the least.
Let's face it. No telecom company in the U.S. Runs a respectable business model that favors consumers. Sorry but Apples only mistake was getting involved with these corporate thieves and now they are getting burned and it hurts.
It had been rumored that Apple would use it's capital to run it's own cell network, perhaps now that wasn't such a bad idea after all.
Is it just me or was it a dumb idea to hire a guy from IBM for anything much less to run your most profitable division? Didn't IBM fail miserably at making PCs? They did make a really decent laptop loved by geeks and they turn around and sell it to Lenovo.
Thinkpads were absolutely HUGE in the corporate space... It was a benchmark of kinds.
Wake up America! It is primarily an AT&T problem...
Maybe Papermaster got axed because he did not handle the relationship (technical and otherwise) with AT&T as well as he could have, leading to a PR fiasco (whether justified or not) in Apple's very own backyard.
Apple as a company let this product out the door. did they do no testing? they are all to blame for this fiasco. Jobs stamps everything doesn't he? oh right, he claims the successes, somebody else gets the failures....
Do you actually have an iPhone 4? What disaster? It's the best phone out there! Ok I live in Europe and don't have to deal with third world carriers that might be the difference.
Antennagate, Bad Publicity, Unfavorable reviews will all assure us of one thing that
IPHONE 5 will be better than ever.
As long as I can resist the temptation (and that's a massive IF) ... I look forward to jumping from my 3GS to iPhone 5.
Then again maybe I can invest my cash more wisely in stuff other than all this Apple gear and madness...
Is it just me or was it a dumb idea to hire a guy from IBM for anything much less to run your most profitable division? Didn't IBM fail miserably at making PCs? They did make a really decent laptop loved by geeks and they turn around and sell it to Lenovo.
Nah, IBM made great PCs until the end. They just saw the handwriting on the wall: margins on PC hardware sales were dropping. They got out of the PC business because they were spending the same amount of effort (or even more) and getting less from it.
In a similar vein, they also abandoned the cut-throat hard disk business; if I recall correctly, they sold this business off to Hitachi.
IBM still sells computer hardware, but it's the enterprise market (like blade servers) and most of the draw is tied to professional services.
Yes, money could have been a reason, but as senior VP with IBM is was making a ton of money and is probably rich with their fancy stock plan. Anyway, if he got Apple stock in the last 2 years, he may have made a lot of money too on the average.
He would be a bad fit for HP too... they need somebody who understand services, applications... not just hardware.
I think I spot the flaw in this argument: all of it
You'd be more convincing if you care to elaborate.
Please make an effort to understand what I wrote one more time. You may find out that I am not making statements as to whether there is or there isn't a flaw, but simply noting that, if there was a flaw, Apple's actions would not have been much different from what I listed.
Also, your comment regarding the soundness of my argument is entirely off topic in this thread.
Do you actually have an iPhone 4? What disaster? It's the best phone out there! Ok I live in Europe and don't have to deal with third world carriers that might be the difference.
LOL I am in the "third world" and early indications from those importing the iPhone 4 is that the death grip cannot be replicated here, at least in major cities and towns.
What I do not understand is why somebody like Papermaster an expert with microprocessors, who was with IBM for 26 years would leave to join a mercurial company like Apple. No matter how talented he may have been, Apple is a totally different company and this guy was a 100% IBMer who spent all his time in Texas! It would have been different if this guy had a history of working with multiple companies, locations, etc even if was with IBM.
Yes, money could have been a reason, but as senior VP with IBM is was making a ton of money and is probably rich with their fancy stock plan. Anyway, if he got Apple stock in the last 2 years, he may have made a lot of money too on the average.
He would be a bad fit for HP too... they need somebody who understand services, applications... not just hardware.
Well Apple was being ultra picky, as they usually are... It was always tough to fill the role.
Imagine who could replace Steve Jobs. That answer is pretty much: no one.
What I do not understand is why somebody like Papermaster an expert with microprocessors, who was with IBM for 26 years would leave to join a mercurial company like Apple. No matter how talented he may have been, Apple is a totally different company and this guy was a 100% IBMer who spent all his time in Texas! It would have been different if this guy had a history of working with multiple companies, locations, etc even if was with IBM.
Yes, money could have been a reason, but as senior VP with IBM is was making a ton of money and is probably rich with their fancy stock plan. Anyway, if he got Apple stock in the last 2 years, he may have made a lot of money too on the average.
He would be a bad fit for HP too... they need somebody who understand services, applications... not just hardware.
Again, as someone else pointed out, not all ex-IBMers fail at Apple. Tim Cook is a great example of an ex-IBMer who has flourished at Apple. While I believe that the differences in corporate cultures put more of a questionmark of ex-IBMers at Apple, by no means is it the death sentence.
I still think that Papermaster is talented enough to find a high-level position in a company that isn't International Business Machines. HP might be that company. Will he be CEO? I don't know, but he's certainly qualified and successful at being a senior hardware engineering manager.
HP wouldn't put Papermaster in a CEO role anyhow. The guy has never led a company. It's one thing for Papermaster to jump up to a startup or medium sized company CEO position. The HP CEO position is not like that. There are very few people qualified to do the job. HP has already struck out twice (Fiorina and Hurd).
You are insane.
Rubinstein proved at Palm that he is not CEO material.
I somewhat disagree with you. It was the former CEO of Palm, before Rubinstein, who ran into the dirt and left to go to Elevation. He was also the one who said that Apple won't just come into this business and dominate. He left Rubinstein holding the bag.
Rubinstein was the primary leader behind WebOS. Some can very reasonably argue it is the best mobile OS. The only black mark against him is that he was apart of the camp who thought the iPod shouldn't go touch which was a colossal mistake.
