Jony Ive Removed From Apple's Leadership Page

[jonblatho]

Ever consider the possibility of doing what Scott did at his level to be a high-pressure, high-stress job and that he wants to take some time off or do something different?

Where's your evidence? Oh right....

I’ve linked it in related posts before, but here’s just some of the reporting that led me to write what I did:

• Forstall’s refusal to sign a letter apologizing for the botched launch of Apple Maps in 2012, saying that concerns over its data quality were overblown, forcing Tim Cook to sign it instead
• Forstall being so toxic and disliked that fellow SVP Bob Mansfield publicly announced his intent to retire and then publicly changed his mind when Forstall was fired (note that Forstall’s firing and Mansfield’s new position were announced in the same press release)
• Forstall being so toxic and disliked that Om Malik reported “quiet jubilation” and “celebratory drinks” in response to Forstall’s firing
• Forstall being so toxic and disliked that fellow SVP (at the time) Jony Ive refused to attend product review meetings with Forstall and vice-versa
• Forstall’s only (known) work since his departure from Apple has been co-producing Fun Home and Eclipsed on Broadway and reportedly serving as an advisor for Snap, but it’s basically certain that no other company (including Snap) has brought him on as a senior-level executive despite his remarkable pedigree

While I know the man just as well as you two do, based on the countless accounts of his personality, it really doesn’t seem like he’d be the type to “slow down” for what’s coming up on a decade — the man lived and breathed software engineering. I’m not sure if the implication in the first quoted post is that Forstall chose to leave, but as far as I know, there’s absolutely nothing indicating that that was the case. Forstall was fired.

That aside, with his genuinely incredible résumé, there are quite a few tech companies out there who would happily give him however much money he wants, allow him exactly the role he wants, and so on, as a senior-level executive. Poaching him would have been a monstrous achievement for any deep-pocketed tech company. That has not happened.

Essentially, within a year after Steve Jobs’s death, Tim Cook was cornered into deciding whether to keep Forstall and lose Ive or keep Ive and fire Forstall, because while none of the executives really liked Forstall, the Ive–Forstall relationship was by far the most problematic. Tim Cook chose the latter route for a reason, and I think Tim Cook could have stomached signing the apology letter without firing Forstall if Forstall were otherwise someone he felt like going to bat for.

Turns out he wasn’t; his refusal to sign the letter was just the final straw for a man that no one liked working with. He got kicked to the curb and, by most accounts of people in a position to speak on it, deserved it. And he — or even members of the factions who liked him — has had every opportunity to challenge and correct these characterizations over the years. Again, that hasn’t happened.

There’s quite a bit of smoke there to run around claiming there’s no fire. A far simpler conclusion is that no one wants him.

 

[cmaier]

Where's your evidence? Oh right....

He seems to have provided some evidence, namely that the free market seems to have spoken.

 

[The-Real-Deal82]

Hawaiian: alumini
Icelandic: ál
Catalan: aluminum
Finnish: alumiini
Albanian: alumin
Irish: alúmanam
...

Haha really?

 

[pika2000]

Doesn’t sound like a very visionary one though.

And maybe Apple is fine with that too if it means people continue to buy their products.

Then define visionary. Is making laptops to be as thin as possible so that battery life, thermal performance, and keyboard become issues visionary? Is making a phone that is so thin that it sacrifices battery life visionary?

Apple’s vision don’t seem to change anyway. Apple is making inroads to things that you don’t even see, like health care. Visionary doesn’t always mean making shiny less functional products.

 

[cmaier]

Haha really?

Yes. And hliník in Yiddish, if that’s your preferred language.

 

[kkinto]

 

[Millah]

Any reporting (or better yet, evidence) to the contrary of any of what I said? Since I see a lot of tech companies freaking rolling in cash, enough to pay Forstall whatever he wants to poach him from Apple, doing whatever he wants, and yet no one’s managed to do it.

Probably because no one wants him working there day to day.

Maybe because Scott doesn’t WANT to work at another tech company? Scott stumbled into computer science. He wasn’t some computer geek before he got into CS, his original passion was for theatre.

