Scott Forstall Deserved to be Ousted from Apple Says Former Apple Exec

[Mattsasa]

Originally Posted by kas23

Seriously, why are they waiting until the new year to boot his ass out? I would have given him an hour to gather his keepsakes and then provided him with an escort out of the building.

Can someone please tell me. What forestall did that made everyone so mad?

[luqtotheman]

Originally Posted by locust76

Join the Army... it's high school with guns.

LOL thats funny!!!! and kind of scary...

[charlituna]

Originally Posted by jessica.

There is nothing more refreshing to see executives behave like morons. This dude needs to shut his mouth. Not to defend Forstall, but to show some professional courtesy.

In a way he did. What he said was what had been said already. He refused to elaborate.

And if he had said nothing folks would still spin it to the same effect

[dysamoria]

Originally Posted by Nevzorus

Not a very big surprise that they cheered. I liked him in the keynotes but that was all.

He was creepy in the keynotes. Reminded me of people I've known who have no ability to deal with human emotion, so they emulate it. I also found the bit where he announced how Siri can now give sports scores to be amusing for how underwhelmed the audience was. His false emotion made it fall even flatter because he appeared to be thinking "if I emote thusly, the audience will applaud." And they didn't. Dunno. Maybe has something to do with tech geeks (his audience) trending away from sports...

[dukebound85]

Originally Posted by Mattsasa

Can someone please tell me. What forestall did that made everyone so mad?

eh it's just the apple legions having to support Apple no matter what vehemently

If Apple had made Forstall CEO, these same people would be praising the move

[dysamoria]

Originally Posted by wikus

I wonder who's idea it was to lock iDevices with iTunes? That guy needs to be fired.

Or threatened some to make it less crippled without iTunes.

But this is marketing, not design. They differ a lot.

[charlituna]

Originally Posted by Rogifan

So far all I can surmise is #1 Forstall came from NeXT and #2 Forstall was a jerk (like Steve could be) and #3 Forstall got fired from Apple (like Steve did) ergo he's the next Steve Jobs and will come back to save Apple like Steve did.
?

Major differences

1. Jobs was anally serious about QC, Forstall doesn't seem the same with the mess that was iOS 6

2. Jobs would say 'I think I'm right, prove me wrong'. Forstall says 'I'm right, shut up.'

[dysamoria]

Originally Posted by Athonline

Worse than High School... in a High School you had a principal or at least someone acting as an adult. In the army, even senior officers are acting like kids.

Military knows that you will have far fewer order-obeying killers if you shop in the adult isles...

[dysamoria]

Originally Posted by Rogifan

All that's come out is he supposedly sent emails to his team asking what they could to improve iOS and berating them for not coming up with more innovative ideas.

Wow, that's so sociopathic. Apparently what we have here is the more common variety sociopath that isn't able to play the social game successfully. Leadership means there's a need to lead. Berating your people for failing to give you the ideas you'll sell up the chain to asskiss your boss is pretty clear demonstration of lack of leadership skills. People follow you because they respect you. If you show contempt for those you think you lead, you will have no followers.

I wonder if my own sociopathic ex boss has yet learned he can't browbeat people into respecting and praising him?

Unlikely. These creatures don't learn to actually see themselves.

Forstall is a lucky man. He can retire young. Live luxuriously till he croaks. He is the 1% and he probably didn't do much to earn it other than please his mentor... who was probably just far better at social manipulation than anyone else around them.

[Rogifan]

Originally Posted by charlituna

Major differences

1. Jobs was anally serious about QC, Forstall doesn't seem the same with the mess that was iOS 6

2. Jobs would say 'I think I'm right, prove me wrong'. Forstall says 'I'm right, shut up.'

Hey I don't think Forstall is the next Steve Jobs but it seems those that do think so because of the reasons I listed. Oh he came from NeXT and he's a jerk therefore he's untouchable because he's just like Steve.

[dysamoria]

Originally Posted by KdParker

Arrogant is not a reason to dislike someone. Just sayin

Sure it is, if the arrogance is not earned and actually backed by being right.

[Rogifan]

Originally Posted by dysamoria

Wow, that's so sociopathic. Apparently what we have here is the more common variety sociopath that isn't able to play the social game successfully. Leadership means there's a need to lead. Berating your people for failing to give you the ideas you'll sell up the chain to asskiss your boss is pretty clear demonstration of lack of leadership skills. People follow you because they respect you. If you show contempt for those you think you lead, you will have no followers.

I wonder if my own sociopathic ex boss has yet learned he can't browbeat people into respecting and praising him?

Unlikely. These creatures don't learn to actually see themselves.

