1. Jony Ive's role is expanded from Industrial Design to Industrial Design AND Human Interface. In other words, Ive is the new Design chief for hardware and software. This is huge.
2. Scott Forstall is out (after an interim advising role to Tim Cook). iOS goes to Craig Federighi who already oversees Mac OS. So, now iOS and Mac OS are overseen by the same person.
3. Eddy Cue's role is expanded (he previously was in charge of iTunes, App Store, iBookStore, iCloud). He now also oversees Siri and Maps.
4. Bob Mansfield will lead a new group called Technologies (wireless and semiconductor).
5. John Browett of retail is out.
Overall, I view this move as extremely positive.
Tim Cook just elevated his most reliable and capable SVPs to assume more leadership role.
John Ive, Eddy Cue, Mansfield and Federighi have all proven to be pretty spectacular. Ive with industrial design, Cue with iTunes/AppStore/iCloud, Mansfield with hardware and Federighi with Mac OS.
Further, Tim Cook gets rid of his problem SVPs - namely Browett who didn't match the culture of Apple... and Scott Forstall (who advanced iOS in huge ways) but reportedly had problems with getting along with other SVPs and also who disappointed users with iOS6/Maps (and also in my opinion poorly designed and implemented Apple apps... appstore reviews for Apple apps have gone significantly down the last year or two).
Cook will probably give Forstall a good severance package with an agreement that Forstall doesn't go to a mobile OS competitor.
I'm actually more optimistic on Apple with this bold management shakeup. Tim Cook is showing the moves of a bold leader... and it's exactly what Apple needs.
Important to mention (you did already, but just to emphasize) that Scott Forstall will be "advisor to CEO Tim Cook in the interim". Interim meaning more specifically 6 months, till April 2013.
This should allow him to cash in some thousands of stock options, which will serve as a natural non-competitive package. Which would be very fair, given his role in re-shaping Apple over all these years.
Anyone who A) likes Apple and B) has ever been in a Dixons store in the UK will be overjoyed with the other departure, Browett (head of retail and previous Dixons CEO) who is leaving immediately (compared to Forstall's year long "transition" departure). Dixons is everything that Apple should never be; terrible customer service, clueless minimum wage staff, horrible retail experience, and generally used only by people who desperately need something immediately or are too naive to find another store.
Recent news out of Apple regarding "cutbacks" at retail suggested he was nudging them in the same direction. Given that he got his first stock disbursement last week and was due $58 million over the next few years if he hung around, I'm guessing he was pushed. Great decision from Cook if that was the case.
>> Anyone who A) likes Apple and B) has ever been in a Dixon's store in the UK will be overjoyed with the other departure, Browett (head of retail) who is leaving immediately (compared to Forstall's year long "transition" departure). Dixon's is everything that Apple should never be; terrible customer service, clueless minimum wage staff, horrible retail experience, and generally used only by people who desperately need something immediately or are too naive to find another store.
I agree, the one thing that irks me though, is that I remember reading the guy was able to convert a sizable part of his Apple stock options only a few weeks ago. That's a quick & cool few million $$$ he made in one year at Apple without any apparent positive contribution :-/
Viewed from the other side, though, he did convert $3 million, yes, but Apple saved $57 million.
Apple can afford to lose the three mil. They'll make that back in a few days once somebody who actually gets Apple's retail concept is running the show again. Somebody who respects the model that brought Apple top-of-the-charts customer service ratings. Somebody who respects that if you're making more money per square foot than any other retail store in the world, you might be doing something right.
But why did someone like this Dixon guy get in to begin with? He seemed like an odd choice from day 1, but I figured maybe apple knew something the rest or us didn't. Apparently not.
Apple retail head is one of the most desirable executive positions on the planet. Why couldn't they recruit a true superstar?
> Apple retail head is one of the most desirable executive positions on the planet. Why couldn't they recruit a true superstar?
I think the problem is identifying the superstar in the first place. Quite frankly, there is no company whose retail comes close to Apple, and so there isn't anyone who has a track record of being able to do the SVP Retail job.
In addition, the Apple SVP Retail job is different from head of retail at other companies (e.g. s/he doesn't have control over inventory [1]), and so when it comes down to the end of the day, it's really hard to find someone who has done a similar job in the past, let alone done that job well.
In all likelihood, Tim Cook had some idea of the downfalls of hiring Browett, but decided to bet on it. I would also guess that given the worries around that time that Cook wouldn't be able to handle the CEO job also made the hiring rather more urgent that it should have been.
I had the misfortune of shopping UK retail for a few years, and especially in electronics, I can't imagine anyone using it as an example of a great way to structure anything, let alone a premium brand like Apple.
The only UK retail brands which don't seem horrible are high-end department stores (Selfridges, etc.) and grocery stores, and neither really seems like a good background for running Apple retail.
It's worth noting that Dixon's eventually scaled back its high-street presence completely and is now found only in airports. If his role at Dixon's was what got him a job at Apple, I'd be really surprised!
Dixons is just one brand of Dixons Retail (formerly DSG International) which also owns Currys, PC World, etc.
They rebranded all their high street stores to Currys.digital, and although store numbers have been declining, they are still a regular fixture on high streets.
> Jony Ive will provide leadership and direction for Human Interface (HI) across the company
And thus ended the reign of skeuomorphism at Apple. Or, at least, the reign of hyper-realism and hyper-whimsy in UI design. Jobs or Forstall always seemed to favour it, but could you imagine Jony Ive signing off on a Podcasts app where half the screen is a reel-to-reel tape that bounces when you pause?
Excellent news. I have always been surprised by the opposing philosophies guiding hardware vs software design in Apple products. They consistently offer beautiful hardware designs that emphasize simplicity, sometimes at a cost in usability (e.g. the sharp edges of the newer iPhones are less ergonomic than the first models). On the other hand, their software makes few compromises in usability, which is a good thing. But it never showed this taste for simplicity and purity that makes Apple devices so appealing from the outside. From the brushed metal windows and shiny plastic scroll-bars of early OS X, to the leather borders in iOS applications, Apple under Jobs and Forstall has pursued the opposite direction. Stock Android actually has the edge here (although inconsistently), something I would not say about the hardware or usability. Hopefully this change means we will see Apple software that preserves usability without the tacky visuals.
I actually like a lot of apple's skeuomorphism. I think it makes digital interfaces more natural. I think at least some of the iPhones success can be attributed to the fact that less savvy people find the skeuomorphisms easy to relate to everyday things and helps bridge the gap between, for example, using a real reel-to-reel vs. using a digital representation thereof. Although I agree that the podcast app is too much, I would really miss the leather textures and whatnot of other iOS apps.
This was also my first thought on the departure. The announcement did look ambiguous on whether Ive would be the final sign-off for software UI. I certainly hope he is, for the reasons you mentioned.
Doubt we'll be seeing any major change like that at least until iOS8. For iOS7 it seems too soon. We might also see it in Mac OS XI, but I also doubt that's coming until 2014.
Interesting that Eddie Cue remains the company fixer, taking on the quirky Siri and the flakey Maps app just as he was once given a completely fucked up MobileMe.
This is good news.
Even better news is Browett's ouster. The business with his cutting operational corners in retail was a very, very bad omen. If they'd left him in, he might have poisoned a very important well for the company. Hopefully his replacement is closer to Ron Johnson's set of retail and service values.
As much as Apple's software and hardware are talked about, Eddie Cue is also the guy largely responsible for negotiating Apple's superior media offerings which is arguably Apple's biggest lead on their competitors internationally.
> Hopefully his replacement is closer to Ron Johnson's set of retail and service values.
I wonder if the scope of Human Interfaces extends to the Apple Store. If Apple is taking a holistic approach to coordinating its products, it's worth considering that the store is one of the most important aspects for human interaction and industrial design. Maybe Jony will take some level of control in terms of design and leave the management and promotional aspects to the retail SVP?
People's reactions to this announcement are overly focused on Forstall's assumed support for heavy skeumorphism (and their excitement at his departure as lead proponent). I think his record as head of iOS since its inception is a much more salient issue.
Forstall led development of the fastest-growing, most popular computing platform of the past decade or so with, to be sure, a few notable screw-ups, but mostly incredible innovation and efficiency. While his departure does sound like the result of a power struggle that needed to be resolved, I really believe we're shortchanging his incredible achievements. Forstall's departure is not unequivocally or even clearly a victory for those who are firm believers in iOS and its ecosystem going forward. The only reasonable reaction is that we'll have to wait and see.