No board is going to vote him in as a CEO and whoever hires him now will either get negative press or have many questions to answer regarding Papermaster's time at Apple. Right now it's best for him to sit back and let the heat cool down.
I somewhat disagree with you. It was the former CEO of Palm, before Rubinstein, who ran into the dirt and left to go to Elevation. He was also the one who said that Apple won't just come into this business and dominate. He left Rubinstein holding the bag.
Rubinstein was the primary leader behind WebOS. Some can very reasonably argue it is the best mobile OS. The only black mark against him is that he was apart of the camp who thought the iPod shouldn't go touch which was a colossal mistake.
I won't dispute the merits of webOS and Jon's contributions to that project but the fact of the matter is the guy was at the helm when the boat hit the iceberg. Rubinstein accepted the role of CEO: no one put a gun to his head. Either he knew about the company's dire position and still went for it and plainly failed, or he naively took the job showing a notable lack of analysis of the seriousness of the situation and his ability to handle it. Either way, he failed miserably.
Another strike against Rubinstein: he said that he had never used an iPhone. You are running a smartphone company and you don't even bother to spend any effort in competitive analysis by testing the dominant player in the market? That reeked of a complete lack of business sense. Jon might be a great engineering manager, but this comment alone showed a complete lack of business knowledge. He was at Palm when Apple wasn't a smartphone player and then let Apple overtake Palm, never once even touching the device that was pummeling his company. Palm had no respect for the competition and the competition just blew right past them.
Perhaps most damning was Palm's cat-and-mouse game with iTunes device spoofing, resulting in a disastrous instability in the end user experience. Will it sync or not? One day yes, another day no. Guess what? Palm was wrong. They complained to the USB group and they got rightfully told to shut their traps. That whole episode showed a blatant disregard for the customer; it was a testosterone-fueled p-ssing contest between Palm and Apple. Palm got smacked silly. This more than anything else showed the world that Rubinstein was not cut out to be CEO. That wasn't an artifact of the previous regime. That was Rubinstein's doing.
The Palm board of directors should have fired the entire senior management team after that debacle.
You'd be more convincing if you care to elaborate.
Please make an effort to understand what I wrote one more time. You may find out that I am not making statements as to whether there is or there isn't a flaw, but simply noting that, if there was a flaw, Apple's actions would not have been much different from what I listed.
Also, your comment regarding the soundness of my argument is entirely off topic in this thread.
LOL. First of all, when is responding to a post considered "off topic"? You posted it, so it's fair game. Don't arbitrarily apply the "off topic card" to criticism of your post.
Here's what your "argument" boils down to: If A then B. B is true. Therefore A must be true. In this case, A = "there is a flaw" and B = "Apple would take these 5 actions". That's a logical fallacy. And it proves nothing.
Congratulations. I've given your unsound arguments more of my time & attention than it rightfully deserves. You should be honored that I took the time, just for you
The news immediately stoked speculation that Papermaster's departure might be connected to the negative media attention devoted to the iPhone 4 antenna, but Apple did not indicate whether Papermaster left on his own accord or was asked to leave.
I'd have thought that the culprit was Jon Ive as VP for Industrial Design, has Papermaster made a scapegoat instead?
how's that sword?
comfy enough for you?
I won't dispute the merits of webOS and Jon's contributions to that project but the fact of the matter is the guy was at the helm when the boat hit the iceberg. Rubinstein accepted the role of CEO: no one put a gun to his head. Either he knew about the company's dire position and still went for it and plainly failed, or he naively took the job showing a notable lack of analysis of the seriousness of the situation and his ability to handle it. Either way, he failed miserably.
Another strike against Rubinstein: he said that he had never used an iPhone. You are running a smartphone company and you don't even bother to spend any effort in competitive analysis by testing the dominant player in the market? That reeked of a complete lack of business sense. Jon might be a great engineering manager, but this comment alone showed a complete lack of business knowledge. He was at Palm when Apple wasn't a smartphone player and then let Apple overtake Palm, never once even touching the device that was pummeling his company. Palm had no respect for the competition and the competition just blew right past them.
Perhaps most damning was Palm's cat-and-mouse game with iTunes device spoofing, resulting in a disastrous instability in the end user experience. Will it sync or not? One day yes, another day no. Guess what? Palm was wrong. They complained to the USB group and they got rightfully told to shut their traps. That whole episode showed a blatant disregard for the customer; it was a testosterone-fueled p-ssing contest between Palm and Apple. Palm got smacked silly. This more than anything else showed the world that Rubinstein was not cut out to be CEO. That wasn't an artifact of the previous regime. That was Rubinstein's doing.
The Palm board of directors should have fired the entire senior management team after that debacle.
I won't disagree with you over The Palm and iTunes situation. It was disgusting to see a company act like children and hacking into a another company's app.
I will say it's unfair of you to blame Rubinstein. Just because a company went under during his tenure doesn't make it his fault. He was put in that situation with no options left. Rubinstein is no Steve Jobs.
As for Rubinstein saying he never used an iPhone, he has to say that. He was the CEO of a company. You can't have the CEO of another company saying he's used a competing product. It is asking for bad press. Ballmer and Gates have said they, and they're families, never used Macs or iPhones but it's funny how much they copy those devices.
I hate to break it to others in this forum but WebOS is the best mobile OS. Apple has an advantage interns of app support and customer trust (which is well-deserved) but WebO still has a ton a features and access that some access that Apple has still not built into the OS.
With the backing of HP, the biggest Windows hardware maker and most popular printer manufacturer, Apple should be concerned.
Android is garbage compared to these two OS's but the average person doesn't know any better.