Shake-up at Apple: Forstall Out; iOS Executive Fired For Maps Debacle? 487
New submitter noh8rz10 writes "Apple's Scott Forstall, who grew iOS from its inception, is departing the company. Rumors say it's because of the Maps debacle, and problems with Siri as well. Jony Ive is taking a larger human interface role, which means he may kill the skeuomorphic interfaces he hates. John Browett, head of retail, is out as well; he never won the trust of the community. What does such a major shakeup say about Tim Cook's leadership?"
Scott Forstall's departure was planned. (Score:5, Informative)
If you check SEC company executive stock records, one can find that Scott Forstall has sold off his Apple Stock options earlier this year, in preparation for a possible departure. His departure has actually been planned for several weeks, but was not announced until today along with the departure of John Browett, who was Sr. VP for Retails operations for Apple.
The current executive reorganization of Mr. Forstall's duties have been spread over several senior Apple executives, distributing responsibilities according to their current function. Read the press release to see the respective changes.
Some people have speculated that Scott Forstall might be the ultimate successor to Steve Jobs, since he came with Steve from NeXT computer back to Apple in 1997. He has been involved in the development of Mac OS X, including heading the Leopard OS development and development of the Aqua user interface in OS X, along with leading the development of iPhone and later iOS system software since 2004.
I don't know what Scott Forstall plans to do, but there is some speculation that he might be involved a project with a former Apple engineer. Needless to say, he probably has a non-compete clause with Apple, he will have respect for a while given his critical involvement with key Apple products like the iPhone, iPad and iOS system software.
I would not be surprised to see Scott come back to Apple sometime in the future, but he has earned a well-earned sabbatical given his recent efforts.
Re:trust of the community???? (Score:4, Informative)
I've heard iphone users complain that they can't get swype and can't get Google Maps or turn-by-turn navigation or any number of things that are on Android...
Re:trust of the community???? (Score:3, Informative)
You can and have been able to get turn-by-turn on iOS for years, just not from the default maps app.
skeuomorphic interfaces (Score:2, Informative)
From Wikipedia: "[Interfaces that emulate] objects in the physical world."
Don't lie and say you knew what that meant. You didn't...
Re:As much as I hate Steve Jobs.... (Score:5, Informative)
Because he had some perfectionist tendencies. That was one thing that set Apple apart from Microsoft - you might not like what they did, but they usually did it thoroughly. That seems to be falling apart a bit.
Sort of like how mobileme worked amazingly well out of the box. Or how about siri working well with accents or just in general with a variety of voices. Same deal with the antennas on the iphone 4. Apple has a fairly long history of hardware issues on their first version of any new hardware. Steve Jobs being a perfectionist didn't prevent this.
Re:trust of the community???? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:trust of the community???? (Score:2, Informative)
I sold computers at one of the largest universities in the continental united states.
Someone's parents blew the computer money on a nice 17" HP laptop from Costco.
They then came in and asked me for the Windows version of Final Cut Pro - and being film majors, Final Cut Pro was an absolute requirement at the time.
I tried very hard not to laugh at them.
I think I succeeded.
Re:trust of the community???? (Score:5, Informative)
i've been working with unix since the early 1980's. almost every engineer i personally know from that era is using a mac. it has nothing to do with being a fanboy... it's about the best non-server unix environment.
Re:Jony Ive should be in charge of everything ther (Score:4, Informative)
If I were Ive I wouldn't budge from my position. He's basically in the heart of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, with any toy, process, tool, material, and workforce he needs to get something done, and essentially no responsibility for some of the more tedious parts of running the business. And now he's got the software side of things, so hopefully we see the end of some of the more...creative...apps and back to something that's more functional.
Re:trust of the community???? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, the story I've heard from fairly authoritative sources is that what Google wanted was the text "Google" on the Maps display so that people knew that the data was coming from Google.
Apple did not like that and it was a deal breaker for them.
Re:The rats are being thrown off the sinking ship. (Score:5, Informative)
You don't understand the first thing about stocks, do you? Of course the pricing of the company will follow all the information about the company, not just the formal quarterly earning announcements.
Amazon, for instance, told everybody that they were spending massive amounts of money in expanding its infrastructure (mostly, building large warehouses near urban areas, instead of shipping from Nevada to San Francisco for instance).
It's not a shenanigan, it's just people quite sensibly pricing the stock to match the news. For instance, Amazon let people know about the expansion plans, the news was widely disseminated and analyzed, etc.
Re:trust of the community???? (Score:1, Informative)
I call bullshit across the board.
Android users need something like Swype because the built in keyboard just sucks ass. I had turn by turn directions on my iPhone before the first Android device hit the market, and you've always been able to use maps.google.com.
You want to try something else?