The macrumors community has, on occasion, had really unpleasant things to say about Forstall, from assertions that he's creepy to that he's a jerk.
I found him really likeable here.
I found him really likeable here.
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Former Apple Executives Recall Designing Touchscreen Interface of Original iPhone
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Benjamid
macrumors regular
Scott Forstall is a rebell like Jobs. Rebels need people like Cook around them to run things smoothly but Rebels make for better CEO's when you are in war with other competitors.
In choosing Cook Jobs thought either that they were in for a peace time expansion (Cook-like optimizers are great here) or he misjudged Cooks nature. Anyway Cook had his time and expanded Apple massivly, now we need a visionary again.
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In the video they refer to 2005 (a year earlier than the TED talk) as the year Steve Jobs showed Greg the table sized multitouch. In addition, the TED demo didn't have things like elastic band scrolling and the keyboard about which they spoke so much.
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One could have said the same about the ousting of Jobs himself. The point is simply that pushing people out can be a mistake.
It's smart in terms of acting in his own self-interest, however in terms of the self-interest of Apple and its customers, it's terrible.
You could pretty much put anybody in charge of Apple and the company could basically run itself due to inertia. I think the best solution might have been to have the CEO position rotate among the Senior VP's.
Personally I believe Steve Jobs chose Cook to be his successor because Steve knew Tim would make him look even better in retrospect, everybody would say that it's just not the same without Steve.
xDKP
macrumors 68030
I'm with you here - and let's not forget that Jobs most trusted designer has way more power in the company now than early years of iPhone development - Ive does a phenomenal job - I LOVE my iPhone 7 and Apple Watch
Agreed. Ive can be under appreciated at times for comments regarding his "Thinness" with devices, but Apple devices are the most aesthetically pleasing and his talent to design, engineer and bring elegance to a piece of tech hardware isn't easy to do, even when some think it is.
BruceEBonus
macrumors 65816
Who wouldve thought that ten .... no, just 5 years ago people would be satisfied in the knowledge that in a decade hence folks would find a clunky Watch, a Pen, a recased and beefed up Echo speaker, a beefed up old iMac case (resold as the 'new' IMac Pro) a beefed up old iPad case (resold as the 'new iPad Pro) in ANY way comparable to what really was then a visionary future. Jobs was Apple. Cook is the caretaker. Ironically enough though shares in the company continue to rise despite the evidence of product stagnation. And people see this as success. Two months to go til iPhone 8. Has the iOS changed much? Not really. Has the design? Well if you deem beefing up and recasing stuff as change. As a vision of the future then yes Apple are no different in their idealism since 2007. However if you 'were there' and remember the occasion then no. We know this inertia can t go unnoticed forever. So rejoice at what was then a daring and industry-challenging time and appreciate how Jobs changed the world. Literally. But please don't insult his memory by comparing Apple today to Apple then. It's like comparing Oasis to the Beatles. Both played similar music. Only one of them actually originated it. The other was a tribute band. 😛
The iOS keyboard itself is great, but in regards to AI Google is mapping the floor with every other company.
You can see this in every aspect of data analysis. Keyboard prediction, personal assistant, search engine etc.
mazz0
macrumors 68040
"Pinch tom zoom" always sounds like a misleading name to me. If you just say "zoom" to me I think specifically "zoom in", where as pinching is to zoom out. Anyone else think that?
MadeMyDay
macrumors regular
I love this video. Send it to Samsung.
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You first need to pinch before separating your fingers to zoom.
Rogifan
macrumors Penryn
I wonder what current Apple leadership thinks of all these ex-employees being so public (especially Tony Fadell). Wasn't Fadell the iPod guy and didn't he leave Apple in part because the iPhone team and not the iPod team was given responsibility for the iPod touch?
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It's amazing all the revisionist history we get now that Jobs is dead. When he was alive he was PT Barnum, just a good salesman who knew how to command a stage. Now he's a technological genius.