When iOS was new, it was incredible. But it's mostly failed to evolve since then. There have been a few minor improvements over the years, but Springboard in particular feels really old, especially for the iPad. And many of the first-party apps are poor.
Apple has succeeded in the mobile market largely because of their excellent hardware and their app ecosystem. But iOS itself is a little disappointing. It's due for a major evolution, not just more incremental tweaking.
The thing about Forstall's achievements is he did them all under the shadow of Steve Jobs.
Is it that he had to take a more active role now, and not just be a Jobs man?
Is it that Jobs could bring talented people together and keep them there and Tim Cook is failing to do that?
I'm almost certain it's neither of those, but they serve to illustrate the point: when people think of iOS, Scott Forstall is not even close to the first person they think of giving credit to.
I agree that probably neither or those explanations is fully true, but I do believe that Jobs had the ability to harness conflicting personalities towards greater goals.
I do disagree with your last point, though —— I've watched every keynote for the past 6-7 years and Forstall has rocked the iOS presentations. Perhaps I'm biased, but I very deeply associate him with the greatness of iOS, particularly Apple's ability to steadily pick off the "low-hanging fruit" features (e.g. 3rd party apps in 2.0, copy-and-paste, PC-free) with regularity and elegance.
Excellent perspective. Apple is not going to succeed or fail based on skeuomorphism. The iPhone and iPad have reached their success in large part because of the tremendous capability and growth of iOS, and Scott Forstall led those efforts. Yes a power struggle seems to be resolved, but Forstall's departure could turn out to be a big loss for Apple.
Just to be clear, he's not "leaving." He got fired. He got fired because after the map fiasco became apparent, he refused to send out an apology or sign his name to the one Tim Cook sent. (internal knowledge)
I'm surprised he got fired over maps. Mapping is hard - comparable to writing a search engine. Apple did as well as can be expected for a first attempt. They had some kind of problem with Google Maps, and wanted to build their own capability, which was never going to be easy.
He might have been fired if he cheated, by creating a well curated Valley dataset to prove to the other execs what a great job he'd done. That would annoy people.
I've heard rumors that he was seen as "better managing up than down" (impressing his boss, at the expense of results), and that doesn't strike me as something Tim Cook would like very much (both from his reported management style, and the number of stock options he has). I can see that being a last straw from Tim - "You screwed up, now own up to it. Or else."
> I'm surprised he got fired over maps. Mapping is hard - comparable to writing a search engine. Apple did as well as can be expected for a first attempt.
The problem is that they released that first attempt. iPhone and iPad weren't their first attempts at phones and tablet computers, they were simply the first ones good enough to take to market.
There are ways of dealing with hard problems- managing scope, managing expectations. I'm not too surprised he was fired for not executing. Remember Papermaster and the antenna?
Mapping is very hard, and he shipped it before it was ready. That was a pretty bad event for them; caused lot of negativity from users. I'm not surprised.
I learned a long time ago honesty and taking ownership is the best policy.
It possible that he though he did no wrong. Or maybe he thought he was above the fray. But if he wanted to save his job, owning the wrong is the best way. People forgive when the apology is genuine.
While it hasn't seemed to have an appreciable affect on sales or the stock price, the shortcomings of the new Maps have been an embarrassing PR mess for Apple and a hit to its reputation for uncompromising quality that sets it so far apart from everyone else.
It does not surprise that he's being fired for this or that his departure is going to be transitional since he's so intricately involved with so many central aspects and initiatives at the company.
Mapping is NOT hard. I know from personal experience.
The reason Apple screwed up maps is because of one reason and one reason only. Licensing. The app itself is great. The 3D maps are great. The data is the problem.
Apple chose not to license data from many of the key players they should have to at least be competitive. My guess is Apple arrogantly thought they could get enough feedback from users to fix up the problem themselves.
This makes me wonder - who at Apple decided it was necessary to make their own maps app?
It's easy to blame Forstall for a crappy product. But if someone else was responsible for mandating the change, assigning him the project, and pushing an impossible deadline, maybe it's more their fault.
