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Shake-up at Apple: Forstall Out; iOS Executive Fired For Maps Debacle?
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?"
The rats are being thrown off the sinking ship.
This is more like bilge water being pumped out of a ship, after the damage to the hull has been repaired.
[Apple] Steve's gone. Let's turn the page. We'll stop being dicks, no more lawsuits.
[Google] Sounds good. We'll give you maps with turn-by-turn navigation.
What does such a major shakeup say about Tim Cook's leadership?
He is going to lead and hold people accountable?
...that Tim Cook has firmly taken the reins and is going to start running Apple the way he sees fit, with his team - not the team that was there when he took over.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
After reading that, I realized that this was indeed true and in fact there has been an alternate philosphy besides the skeuomorphic design which is the "war on color" in some aspects of OS X (e.g., the flat gray scroll bars, the gray linen background for the virtual desktop manager, even the world map for changing the time zone). So, now I'm wondering if the skeuomorphic faction led by Forstall has lost the debate, was Ive and the other minimalist design people behind the "war on color" and if that's true, is that what we'll see in future versions of the OS with Ive leading the interface design? I'm not sure how I feel about that, I really don't like using an OS that is drab and boring, it's depressing (I actually liked Aqua for the most part, which was also Forstall's invention I guess). Either way, it's good to know that Apple isn't afraid of rocking the boat still. That skeuomorphic crap might have been good for increasing everyone's vocabulary with regards to interface design, but it was annoying as hell to use.
Now, if only Apple would admit they screwed up the document versioning system beyond repair and give us a proper "Save As..." since the dawn of the computer (or thereabouts) I would consider Apple as having fully realized the error of their ways and moving decidedly in a less terrible direction. But alas, Federhigi is still in charge and they haven't brought Serlet back from retirement unfortunately.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
Indeed. The maps fiasco is more like something that came out of Redmond than out of Apple. I can well imagine Ballmer going "So it doesn't work? Well fuck it. Release it anyways." Basically he's done that on a few occasions. But Jobs, egomaniacal control freak that he was, would never have allowed it to go to production like that.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Never under estimate the value of eye candy.
Skeuomorphic is not eye-candy, it's an obsolete approach that was never pretty to start with. Not sure if the colored squares in Metro or the 2-color palette in Office 2013 and VS 2012 are the answer but at least it does not look like korean cars fake wood panels.
lucm, indeed.
So you'd rather have the OS chew up cycles than let the apps have them?
You have any idea how fast a modern computer is? An icore7 has 70,000 mips (millions of instructions per second!) For a comparison the 1984 Mac had 3 mips. Your computer you are reading this on is 20,000 faster than the first successful graphical computer.
Now lets talk about the GPU. I do not have hardcore numbers like I did with the CPU but 10 to 100s of billions of pixels rendering a second has been the norm for years and this is true even for a crappy intel integrated graphics.
In 1990 yes, your argument made sense as 8 colors could substancely lower the cost and increase the performance of your system. Today 32-bit graphics use 16.7 million graphics per pixel! This is regular standard Windows 7 colors as designers on workstations use up to 48-bit.
So I want my AERO, compiz, and pretty eye candy since I have this awesome supercomputer and it is asthetically pleasing much the same way of having nice interior does not signficiantly slow down the performance of your car due to the extra 7 pounds it adds. I love text that flows smoothly on my Android phone and hate how browsers are choppy on a full powered desktop unless I go in and tweak the 3d settings and smooth scrool. Though, Firefox and IE 10 are getting better.
I like the current system because it is what I am used too as well and see no need to replace it. Only difference is I use Google to search for things instead of using a gui, but that is it.
http://saveie6.com/
Have you ever considered the possibility that some people actually *value* a walled garden?
Some people highly value smoking crack. This alone is not proof of merit.
Like nearly everyone who isn't a tech geek? Which is like 99% of the people buying these devices?
If you are claiming that only "tech geeks" could possibly appreciate unrestricted freedom of choice, that is interesting. I would be willing to entertain your reasoning, but so far I haven't seen it. Personally, I think it's a nice euphamistic way of saying that most people are far too stupid to be trusted with choices. The funny thing about that, is that if stupidity is universally expected, it tends to become the norm. When it's viewed as pathological, it tends to be limited to only the few who really can't do better.
