Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple's Reorganization Goes Deeper Than Just Who's In Charge
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Thank God he said arrow to the back; I don't think I could handle any more Skyrim memes
It's hilarious you said that because I was thinking along those lines. Why take a arrow in the back when you can just take one in the knee?
You mean, at least Cook is doing something about it
He's changing some of the Jobs-protected Apple culture that's been in place for over a DECADE.
Time will tell if Cook knows what he's doing.
Cook is not enhusiastic or charismatic as a CEO, and Apple needs that. Sculley, Spindler, and Amelio even, were all more energetic leaders, of course no one matches the energy and charisma of Steve Jobs.
Simply put, Tim Cook is dull as dirt. And Apple can't be Apple with the head-of-the show lacking any spunk whatsoever....Apple is built on WOW and Tim Cook cannot deliever WOW...he can only manage from the sidelines.
Book-smarts and office skills from a CEO can't command a following that is needed to keep a company thriving for the long haul. A bit of ingenious, clever, and witty dialogue is always needed.
This all strikes me as reasonable timing, considering Apple has to figure out what OS 11 is going to be. We're a couple years out, maybe a little longer than that. A reorganization now, to streamline leadership and get clear areas of responsibility, makes a lot of sense. Maps and such may be part of it, but I think Apple is more forward-thinking than that.
It's not usually about who can get out the door first. It's usually about who can get out the door first, right.
Sure, but this has nothing to do with who got out first. It's about whether the Courier tech was possible at all in 2009 or not. The software certainly was. So was the hardware.
The price would've probably been killer high, though.
Why not? It was just the equivalent of hinging two iPads or UMPC tablets together.
Why? The 3GS wasn't the top level of hardware available at the time. However, even two iPad 1 equivalents would've worked fine.
Agreed. I've posted here before that I thought Allard was a little optimistic about how fast he could polish it up. However, the tech was quite doable, and certainly generated enormous excitement for a while.
And also still no desktop CPU for the iMac; still not sure about this overriding drive for the iMac's thinness.
The problem with releasing to a schedule is that you end up having to release something even if it's not finished (hence Siri and Maps) and that only generates bad publicity and customer dis-satisfaction. Far better to wait and release it when the product is finished and ready for prime time. They are trying to rush products out presumably because they are scared of what the competition is doing but I'd rather they wait and get it right. We didn't need a new Maps app this year, they could have stuck with Google Maps until it was finished.
Precisely. APPLE was 100% correct in releasing iPad 4 now, rather than in April next year. No company can expect to stay ahead of the curve, by withholding dramatically better technology http://www.primatelabs.com/blog/2012/10/early-ipad-4th-generation-benchmarks/ because of a rigid, fixed timeframe release schedule. The competition would walk all over them.
Agreed - iOS is good, not great, but damn good and with just some positive attention here and there, it would be much better. At the end of the day, today, it is still IMHO better than anything else out there.
I think of this as a Sport team.
Before with Jobs it was like one of the offensive superstar QB was also team coach while being one important player.
With Cook, its now a very experienced and trusted defesive guy who is way less flashy but does lots of small "boring" stuff right is now the team coach.
I think both team can still be as successful, because even with the second scenario you can still have another Superstar QB that can work his magic without being the coach also.
I mean, Tim Cook can be a very good CEO, maybe as good as Jobs, while not playing the same role as Steve in the creative process. I think we need to see this a two very different positions in the company that Steve happened to fulfill all by himself.
I had no idea these items were delivered on some schedule instead of when they were finished, but it makes sense now. I was involved in a similar project last year. Someone told me you have three factors: speed, cost, quality. You can only get two. If you get speed, then you either have to spend more or get lower quality. Apparently, Apple didn't spend enough.
This is kind of surprising based on Apple's track record. People complained forever about "lacking" features on iOS such as cut and paste, MMS, etc. Considering how polished those items were when they arrived, it was obvious that Apple pushed them out when they were ready. You could only do so much with a certain number of people on iOS, so you can't include ALL features people on here complain about.
I would definitely rather have products come out when they're ready instead of when I told you I thought they might have a chance at being ready 12 months ago. I don't think Siri was a big deal considering the fact that it was new, unfinished and labeled as such. Maps is obviously a bigger problem because it replaced another product. I personally have had minimal problems with it. I think a lot of the issue comes from people wanting everything from a free product. The turn-by-turn directions from Maps are neat, but the $40 GPS app from Magellan is much deeper. Unfortunately it's also a storage hog, which sucks on a 16GB iPhone.
But I digress. Stick to the "it is deployed when ready" philosophy.
This is kind of surprising based on Apple's track record. People complained forever about "lacking" features on iOS such as cut and paste, MMS, etc. Considering how polished those items were when they arrived, it was obvious that Apple pushed them out when they were ready. You could only do so much with a certain number of people on iOS, so you can't include ALL features people on here complain about.
I would definitely rather have products come out when they're ready instead of when I told you I thought they might have a chance at being ready 12 months ago. I don't think Siri was a big deal considering the fact that it was new, unfinished and labeled as such. Maps is obviously a bigger problem because it replaced another product. I personally have had minimal problems with it. I think a lot of the issue comes from people wanting everything from a free product. The turn-by-turn directions from Maps are neat, but the $40 GPS app from Magellan is much deeper. Unfortunately it's also a storage hog, which sucks on a 16GB iPhone.