It was a decision that was forced by a number of factors. Google wouldn't agree to providing directions for turn-by-turn navigation, so Apple had to seek other solutions.
It seemed obvious that his back-to-back failures with Siri + Maps and the fact that lots of people inside Apple hated him were the reason for this, but it was impossible to know for certain without somebody inside taking a risk and saying that.
Care to speculate on who would be next in line to be CEO now? That was presumably Forstall. Now it would be Cue or Ive or...?
1) Forstall apparently wants to be CEO, and run the company. That puts him at odds with Cook (the CEO), and Ive (who wants to drive Apple's design decisions).
2) He's divisive. There's claims that neither Jonny Ive nor Bob Mansfield would talk to him without Tim Cook mediating. There's also claims that he "managed up" (showed off to the boss) better than he "managed down", and stole credit while deflecting critisism.
3) He was the guy in charge of Siri and Maps.
4) He was probably the one driving the post-Jobs war with Google.
Siri and Maps are Apple's way of fighting Google. Siri competes with Google Search, and Maps competes with Google Maps. There are reasons why Apple wants to spite Google, but the whole strategy could also be Scot Forstall's way of creating his own empire in Apple. Going head to head with Google requires lots of resources, which would all be under Forstall's command.
I don't think it's a good gamble for Apple. Google doesn't really hate Apple. I bet they'll port everything they can to iOS, as long as they can keep pushing their ads. Nexus might see Apple as a competitor, but Nexus isn't worth as much as adwords. As Eric Schmidt said in an interview - "It's their call".
If Apple goes down the path Forstall wants, they'll be going head to head with Google in the things Google is best at. If they stop trying to turn into a data / AI company, they can focus on what they do best - making easy to use devices which sell like hotcakes, and command a fat profit margin.
Android will hurt them, but as long as they focus on their core strengths (hardware, marketing, industrial design, interface design, and integration) they'll continue to do pretty well. They milked the iPod for a decade, despite there being plenty of better value competitors. They can do the same with the iPhone. They can do the same with whatever the next big thing is. I'd say going to war with Google will be at best a waste of time, and most likely a string of humiliating losses.
Spot on. I can't help but add that on the day Apple is getting a lot unwanted press, the company you paint as Forstall's rival, Google, is also on HN front page with a remarkably quiet announcement of a $399 10" 300 dpi tablet.
I hope this marks a low for Apple. All things considered, they could do a lot worse. Hopefully they will only keep improving.
The only reason I'd buy a Nexus over an iPad is if Google offers great integration (search + maps) on the Nexus, but Apple blocks them from doing the same on the iPad.
If Google was a hardware company (not a search company) I could see why they would screw over the iPad by not porting their apps. But Google is not a hardware company, most of their revenue comes from search. They want Google search (or the next generation, interfaced with their Siri clone) on every phone and tablet. That's why they make Android open source.
Apple can try to screw over Google, by blocking Google apps (or just not cooperating with Google on integration). They can offer their own search and maps, but they'll do a crap job, and end up screwing their customers. It might hurt Google, but it will also hurt Apple (as Android will have a big advantage).
The best thing for both companies is cooperating to get Google features on the iPhone. Sure, Apple may resent Android, but they are just going to have to suck it up. If it weren't for Android, Microsoft would be making the leading iOS substitute, and I can't see either Apple or Google loving that.
Does anyone but me here listen incessantly to podcasts?
The latest Podcasts App from iTunes is a skeuomorphic mess. It has a superfluous animation of a reel-to-reel player of course. But it utterly fails at its most basic task: playing a goddamn podcast. But don't take my word for it, it has a 1.5 star rating on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/podcasts/id525463029
Not to mention crashes... Apple used to make jokes about the Windows blue screen of death. Well, that's my new day-to-day experience with iOS apps. I'm constantly restarting crashed apps over and over.
Honestly, this is good news if Forstall really is the driving force behind the deteriorating user experience of many apps.
The Podcast app and the iPad Music app are both a mess, and both happened under Forstall as I understand it.
Trade away the lyric and podcast show info displays for kitsch wood veneer? And a reel-to-reel tape recorder simulator? Move seek controls to weird locations? Replace the easy-to-spot seek knob with a radio needle? Why? So many small steps backward, even if no single one was a deal breaker... negative trajectory is negative trajectory.
If this means they walk some of that silliness back, it's the best Apple news in ages. It started to look like designers who didn't actually use the apps were taking over.
Wow. I haven't listened to any podcasts recently but felt compelled to try it after your post. That thing is just awful. Not only "yo dawg, I heard you like skeuomorphism..." territory, but they didn't even do it right - scrubbing through a track is completely disconnected from the tape wheels (go in reverse, it's much more obvious) If you're going to go down that path, you really have to emulate the device in question 100% accurately or else it just looks really stupid.
There's a good reason that its a bad idea to roll a system UI replacement the vast majority of the time. The next time it comes up in conversation, I now have a perfect example of why in my pocket.
I also totally agree about the "designers who didn't use the apps" bit, and would go a bit further - they really need to do a better job testing real-world network conditions too. Designing stuff designed around cell reception doesn't fare so well outside apple campus where it's not blanketed with reliable, high-speed, low-latency network connections. iTunes Match... it brings back memories of realplayer. It's a cost of secrecy, but seeing that the supply chain had already failed them there, best embrace reality and use it to improve stuff before launch.
I think that's unfair: The "everything is simplistic, monochrome gray" half of Apple's recent design may be more tasteful in many people's view, but it isn't any more usable.
I had many situations in which the auto-hidden scrollbars made it impossible to tell that there was more to discover in a scroll view. The CAPS SIDEBAR HEADERS have no triangle indicator anymore, it is impossible to tell without hovering if a section is closed or open & empty. The monochrome sidebars made Finder and iTunes noticeably less efficient in my usage. Many new-style toolbars like Xcode's are not customizable anymore. etc...
And all these things are in line with Apple's hardware design (where I enjoy the simplicity a lot more).
Luckily, they didn't immediately pull all competing apps out of the store when they released this, as they have done in other cases.
Podcasts.app is crap, but there are Instacast and Downcast (I alternate between those) and probably other good choices that cost less than a half gallon of gas.
I have tried almost all the podcast apps at this stage (sinking about $15-20) and although Downcasts is great (my number 2 choice) I recently found myself prefering the lesser known Pocket Casts. The best feature by far is they poll the feeds on their own servers and push notifications to you (I know Instacast is supposed to do this but I didn't find it very reliable and Instacast had many other problems for me). Pocket Casts very rarely crashes (with over 60 podcasts subscribed), resumes/pauses system-wide reliably and instantly, has a nice responsive UI (even on my iPhone 4) and has full import/export OPML so you aren't stuck with them. No affiliation.
The new podcast app makes certain workflows impossible--like downloading a single podcast before taking a walk. Now it just says "preparing to download" indefinitely. By the time it shows up on my device, that window of free time to listen to a podcast is gone. Complete and utter crap.
It's horrifying bad. Even the app that I use for my (relatively) ancient Nokia N8 (Podcatcher) is miles better than Apple's Podcasts app. The SO complains about it all the time.
Readit News
1. Jony Ive's role is expanded from Industrial Design to Industrial Design AND Human Interface. In other words, Ive is the new Design chief for hardware and software. This is huge.
2. Scott Forstall is out (after an interim advising role to Tim Cook). iOS goes to Craig Federighi who already oversees Mac OS. So, now iOS and Mac OS are overseen by the same person.
3. Eddy Cue's role is expanded (he previously was in charge of iTunes, App Store, iBookStore, iCloud). He now also oversees Siri and Maps.
4. Bob Mansfield will lead a new group called Technologies (wireless and semiconductor).
5. John Browett of retail is out.
Overall, I view this move as extremely positive.
Tim Cook just elevated his most reliable and capable SVPs to assume more leadership role.
John Ive, Eddy Cue, Mansfield and Federighi have all proven to be pretty spectacular. Ive with industrial design, Cue with iTunes/AppStore/iCloud, Mansfield with hardware and Federighi with Mac OS.
Further, Tim Cook gets rid of his problem SVPs - namely Browett who didn't match the culture of Apple... and Scott Forstall (who advanced iOS in huge ways) but reportedly had problems with getting along with other SVPs and also who disappointed users with iOS6/Maps (and also in my opinion poorly designed and implemented Apple apps... appstore reviews for Apple apps have gone significantly down the last year or two).