I also have doubts that it's healthy to design everything for the absolute beginner, rather than viewing "newbie" as a transitory and most temporary stage along the path to at least some small degree of competence. But it's difficult to have this conversation around here. Few seem to recognize that "small degree of competence" does not mean "expert" due to some strange tendency to go to extremes. It's a bit mysterious, since it's inconsistent with any contact with reality and its myriad shades of grey.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Nobody is talking about the icons... they're talking about the applications themselves. You're arguing against a point that nobody is even discussing...
Right, but handicapping OSX so that it more closely mimics IOS is absolutely idiotic. Like limiting spaces to left/right only and removing up/down. That still outrages me to no end. I HATE not having up/down.
If we were to replace the word "computer" with the word "washing machine" or "refrigerator," then you might start to see how people don't even _want_ to seek even the smallest amount of computer competence. You're essentially asking them to re-install the OS on their washing machine, or re-wire the heating coils of their dryer for some abstract goal of "increased knowledge" and "freedom".
The computer is an appliance. You press a button, it sends an e-mail. You press another one, it plays music for you. If it breaks, you call someone to fix it or you toss it to the curb and get a new one. I'm not saying these people are stupid, I'm just saying they have different priorities.
Microsoft is/was evil.
Google only knows evil because of their advertising mindset.
Apple is evil because you can't do whatever the hell you want.
Linux sucks because there's no unified vision of how things are supposed to work (both in UIs and APIs).
What am I supposed to use? FreeDOS? WebOS? AmigaOS?
Apple and Microsoft couldn't give a flying fuck about the average person figuring out the full range of possibilities that computers offer. Any more than the head of Maytag stay up at night with nightmares of everyone suddenly deciding to become washing machine mechanics in their spare time.
There is no conspiracy. There is no great shadow hovering above and preventing people from waking up to what their computer can do. Most of them have a pretty good idea of what computers can do. They often don't have the vocabulary or means to make it happen, but if you have ever dealt with a user figuring out a new task they tend to have a very realistic idea of what is possible (at least in the abstract) and then once they figure out their new thing that go back to ignoring everything else.
Because there is an opportunity cost to computers. And most people don't enjoy paying that cost. They get far more enjoyment out of playing in a local baseball league or building model trains or learning to cook or take dance lessons or just watching movies with friends.
Every single possible roadblock could be removed and the vast majority of the population would not care and could not be made to care. Because they are busy doing more interesting (to them) things. And for people who are already interested in computers there are no roadblocks worth speaking of.
Not everyone finds spending their time geeking out on their phone to be rewarding, interesting, or something they have any real interest in doing. That isn't smoking crack, it's simply a different priority.
Most people limit the amount of cognitive overhead they have to shoulder when it comes to things they don't find terribly interesting or important. In the case of people who prefer a walled garden for their devices, this can be one of those things. One place to go for software, one pace to go for support, and they don't have to waste time thinking about all those options.
Some people do this with clothing or food. I know a lot of geeks who wear essentially the same outfit on a daily basis because they just don't care enough about clothes to bother thinking about it past "does it pass the sniff test?" I know a lot of people who eat roughly the same thing for breakfast every day because they just want fuel for their body and don't want to have to think about what they're eating. There's nothing wrong with doing this, and we all actually do this to some degree or another,
Let me throw a challenge to you: I want you to think about the clothes you're wearing. Think about the materials used - where did they come from? How are they made? Why were those materials chosen instead of some other set? What about the design - who designed each piece, and why did they make the choices they did (buttons vs. snaps, handling of seams, style of collar etc.)? What were their influences - what was the evolution of each item and how it came about from a series of iterations throughout the history of couture? What about the colors - what kind of dye did they use and why? What was your decision process when you bought it, what about your decision process when you picked it out to wear today?
Is it fair for me to say you're smoking crack because you probably don't geek out on fashion?
To you, I'm guessing clothing is just something you wear because you have to and you don't want to think about much.. To people who prefer a walled garden for their various devices, gadgets are just something they use because they need something to do that stuff, and they don't want to think about much.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.