Scott was a true Steve Jobs lieutenant. I can’t imagine he would want to work at any tech company other than Apple. Anyone in the industry who knows him all say he is a brilliant system architect and platform leader. So let’s not trash the guy who led a project in 2005 that literally seemed impossible at the time, and made the groundbreaking software platform that literally changed software platforms forever. The level of latency and responsiveness to multitouch input that allowed you to just flick the screen and have it scroll with physics and momentum, running on wimpy handheld ARM hardware, genuinely seemed impossible in 2007. Even in 2019, other platforms still haven’t been able to match UIKit. Truly masterful work in system level architecture.

Federighi is a very capable leader in his own right, but nothing on his resume comes close to matching Forstalls work from iPhone OS 1+2

 

[progx]

You can’t be serious about this. Don’t you know how bad iOS is since iOS 7? That was a prime example of form over function and that form wasn’t too good.

Are you serious? There was less functionality in the iPhone and iPad OS because of these ideas. I don’t care about aesthetics of the experience, I want to be able to do something with it. Scott was terrible with functionality and more concerned with nostalgia. He wanted to be the next Steve, but failed to understand who he was going to be. He lacked, in my opinion, the ability to believe in the function of a tool versus the look. Apple hasn’t made the best strides lately post Steve, I’ll agree, but no other competitor has made great leaps either. The industries, whether PC or mobile, has been stagnant since 2015 at the last war.

For those “Forstallers”, Scott leading the company would have been pesticide for the faithful and the employees. He was a fake.

 

[iMi]

People can say what they wish, but to suggest he was not an incredibly talented industrial designer is simply wrong. He's brilliant and a big loss to Apple. I wonder why he's leaving...

 

[Abazigal]

Then define visionary. Is making laptops to be as thin as possible so that battery life, thermal performance, and keyboard become issues visionary? Is making a phone that is so thin that it sacrifices battery life visionary?

Apple’s vision don’t seem to change anyway. Apple is making inroads to things that you don’t even see, like health care. Visionary doesn’t always mean making shiny less functional products.

I am not sure if it’s just me, but complaints of the butterfly keyboard malfunctioning seems to have stopped this year, suggesting that Apple may have finally fixed the problems with it. However, the stigma around it is so great that they may have felt it warranted to release another MBP with a revised keyboard just to shake off this cloud of negativity surrounding it.

If you ask me, Mac users don’t need keys with deeper travel, different cursor keys layout, or a physical Esc key. What they need is a more powerful keyboard. That keyboard is a virtual keyboard. Of course, customers don’t know what they want until you show it to them.

Just as the truck’s steering wheel is not its defining feature, I don’t think the physical keyboard should be the Mac’s, yet that seems to be precisely what Apple has done here.

The Mac is all about power that is not available elsewhere. And I think it should also have input methods which would enable creators to make the best content possible.

I don’t think Mac users should be calling for the return of the physical Esc key or the removal of the Touch Bar. They should be calling for Touch Bar expansion which feels like a physical keyboard - so that they can create better content.

I concede that the new MacBook Pro seems like a good compromise between where Apple wants to take the Mac keyboard and the technology it has available. I believe that the Touch Bar remains the future yet its evolution is clearly contingent on further R&D in haptics.

I guess the main point I want to make is one about a bias. A better keyboard is in the best interest of all Mac users. However, does a better keyboard mean the physical keyboard one grew up with? Instead of asking Apple to evolve the Mac and keep it relevant, a portion of Mac users is asking Apple to sell familiarity instead.

I think that’s wrong. I think that when the day when Apple introduces a dual-screen Mac with a full virtual keyboard with haptics does come, Mac users will be delighted at the possibilities and power at hand and will ask themselves why they had wished for a faster horse instead of a car all this time.

But I don’t run Apple, and I guess even Apple has to listen to the market every once in a while.

 

[pika2000]

I am not sure if it’s just me, but complaints of the butterfly keyboard malfunctioning seems to have stopped this year, suggesting that Apple may have finally fixed the problems with it. However, the stigma around it is so great that they may have felt it warranted to release another MBP with a revised keyboard just to shake off this cloud of negativity surrounding it.

If you ask me, Mac users don’t need keys with deeper travel, different cursor keys layout, or a physical Esc key. What they need is a more powerful keyboard. That keyboard is a virtual keyboard. Of course, customers don’t know what they want until you show it to them.

Just as the truck’s steering wheel is not its defining feature, I don’t think the physical keyboard should be the Mac’s, yet that seems to be precisely what Apple has done here.

The Mac is all about power that is not available elsewhere. And I think it should also have input methods which would enable creators to make the best content possible.