Cook will probably give Forstall a good severance package with an agreement that Forstall doesn't go to a mobile OS competitor.
I'm actually more optimistic on Apple with this bold management shakeup. Tim Cook is showing the moves of a bold leader... and it's exactly what Apple needs.
Important to mention (you did already, but just to emphasize) that Scott Forstall will be "advisor to CEO Tim Cook in the interim". Interim meaning more specifically 6 months, till April 2013.
This should allow him to cash in some thousands of stock options, which will serve as a natural non-competitive package. Which would be very fair, given his role in re-shaping Apple over all these years.
Recent news out of Apple regarding "cutbacks" at retail suggested he was nudging them in the same direction. Given that he got his first stock disbursement last week and was due $58 million over the next few years if he hung around, I'm guessing he was pushed. Great decision from Cook if that was the case.
I agree, the one thing that irks me though, is that I remember reading the guy was able to convert a sizable part of his Apple stock options only a few weeks ago. That's a quick & cool few million $$$ he made in one year at Apple without any apparent positive contribution :-/
Apple can afford to lose the three mil. They'll make that back in a few days once somebody who actually gets Apple's retail concept is running the show again. Somebody who respects the model that brought Apple top-of-the-charts customer service ratings. Somebody who respects that if you're making more money per square foot than any other retail store in the world, you might be doing something right.
Apple retail head is one of the most desirable executive positions on the planet. Why couldn't they recruit a true superstar?
I'm a little confused and worried ...
I think the problem is identifying the superstar in the first place. Quite frankly, there is no company whose retail comes close to Apple, and so there isn't anyone who has a track record of being able to do the SVP Retail job.
In addition, the Apple SVP Retail job is different from head of retail at other companies (e.g. s/he doesn't have control over inventory [1]), and so when it comes down to the end of the day, it's really hard to find someone who has done a similar job in the past, let alone done that job well.
In all likelihood, Tim Cook had some idea of the downfalls of hiring Browett, but decided to bet on it. I would also guess that given the worries around that time that Cook wouldn't be able to handle the CEO job also made the hiring rather more urgent that it should have been.
[1]: http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/08/25/how-apple-works-insid...
The only UK retail brands which don't seem horrible are high-end department stores (Selfridges, etc.) and grocery stores, and neither really seems like a good background for running Apple retail.
They rebranded all their high street stores to Currys.digital, and although store numbers have been declining, they are still a regular fixture on high streets.
Cook hired him, which many commentators pointed out was a mistake in the first place.
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> Jony Ive will provide leadership and direction for Human Interface (HI) across the company
And thus ended the reign of skeuomorphism at Apple. Or, at least, the reign of hyper-realism and hyper-whimsy in UI design. Jobs or Forstall always seemed to favour it, but could you imagine Jony Ive signing off on a Podcasts app where half the screen is a reel-to-reel tape that bounces when you pause?
The skeuomorphic look of Podcasts was based on a physical product design by Ive's legendary design influence, Dieter Rams:
http://www.cultofmac.com/176008/heres-the-braun-tape-recorde...
In retrospect, the tension inherent in this odd compromise seems palpable. It's like listening to the last album a band releases before they break up.
Even worse than maps, which are a huge ongoing problem.
http://www.apple.com/itunes/new-itunes/
So it could be coming sooner than you think.
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This is good news.
Even better news is Browett's ouster. The business with his cutting operational corners in retail was a very, very bad omen. If they'd left him in, he might have poisoned a very important well for the company. Hopefully his replacement is closer to Ron Johnson's set of retail and service values.
N'bad, Tim.
Not sure why this is downvoted. At least Apple's competitors allow me to buy their music as Linux user.
http://allthingsd.com/20120803/apples-eddy-cue-saw-market-fo...
I wonder if the scope of Human Interfaces extends to the Apple Store. If Apple is taking a holistic approach to coordinating its products, it's worth considering that the store is one of the most important aspects for human interaction and industrial design. Maybe Jony will take some level of control in terms of design and leave the management and promotional aspects to the retail SVP?
