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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?"
Forestall does pretty good work, but he's always been too proud to listen when someone else has a better idea. He shouldn't be working on products that are used by hundreds of millions of people all around the world.
The thought of him working directly under Tim Cook, who doesn't know much about product design, has always made me uncomfortable.
Hooray for Ive, he's possibly the best engineer I have ever heard of, except for maybe Wozniak. This is a good day for Apple.
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.
For example, the way the OS X Address Book attempts to resemble
a paper address book. This is pointless and stupid and the only
people it could possibly appeal to are idiots who probably don't
use a computer for anything more than surfing the web anyway.
This is the kind of crap that insults me when I see it on a computer I
paid a lot of money to buy.
If Ive gets rid of this crap, he will have my everlasting appreciation.
Also, and MUCH more important : Apple MUST quit trying to blend the
interface used by OS X with the interface used by iOS. The result of
such attempts at blending is stuff that is annoying and awful to use and
it is an insult to a user who has a modicum of intelligence. QUIT THIS
SHIT, Tim Cook, or your legacy will be that of the guy who fucked up
a good thing, and that is not a legacy anyone with honor wants.
He let Siri go live. In fact, he saved it for himself to announce in the last keynote he did. The key distinction there is that he set expectations appropriately with Siri. He introduced it as a beta that was still in need of work, but that he thought it was ready to show and to let others use. He explained that there would be issues, but that they'd work them out. Had they done the same with Maps, there would not have been such a big issue. But because Forstall showed off a perfect demo and claimed the usual "just works" level of polish, anything less than that would mean a big disappointment. And it was a disappointment for many people when it didn't just work.
Honestly, Steve Jobs let several things go live that shouldn't have. Remember the MobileMe release? Heads rolled over that, with one Senior Vice President getting the boot. That was actually a much bigger deal at the time than this Maps thing is now.
OR we do not really know what happened are are making an assumption?
We do know that IOS 6 sucked. It had power issues, maps were unusable, and Sirii still has issues. To this day people love putitng pics on facebook of IPhones misinterpretting things in embarrasing conversations.
I would fire several people too. Not to show who is boss and be a badass, but because that should not have been released PERIOD. Did they do any QA at all? WTF. I could be wrong too and Cook could have demanded it and ignored issues but this would be likely a good termination ... well except for the guy who got canned.
http://saveie6.com/
Down 15% because the wall street analysts are playing shenanigans. Amazon posts a $274 million LOSS, and there isn't a single article in the news about it. Apple posts profits that are a little bit less than the made up numbers the analysts pulled out of their asses, and all the news sources practically shit themselves over the 'disappointing' news, conveniently ignoring the fact that the record 8.2 billion in profits happen to be 26% up over the year ago quarter and their best 4th quarter ever.
Forstall was canned because he didn't get along with the rest of the executives, pushed for over the top skeuomorphism that everyone else in the company and even the rabid fanboys hate, and fucked up the maps thing. He was holding the company back.
Interesting. Especially the "holding the company back" thing.
Recently, I've been catching the Samsung ads while watching football. "The Next Big Thing is Already Here" is really starting to work it's way into my head. The ads outside the Apple Store are priceless--especially the "We'll get that next year, right?" It seems that Samsung has been working on useful things while Apple has been thrashing about trying to decide what shade of leather looks best in the Calendar app and whether bookshelves in iBooks should be Maple or Oak.
So Apple is looking less-and-less like the technology leader and more like the follower. I hear more and more people saying, "Well, I'd get Android but I have all these iOS apps that I'd have to buy again." These were the same excuses that Windows users used to have. "Yeah, it sucks, but I have too much of an investment to walk away from it now."