Forstall is a lucky man. He can retire young. Live luxuriously till he croaks. He is the 1% and he probably didn't do much to earn it other than please his mentor... who was probably just far better at social manipulation than anyone else around them.

Of course these are all unconfirmed at this point, but the rumors I read about were what I mentioned above, along with Forstsll allegedly bad mouthing other teams in emails to his team as well as frequently playing the "Steve wouldn't have..." card. Also John Gruber reported that Forstall and Schiller didn't get on well and often times Forstall would wait until the last minute to provide Schiller's team with information on iOS updates.

[gnasher729]

Originally Posted by KnightWRX

NDAs are not part of the criminal code, they're a civil affair. Trade secrets are also not a form of protected IP, so you can't get criminal infringement like you could with Copyrights, nor can you sue competitors for infringing "trade secrets".

Stealing trade secrets _is_ a criminal offence.

NDAs are there to keep information a trade secret. So breaking an NDA is not in itself criminal, but if the breach reveals trade secrets, then it is.

[dysamoria]

Originally Posted by Tailpike1153

Not sure about #2.

Cause there have been a bunch of "nice" people in the tech world.

1. Bill Gates
2. Steve Jobs
3. Larry Ellison
4. Senior Leadership at ATT, Verizon, BellSouth, Comcast... (ie the American Telcom and Cable industries)
5. Carly Fiorino
6. Thomas Edison
7. Google leadership (if you aren't drinking the Don't Be Evil kool-aid)
8. HP management. For some reason it makes perfect sense to have a multimillion dollar American account call the customer service line to the call center in Guatemala, where the staff can barely speak Spanish (fugedabout American), to placed on hold for 3 hours while "Ma-hew" goes to find the one person in the village who can say "I send somebody."
9. Fill in the Blank

Somehow these people keep their jobs or move on to other good jobs. All by being garbage. Dang, I need to move to their level.

There is an incredible disparity between the qualities society claims to admire and those it allows ease of rewards. Especially in capitalism. Ethics are only involved in business when it's time for PR. Sociopaths rule because they are willing to sink to any level of unethical behavior in order to get what they want. Good people that wish to treat others fairly are always at a disadvantage when faced with competition against people willing to do distasteful, unethical and illegal things. That's why sociopaths, narcissists and psychopaths are considered "antisocial" behaviors; they defeat the purpose of, and wholly damage, society. This is why we are supposed to have regulating bodies to seek to balance and curtail the instincts of greed abs selfishness in cases where it grows to such a scale that it negatively affects the entire society (such as with corporate America). Unfortunately, government is power and those same antisocial creatures are filling the ranks there too.

[Millah]

Some of you should check out the book a**h*leology. There's a big difference between being an a-hole, and being a douchebag. Scott Forstall was a douchebag. Steve Jobs was an a-hole. Don't compare Forstall to Jobs just because they were both conflicting personalities. Steve was conflicting for all the right reasons, for a greater vision and high standards. Steve would listen to you if you showed him passion and seemed like you weren't a "bozo," he wanted you to prove him wrong and challenge you to achieve.

Scott on the other hand just strikes me as the type who is more full of himself. He seems like the type who would suppress talent inside Apple from outdoing him, never listening to others or allowing others to prove him wrong, and just an all around douche. Yes, he was a brilliant and ambitious man, but he clearly let the success of iOS get to his head. Not to mention the whispers that he was trying to overpower Tim Cook. That kind of behavior is not healthy for a company like Apple that's still learning under a new leader.

I have HUGE respect for everything Scott did. But I think Tony Fadell and others inside Apple know a bit more about the situation than we do. And if Tony feels Apple is in a better place without Scott, allowing the other talented people get more influence inside Apple, I'm inclined to believe him.

[Spink10]

Originally Posted by Millah

Some of you should check out the book a**h*leology. There's a big difference between being an a-hole, and being a douchebag. Scott Forstall was a douchebag. Steve Jobs was an a-hole. Don't compare Forstall to Jobs just because they were both conflicting personalities. Steve was conflicting for all the right reasons, for a greater vision and high standards. Steve would listen to you if you showed him passion and seemed like you weren't a "bozo," he wanted you to prove him wrong and challenge you to achieve.

Scott on the other hand just strikes me as the type who is more full of himself. He seems like the type who would suppress talent inside Apple from outdoing him, never listening to others or allowing others to prove him wrong, and just an all around douche. Yes, he was a brilliant and ambitious man, but he clearly let the success of iOS get to his head. Not to mention the whispers that he was trying to overpower Tim Cook. That kind of behavior is not healthy for a company like Apple that's still learning under a new leader.

I have HUGE respect for everything Scott did. But I think Tony Fadell and others inside Apple know a bit more about the situation than we do. And if Tony feels Apple is in a better place without Scott, allowing the other talented people get more influence inside Apple, I'm inclined to believe him.

I buy that!

[wgnoyes]

Originally Posted by Rogifan

So you're suggesting Scott Forstall is equal to Steve Jobs? I mean there's a reason people tolerated Steve being a jerk.

No, I'm just saying being difficult to work with doesn't automatically mean you suck.

[kalsta]

Originally Posted by jessica.

There is nothing more refreshing to see executives behave like morons. This dude needs to shut his mouth. Not to defend Forstall, but to show some professional courtesy.

Yeah, I thought the way he responded to the question about Scott Forstall was terrible.

Originally Posted by charlituna

In a way he did. What he said was what had been said already. He refused to elaborate.

And if he had said nothing folks would still spin it to the same effect

I disagree. What he said was worse for Scott's image than saying nothing or even just answering the question. He gave us no useful insight into the problems, but left us with no doubt as to his utter disdain for Scott.

The interviewer asked, 'Were there personal problems that you had with him? I mean how difficult was it working with him?' He could so easily have answered by saying, 'Yes, we clashed and there were problems, but that's in the past, and I wish Scott well in his future ventures.' He might even have elaborated a little bit on what those areas of difference were, without making it a personal attack. Instead, he makes it personal by saying Scott 'got what he deserved' and talking about the cheering of other Apple employees, while giving us no useful information at all. It's left to the viewer to imagine that Scott must have done something so unspeakably horrible that it can't even be discussed publicly.

[Solomani]

Originally Posted by hackjo

Sometimes to create you have to destroy.

Nero?

[alephnull12]

What Fadell says is more or less irrelevant.

What Ive says about skeumorphism is irrelevant.

What happened with the maps feature, and whether or not Forstall chose to apologize for it is irrelevant.

It appears to me, that there is a move towards consensus-based management at Apple, which is a shame. Consensus is, and always has been, the refuge of scoundrels -- for the plain reason that 10 poorly informed opinions are never as good as one really well-formed informed opinion.

You need a good manager who can cut through all the ******** of the so-called "consensus" to manage large technology products.

I think the Apple maps app is a good upgrade to what was already present. And so what if every address listed wasn't correct? It's not a show stealing feature anyway; more just coming up to standard with what has already been available elsewhere.

I wouldn't pan skeumorphism either. In some form or another, it's been the bedrock of all of Apple's revolutionary products in software, and what has always made its best products revolutionary and widely accepted. Consider the concept of the "desktop" in the original MacOS. The "Trash can." The icon for the "folder" (as opposed to "the directory"). The "document" (as opposed to the "file.") Consider the concept of an animated "button" on the computer screen (a graphical representation of a physical button). Consider Steve Job's long-held affection for classical typography, which is one of the few things he remarks on learning in school, and which formed the basis of much of what was unique about MacOS.

Discarding these classical notions for real-world objects which are familiar to people may be attractive to a select number of nerds who form a small proportion of the population, but is a dangerous path for Apple to go down as a consumer-oriented company.

Also, you should read a very widely read book in design called "The Design of Everyday Things", which is about how the physical appearance of objects gives users an intuitive sense of how they should interact with them. As arbitrary as these rules may seem, these are not concepts that individuals easily unlearn.

In iOS, it manifests in many ways as for example the slide switch, the "bounce" motion that gives users intuitive feedback that they have reached the end of a list (as opposed to accidentally touching a finger to the screen to cause it to inadvertently stick), the envelope icon for e-mail, etc...

The combination of Ive's industrial design and Forstall's classical and intuitive software design are part of what made iOS so great. The physical design of the computer is a sleek, simple and unintrusive as possible. This is as it should be. Why? Because the shape and appearance of the hardware does not change depending on the task at hand. Whether one is using a Calendar program, a word processing program, or watching a movie, the hardware will appear as always, so the design should be simple and unintrusive.

But the software of a computer is another matter. It *has* to communicate to the user what task is at hand. The appearance of a physical-appearing calendar or planner communicates this *very* easily, intuitively and simply to the user.

I wouldn't presume to what Ive has in mind when abandoning skeumorphism in software design, but for example using simplified, OS-wide similar geometric layouts and rendering the calendar screen in blue, e-mail screen in red and checklist screen in yellow, may *seem* simple, but is actually a lot harder for a person to acclimate to. They would have to constantly remember which color belongs to which appilcation, as opposed to looking at the surface of what appears to be a calendar, which pretty much anyone can understand and recognize in a split second without any instruction or learning whatsoever.

As great as Ive-style modern design may look aesthetically, designers of his caliber have conceived of a great many awesome-looking, but hardly useable products in the past. They may be of interest to a select few with a particularly discriminating eye, but most people abhor actually using them, and in most cases, owning them.

How does one sit at this simple looking table that is spare in the number of legs?

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/home...corbusier.html

Is it easy to see what you're cutting? If someone handed one of these to you outside of the kitchen, what would you think it was for?

https://www.momastore.org/museum/mom...69_26670_17611

Without fiddling with this first, how would you operate it?

https://www.momastore.org/museum/mom...69_26671_63596

This **** looks great, but they're a pain in the ass to use.

Ive's hardware design is great. But software, having no edges or curves, needs to communicate to users reliably and immediately how to use them. Skeumorphism has for the last 30 years been the most reliable and intuitive way to accomplish this in software. Just look at windows 8 and how hard it can be to figure out what their tiles actually do. One wonders how nutso the execs have to be at Apple to consider discarding it.

[KnightWRX]

Originally Posted by gnasher729

Stealing trade secrets _is_ a criminal offence.

NDAs are there to keep information a trade secret. So breaking an NDA is not in itself criminal, but if the breach reveals trade secrets, then it is.

Citation needed.

You're thinking of someone breaking the law to obtain trade secrets (breaking and entering, cybercrimes) for which a victim can obtain relief under the Uniform Trade Secret Acts signed by 46 states.

Breach of NDA does not grant protection under that Act, as NDAs are not considered sufficient form of protection of the secrets.

[thekev]

Originally Posted by prowlmedia

Because it's contractual. He's probably on a 6 month to 1 year Termination. And given he is still being paid a massive amount, why lose the knowledge he has on the process.

Also means he can't go and work for a competitor in that time - Gardening leave, as it known

Even if he signed one, they're invalid in California. He could go work for a competitor as long as he doesn't breach NDAs.

[prowlmedia]

Originally Posted by thekev

Even if he signed one, they're invalid in California. He could go work for a competitor as long as he doesn't breach NDAs.

Sure. But he can't go anywhere if he's still under contract and "working" for apple. Hence they don't release him from it.

He may be able to quit and walk but will loose $5.8m in shares! Fairly sure he is not active in the campus and just answering questions etc.

----------

Originally Posted by KdParker

Not in the world of business. There are lots of arrogant people and you don't have to like them to appreciate what they have done.

Liking and appreciating are completely different things

[xofruitcake]

Originally Posted by alephnull12

It appears to me, that there is a move towards consensus-based management at Apple, which is a shame. Consensus is, and always has been, the refuge of scoundrels -- for the plain reason that 10 poorly informed opinions are never as good as one really well-formed informed opinion.

You need a good manager who can cut through all the ******** of the so-called "consensus" to manage large technology products.

Have you ever involved in a complicate development project before? What you are talking is a movie version of corporate / project management. Given how many projects that Apple has to tackle at the same time, there is no one man/woman that can manage all of them. A person can only work 12-18 hours a day and there is no way that one person can be the visionary for Iphone 5, Ipad 4, Ipad mini, Ipod touch, Imac etc etc. at the same time. So you need a team of high power people that can work well together.

The IOS map problem is a really good example of what you get when one member of a team has a really strong ego and it almost bring all the product launch into a halt. The IOS 6 beta feedback was really bad. So Fostall and the development team should have known that the IOS map has a big problem. But guess what Apple kicked Google map out of IOS 6 anyway and presented the IOS map as better alternative than Google map. It created a fire storm of criticism from user group and Tim Cook had to issue an apology letter. From the action taken by Apple so far, it looks like Fostall and Williamson sandbagged the rest of the executive team and convince everyone believe that the Map is ready. And Forstall still don't believe an apology is appropriate to all the user that was affected by his decision. If Forstall and Williamsons worked better with other part of the executive team, Apple could have launched the map 10x better even if they decide to kick Google map out anyway. They could have prepare the user much better. Didn't we have an article about Apple trying to hire programmers who had work in Google map to help fix the problem after the IOS 6 launch? Clearly the software organization under Forstall miscalculated how bad the IOS map situation is and had not staff up enough resource to work on the problem. Do you want to bet your company on Forstall? How do you know that the one guy that you want to bet on is not the next Forstall?

Fortunately for Apple that there are enough alternative map solution out there that it does not affect the sales of any of the product so far. Otherwise, we would have been talking about how Apple product are not selling because of IOS map problem and how much money they are losing this quarter. A lone hero that save the world work great for a movie plot but it never happen in the real world.

[63dot]

Originally Posted by xofruitcake

A lone hero that save the world work great for a movie plot but it never happen in the real world.

+1

So true!