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Forstall led development of the fastest-growing, most popular computing platform of the past decade or so with, to be sure, a few notable screw-ups, but mostly incredible innovation and efficiency. While his departure does sound like the result of a power struggle that needed to be resolved, I really believe we're shortchanging his incredible achievements. Forstall's departure is not unequivocally or even clearly a victory for those who are firm believers in iOS and its ecosystem going forward. The only reasonable reaction is that we'll have to wait and see.
Apple has succeeded in the mobile market largely because of their excellent hardware and their app ecosystem. But iOS itself is a little disappointing. It's due for a major evolution, not just more incremental tweaking.
Is it that he had to take a more active role now, and not just be a Jobs man?
Is it that Jobs could bring talented people together and keep them there and Tim Cook is failing to do that?
I'm almost certain it's neither of those, but they serve to illustrate the point: when people think of iOS, Scott Forstall is not even close to the first person they think of giving credit to.
I do disagree with your last point, though —— I've watched every keynote for the past 6-7 years and Forstall has rocked the iOS presentations. Perhaps I'm biased, but I very deeply associate him with the greatness of iOS, particularly Apple's ability to steadily pick off the "low-hanging fruit" features (e.g. 3rd party apps in 2.0, copy-and-paste, PC-free) with regularity and elegance.
As a side note, I do hope iOS will become more open under a new leadership.
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I'm surprised he got fired over maps. Mapping is hard - comparable to writing a search engine. Apple did as well as can be expected for a first attempt. They had some kind of problem with Google Maps, and wanted to build their own capability, which was never going to be easy.
He might have been fired if he cheated, by creating a well curated Valley dataset to prove to the other execs what a great job he'd done. That would annoy people.
I've heard rumors that he was seen as "better managing up than down" (impressing his boss, at the expense of results), and that doesn't strike me as something Tim Cook would like very much (both from his reported management style, and the number of stock options he has). I can see that being a last straw from Tim - "You screwed up, now own up to it. Or else."
It would be because he over promised and under delivered.
Sure, it was embarrassing to Apple to release a half-assed Maps app, but even more so to tout it just a few weeks earlier as being soooo good.
The problem is that they released that first attempt. iPhone and iPad weren't their first attempts at phones and tablet computers, they were simply the first ones good enough to take to market.
http://daringfireball.net/2010/08/papermaster_damn_antenna
It possible that he though he did no wrong. Or maybe he thought he was above the fray. But if he wanted to save his job, owning the wrong is the best way. People forgive when the apology is genuine.
It does not surprise that he's being fired for this or that his departure is going to be transitional since he's so intricately involved with so many central aspects and initiatives at the company.
(also no internal knowledge)
The reason Apple screwed up maps is because of one reason and one reason only. Licensing. The app itself is great. The 3D maps are great. The data is the problem.
Apple chose not to license data from many of the key players they should have to at least be competitive. My guess is Apple arrogantly thought they could get enough feedback from users to fix up the problem themselves.
It's easy to blame Forstall for a crappy product. But if someone else was responsible for mandating the change, assigning him the project, and pushing an impossible deadline, maybe it's more their fault.
It seemed obvious that his back-to-back failures with Siri + Maps and the fact that lots of people inside Apple hated him were the reason for this, but it was impossible to know for certain without somebody inside taking a risk and saying that.
Care to speculate on who would be next in line to be CEO now? That was presumably Forstall. Now it would be Cue or Ive or...?
1) Forstall apparently wants to be CEO, and run the company. That puts him at odds with Cook (the CEO), and Ive (who wants to drive Apple's design decisions).
2) He's divisive. There's claims that neither Jonny Ive nor Bob Mansfield would talk to him without Tim Cook mediating. There's also claims that he "managed up" (showed off to the boss) better than he "managed down", and stole credit while deflecting critisism.
3) He was the guy in charge of Siri and Maps.
4) He was probably the one driving the post-Jobs war with Google.
Siri and Maps are Apple's way of fighting Google. Siri competes with Google Search, and Maps competes with Google Maps. There are reasons why Apple wants to spite Google, but the whole strategy could also be Scot Forstall's way of creating his own empire in Apple. Going head to head with Google requires lots of resources, which would all be under Forstall's command.
I don't think it's a good gamble for Apple. Google doesn't really hate Apple. I bet they'll port everything they can to iOS, as long as they can keep pushing their ads. Nexus might see Apple as a competitor, but Nexus isn't worth as much as adwords. As Eric Schmidt said in an interview - "It's their call".
If Apple goes down the path Forstall wants, they'll be going head to head with Google in the things Google is best at. If they stop trying to turn into a data / AI company, they can focus on what they do best - making easy to use devices which sell like hotcakes, and command a fat profit margin.
Android will hurt them, but as long as they focus on their core strengths (hardware, marketing, industrial design, interface design, and integration) they'll continue to do pretty well. They milked the iPod for a decade, despite there being plenty of better value competitors. They can do the same with the iPhone. They can do the same with whatever the next big thing is. I'd say going to war with Google will be at best a waste of time, and most likely a string of humiliating losses.
I hope this marks a low for Apple. All things considered, they could do a lot worse. Hopefully they will only keep improving.
If Google was a hardware company (not a search company) I could see why they would screw over the iPad by not porting their apps. But Google is not a hardware company, most of their revenue comes from search. They want Google search (or the next generation, interfaced with their Siri clone) on every phone and tablet. That's why they make Android open source.
Apple can try to screw over Google, by blocking Google apps (or just not cooperating with Google on integration). They can offer their own search and maps, but they'll do a crap job, and end up screwing their customers. It might hurt Google, but it will also hurt Apple (as Android will have a big advantage).
The best thing for both companies is cooperating to get Google features on the iPhone. Sure, Apple may resent Android, but they are just going to have to suck it up. If it weren't for Android, Microsoft would be making the leading iOS substitute, and I can't see either Apple or Google loving that.
The latest Podcasts App from iTunes is a skeuomorphic mess. It has a superfluous animation of a reel-to-reel player of course. But it utterly fails at its most basic task: playing a goddamn podcast. But don't take my word for it, it has a 1.5 star rating on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/podcasts/id525463029
Not to mention crashes... Apple used to make jokes about the Windows blue screen of death. Well, that's my new day-to-day experience with iOS apps. I'm constantly restarting crashed apps over and over.
Honestly, this is good news if Forstall really is the driving force behind the deteriorating user experience of many apps.
Trade away the lyric and podcast show info displays for kitsch wood veneer? And a reel-to-reel tape recorder simulator? Move seek controls to weird locations? Replace the easy-to-spot seek knob with a radio needle? Why? So many small steps backward, even if no single one was a deal breaker... negative trajectory is negative trajectory.
If this means they walk some of that silliness back, it's the best Apple news in ages. It started to look like designers who didn't actually use the apps were taking over.
There's a good reason that its a bad idea to roll a system UI replacement the vast majority of the time. The next time it comes up in conversation, I now have a perfect example of why in my pocket.
I also totally agree about the "designers who didn't use the apps" bit, and would go a bit further - they really need to do a better job testing real-world network conditions too. Designing stuff designed around cell reception doesn't fare so well outside apple campus where it's not blanketed with reliable, high-speed, low-latency network connections. iTunes Match... it brings back memories of realplayer. It's a cost of secrecy, but seeing that the supply chain had already failed them there, best embrace reality and use it to improve stuff before launch.
I had many situations in which the auto-hidden scrollbars made it impossible to tell that there was more to discover in a scroll view. The CAPS SIDEBAR HEADERS have no triangle indicator anymore, it is impossible to tell without hovering if a section is closed or open & empty. The monochrome sidebars made Finder and iTunes noticeably less efficient in my usage. Many new-style toolbars like Xcode's are not customizable anymore. etc...
And all these things are in line with Apple's hardware design (where I enjoy the simplicity a lot more).
(I also listen to a lot of podcasts and have been disappointed by the Apple Podcast app).
Podcasts.app is crap, but there are Instacast and Downcast (I alternate between those) and probably other good choices that cost less than a half gallon of gas.
It was a bit cumbersome to learn (tap to show position/scrubbing bar) but it works well for my news podcasts as well as my podrunner casts.
I often find streaming works fine instead of downloading the episode... couldn't do that before easily in the iPod/Music app.