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Cook rushed out Maps? You think this all just happened after Steve died? That's ridiculous! The decision to ditch Google no doubt was approved by Jobs. Also why is everyone assuming Forstall was fired because of Maps? Tim Cook never said that. All signs point to him being fired because he was difficult to work with and didn't get along with the rest of the executive team. Even Tony Fadell when asked about his firing in a BBC interview said Forstall "got what he deserved". So clearly there wasn't a lot of love for him in the upper ranks of Apple. Ben Thompson who writes the blog Stratchery, was an intern at Apple. Interns at Apple get to meet the executive team. He said the person that impressed him the most was Tim Cook. And the least was Scott Forstall because Forstall acted like the smartest man in the room and made sure everyone there knew he was the smartest man in the room. I'll take Craig Federighi any day over Forstall. I doubt we'd have iOS 11 for iPad if Forstall was still running iOS.
Talk about rose-tinted glasses. What is remotely game-changing about anything that Apple has announced in the last couple of years? Normal people are massively underwhelmed by the tiny iterations of the i-devices year on year. The last bit of progress imho was the 5.5" iPhone. Since then, little or nothing of actual and genuine interest or innovation in the wider sense.
In a word.. NO!
Forstall didn't push his luck with Jobs. He thought he could stage a coup vs Cook and he was wrong. In other words, he acceded to Jobs total control willfully because he knew Jobs could not be challenged. He didn't want to live under Cook so he was unmanageable and viewed that he was irreplaceable.
There are always talented people who push the limits of management's tolerance. The Harvard Business Review once published an article about the "temperamental talent." Which such people it's about risk vs reward. At the point that they create too much dysfunction for what they offer, a strong manager has to have courage to cut their losses, which is what Cook did.
Apple hasn't suffered since Forstall left. He botched Maps. He refused to make simple changes to iOS that were useful and readily available in Android.
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They don't say if that was actually in the final keyboard, let alone whether its still in the keyboard 10 years later?
I hope not - so any time I hit 'T' and want to type 'type', it'll be more difficult because the hit zone for 'y' is smaller to accommodate 'h' being bigger? I thought it'd be more likely to keep the hit zones the same and then compensate with autocorrect afterwards. So eg if I type tye/tje/tge etc it'll autocorrect to 'the'?
Labeno
macrumors 6502
That is an excellent thought. If Tim Cook had been at that lunch table instead, he would have told Scott, "existing phones are fine.... what we need is more profit from the iPods."
The thing Forestall talks about the 'hit region'....
I've had iP4 then iP5 .... when i was in the process of gathering money for iP6, I swiched to LG G3 primarily for dual-sim reason, and I couldn't figure out why I could type faster on the tiny iP5 screen then on 5.5` Lg G3 screen... ????
This is why Apple is the best there is.
I've had iP4 then iP5 .... when i was in the process of gathering money for iP6, I swiched to LG G3 primarily for dual-sim reason, and I couldn't figure out why I could type faster on the tiny iP5 screen then on 5.5` Lg G3 screen... ????
This is why Apple is the best there is.
hawkeye_a
macrumors 68000
That's my opinion as well. The only criticism I have is the lack of 'points of interest' (a data issue). The app however, was light years ahead of anything else out there. If I had worked on it and then been ordered to apologize by a pandering CEO, i'd walk too.
imnotthewalrus
macrumors 6502a
The wheel was pretty useless until someone figured out what it could be used for. And that someone, Apple in this case, is worthy of that credit.
Tycho24
Suspended
Right, right... one of the shrewdest businessmen of this century “misjudged” drastically the nature of a man that had worked for the company for 11 years at the time- & somehow accidentally bestowed upon him, control of the most valuable company in the world.
Please, Mr. Armchair CEO- do tell us more about what “we” need, lol.
hawkeye_a
macrumors 68000
I watched that 'Computer History Museum' video with the 3 Apple engineers and Forstall, over the weekend.
It was the best video about/from Apple i've seen since the last Stevenote. And unexpectedly, it highlighted how 'fake' Cook is on stage in comparison IMHO. I appreciate the supply-chain and operational know-how of the man(Cook), and i do credit him with being a big part of bringing Apple back from the abyss.
It was the best video about/from Apple i've seen since the last Stevenote. And unexpectedly, it highlighted how 'fake' Cook is on stage in comparison IMHO. I appreciate the supply-chain and operational know-how of the man(Cook), and i do credit him with being a big part of bringing Apple back from the abyss.
interesting article about the genesis of the iphone, and we have 4 pages of mostly Steve Jobs spinning in his grave, Cook being a terrible CEO, and conspiracy stories about Forstall and Maps.
sigh
sigh