But I digress. Stick to the "it is deployed when ready" philosophy.
How do you figure?
One of the things Jobs talked about with big companies is that they had too many committees, and he seemed to love telling people that Apple has zero committees and is run like the world's biggest startup (a little exaggerated, but you know what he meant).
He also said his business model was "The Beatles", e.g., he said "four very talented guys who kept each other's negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other...and the total was greater than the sum of the parts."
Incidentally, Apple now has four people who are more-or-less in charge of the whole show: Tim Cook; Jony Ive; Craig Federighi and Eddy Cue.
I don't really see the kind of bogged down corporate culture that Microsoft had for years (see the Vanity Fair article, "Microsoft's Lost Decade").
Good point. I may have misunderstood.. it sounded to me like they were creating divisions that were going to split responsibilities for the products or something. I'm not very knowledgeable when it comes to corporate structure, but I did read the Jobs bio and I seem to remember reading that he hated the various divisions and departments most companies have. Anyway, I'm hoping that they're shaking things up to keep things fresh and it sounds like that's the plan. Still don't know why everybody here seems to hate the wood texture in iBooks or the leather texture of Find Friends- I think those things are cool and distinguish iOS from the neon-video-game-looking OS of Android.
Well as someone from the UK I would question the wisdom of Tim Cook's decisions, in particular the appointment of John Browett. This is a man who was in charge of an electronics retailer here in the UK with a dreadful reputation for customer service, a store of last resort for the savvy. Yes he's been given the push but what was Cook thinking of ever appointing him in the first place?
True. I liked System 7, especially 7.5.
I loved Mac OS 8.5, too though. (And Mac OS 9.)
----------
Basically.
IBM makes CPUs called the POWER series. The G5 was based on the POWER4. Previous PowerPCs were also based on POWER chips.
...Needless to say the PowerPC powered Apple's computers for over ten years-- from 1994 to 2006.
I think Mansfield is just old and wants to retire. Figuring his successor was ready, he went ahead and announce his retirement. Of course things didn't quite work out.
Mansfield is 51 and only signed on for another 2 years, which will leave a big gap for Riccio to fill as SVP of Technologies.
I'm not familiar with how his department runs but it makes me nervous when someone with that deep of a knowledge of the underpinnings, the frameworks, etc. gets canned.
I also think Ive is capable of very big damage to usability if left unchecked. He's a great designer, but UI is a whole new path for him. Aesthetic decisions can bring big changes to functionality. This is beyond removing the faux leather (yea!). I'm worried he will sacrifice function for form. When it comes to how we use a computer or other device, it is a lot different than how the case design looks and feels.
iOS has turned Apple into the company it is and Forstall was integral to that. I met Forstall at a WWDC and spoke with him for about 10 minutes, I don't know how he manages, it's obvious he's a really smart guy (he wasn't a jerk to me).
But Apple without at least one jerk probably isn't going to work so well.
Federighi is probably up to the task for OSX/iOS, but Forstall was the last major NeXT guy left who was there the whole time. It's doubtful that Federighi would tell Ive no on a UI decision, whereas Forstall probably would.
I guess if other people wouldn't work with Forstall, he brought this on himself. Forstall sold over $70M in stock around April, so he probably saw it coming (was that around when Mansfield left/unleft?). No way was this just about Maps.
People saying this is a great new day for Apple is silly. It's obvious Apple has been working carefully with their PR and media contacts to manage the message and focus the story on Forstall's personality and downplay the loss of a major engineering asset.
Cook is not "putting his stamp" on Apple. He's obviously dealing with a total fiasco. He had to beg Mansfield to stay. He probably was at risk of losing Ive and that is the only reason Forstall is going.
No matter the spin, it's a huge amount of uncertainty and not a positive for Apple.
Browett was a bad decision period, it's good to see it corrected so quickly but it calls into question the whole search process followed by Apple and ultimately falls on Cook too.
Apple is in a huge war with Android, and they just lost a battle with the problems with iOS 6. There's an old Chinese saying "It is a big taboo for a military commander to replace the marshal in the middle of a battle" (陣前易帥, 兵家大忌).
Jony: "Why do we have two buttons on that dialog box?"
Engineer: "So that the user can select 'yes' or 'no'."
Jony: "One button would look better. Get rid of the second."
+1
2 years should be enough for Riccio to get up to speed. Mansfield can't keep working forever you know. Retiring in your 50s if you have the means isn't a bad idea.
As for UI, you are assuming Ive doesn't knows his limits. Apple has teams of UI designers to do the UIs, Ive will probably only be overseeing the "look" of things and leave the details to the teams.
Anyway, I'm rather unhappy with skuemorphic design of recent apps. The skuemorphism adds little functionality and in general only serve to clutter up the app and slow it down. Look at Reminders on iOS, the whole app feels cramped. I rather they had stick to the old UI philosophy of Contacts and Safari. If purging Forstall is necessary to avoid apps like Reminders then so be it.
Last edited: