I'm actually fairly shocked at how many of the top executives at Apple disliked Forstall. At least now, perhaps we'll start to see iOS change up a little bit.
They may have disliked him for different purposes. How about creating 2/3 of all of Apple's revenue singlehandedly by his iOS division (iphones, ipads, ipods) and making it a most valuable company in the world? How about creating a whole mobile craze, two new revolutionary markets, touch smartphones and touch tablets? Forstall might be a difficult person but he sure he is a true visionary, not less than Steve himself. Having 2/3 of Apple revenue coming form his division, Forstall had a right to be proud of his vision.
However, having said that, at some point he probably made an enemy bigger than Ive and Mansfield: Tim Cook, the CEO.
The reason is that Tim Cook is not a visionary but a brilliant and ruthless executioner. Tim needs a vision to guide and a plan for follow so he can muscle his great execution. He needs visions for both sides of his company: hardware and software. Steve would be able to provide that vision both for Cook and Ive and Forstall and he would be the one to integrate things into a single plan for Cook to go ahead.
With death of Steve Jobs, there was no more integration in a single vision, but two different visions, one is led by Ive, of minimalist and functional design and one of Forstall, built on current iOS, which itself was revolutionary but increasingly autonomous, because probably Forstall operated under principle if it aint broken, don't fix it so he was began producing iterations of earlier iOS without much visible changes. It is visible from the different iOS versions and different iPhone models. There were 3-4 largely distinct, large changes in iOS hardware (iPhones) but only small changes in a iOS design, which means Ive was progressing much faster than Forstall. At some stage the breakup was inevitable and one who is for change, won.
Having one visionary is quite an nightmare; having two is a catastrophe for a company. Tim Cook made his bet and chose Ive's style, because Ive's style is wider; it not only includes iOS hardware but also OS X hardware and also Ive's progress was more competitive while on software both MS and Google quickly caught up with Apple, if only not so fully.
What to expect next?
Shared time of Ive with software design means that probably Apple hardware design changes may somewhat slow down (specs will change of course), but there will be huge changes in software and the way it interacts with user. For example, the clock app icon may become live, mail icon more informative, weather icon live updating, stock app icon go live and so on, because Ive will require every icon to have some function, such as displaying information at glance and will never allow stale icons (=nonfunctional) in iOS.
stock from May, he should be okay. Do not worry too much.
