Why Bob Mansfield Was Cut From Apple's Executive Team

colinneagle writes "AllThingsD reported that Bob Mansfield, Apple's Senior Vice President of Technologies, has disappeared from the executive management team at Apple. But it was only last October when Mansfield was widely reported to have been convinced to return from retirement by Apple CEO Tim Cook for a two-year stint. His return to the company may have been cut short on account of Apple's continued reliance on Samsung for its mobile SOC processors, for which Apple paid an estimated $10 billion to Samsung last year. Mansfield's group was to have played a major role in this, and apparently it has not been able effect this change."

Another way to look at it

[RetiredMidn]

Mansfield tried to retire in 2012. It's just possible he wanted out again and Tim Cook asked him to stick around and lend his expertise without the management responsibilities. It's the perfect semi-retirement: get rid of the tedious part of the job, work on the fun stuff, and continue to get compensated. I'd jump at an offer like that. Get removed from the management bio page? pfft.

This is tech news now.

[i kan reed]

Talking about who's who at large corporations, and the monetary details of their jobs. I get that it matters, it just bores the hell out of me.

Speculation?

[noh8rz10]

I see nothing in TFAs which support the question in the title or the speculation in the summary. True: BM was re-hired in Oct for continuing hardware work. Informed input: Apple is struggling to move SoC production, but looks like they're stuck with Sammy for the short term. Utter leap of speculation: because of this, BM was fired. wtf? leave the speculation to the ACs, please.

Wow, just wow

[RedBear]

How the hell this qualifies as any kind of news is beyond me. This appears to be someone's tech blog where he's basically just talking out of his ass and pulling suppositions out of thin air, about something that just happened like 24 hours ago. Suppositions which by the way are not confirmed by the only further piece of information we have, which is the statement from Apple that Mansfield will be working on special projects. He was already announced to be retiring last year and was convinced to stay on a temporary basis. Why on earth would Apple hold one executive responsible for the failure of a third-party company to effectively compete with Samsung in making chips? It's just--I can't--what?

This article is full of all kinds of fail. How about we wait a couple of days until someone actually has some factual news to report? Why the fuck is everybody and his brother jumping all over this guy all of the sudden? I expect this sort of thing from Mac _RUMORS_, but here? What the hell, Slashdot?

Re:Another way to look at it

[sl4shd0rk]

It's just possible he wanted out again

It's also possible that he was happily retired and really didn't like Apple all that much but decided he'd come back for a while to help out an old friend.
        Or...
He was getting kind of bored in retirement and it sounded like a fun way to spend some free time but then he realized he had forgotten how much corporate drama bullshit there was at Apple and now he's changed his mind.
        Or...
Samsung wants him to come to work for them in Korea and this conflicts with Timmy boy's vision.

Just sayin.. As long as we're postulating... that road goes both ways. It's exciting how projection works, eh?