I don’t think Mac users should be calling for the return of the physical Esc key or the removal of the Touch Bar. They should be calling for Touch Bar expansion which feels like a physical keyboard - so that they can create better content.

I concede that the new MacBook Pro seems like a good compromise between where Apple wants to take the Mac keyboard and the technology it has available. I believe that the Touch Bar remains the future yet its evolution is clearly contingent on further R&D in haptics.

I guess the main point I want to make is one about a bias. A better keyboard is in the best interest of all Mac users. However, does a better keyboard mean the physical keyboard one grew up with? Instead of asking Apple to evolve the Mac and keep it relevant, a portion of Mac users is asking Apple to sell familiarity instead.

I think that’s wrong. I think that when the day when Apple introduces a dual-screen Mac with a full virtual keyboard with haptics does come, Mac users will be delighted at the possibilities and power at hand and will ask themselves why they had wished for a faster horse instead of a car all this time.

But I don’t run Apple, and I guess even Apple has to listen to the market every once in a while.

Until Apple perfected Siri on the Mac do macOS can be operated 100% by voice commands, the keyboard will be the most important user input device. Considering that customers now keep computers for 4, 5 years or even longer, an unreliable keyboard like the butterfly keyboard really is against everything that makes people love Apple. Butterfly keyboard itself is a marvel of engineering in a vacuum, but it seems that the engineers are forced to do that because someone from the design team (Jobs gave the design team ultimate precedence over other departments) want an even thinner MacBook Pro profile.

And butterfly keyboard is not the only issue. The thermal issues suffered by 15” MacBook Pros is a clear indication that design cannot go against the law of physics.

in the end, Apple needs to strengthen its core competencies, and looks like they are doing it, with iPhones having great battery life, and a well performing and reliable Pro laptop.

 

[Feyl]

Are you serious? There was less functionality in the iPhone and iPad OS because of these ideas. I don’t care about aesthetics of the experience, I want to be able to do something with it. Scott was terrible with functionality and more concerned with nostalgia. He wanted to be the next Steve, but failed to understand who he was going to be. He lacked, in my opinion, the ability to believe in the function of a tool versus the look. Apple hasn’t made the best strides lately post Steve, I’ll agree, but no other competitor has made great leaps either. The industries, whether PC or mobile, has been stagnant since 2015 at the last war.

For those “Forstallers”, Scott leading the company would have been pesticide for the faithful and the employees. He was a fake.

Do you realize that features that you had in iOS were planned by Scott and the team was working on them after he wasn’t already there? Do you think that companies have no future roadmap? There are many signs in iOS 6 that redesign was coming. Maybe not in the next version and maybe it was supposed to be a slower change. So what you’re saying is that you’re ok with Apple postponing announced features and deliver poor experience.

After Scott left many people went with him. Half of the company didn’t want the change to flat design. Apple was ill and divided in 2013. Let’s not blame Scott Forstall for everything in this broken company because he was one the guys that saved the company. Don’t ever forget that.

 

[Chytin]

What doesn't work like that, read my post and the comments I was replying to again, to discover your comments make zero sense...

You are reading it all wrong.
You read too much into the Finance side of things. I was not honoring Steve, there are many reason to do that, but that would be a different topic. Steve came back to Apple, saved Apple and made it the richest company by focusing on great products.
Tim Cook does not have that focus, I think Scott Forstall does have that.

 

[chineseguy38]

Product visionaries all but gone from Apple.

View attachment 879653

Best team from Apple.

 

[kkinto]

Lots of hate for Forstall! Dont know him, but hey, remember lots of people couldnt abide steve jobs either. Brilliant people can be hard to work with if youre not on their wavelength, but that doesnt make them any less brilliant/ Like that photo posted, Steve could keep the opposites together. Unfortunately the glue all gone now, and dear Tim Apple just isnt into conflict of any kind or managing such big egos and brilliant people imho. Anyway, Ive is gone, the Mac Pro keyboard seems sorted, ports are gone for good, software is super buggy and the new mac pro, well looks good if you can afford it...there's gotta be hope for the future (of the Mac that is - couldnt care two hoots for the phone or whatnot else tbh)

 

[pika2000]

Lots of hate for Forstall! Dont know him, but hey, remember lots of people couldnt abide steve jobs either. Brilliant people can be hard to work with if youre not on their wavelength, but that doesnt make them any less brilliant/ Like that photo posted, Steve could keep the opposites together. Unfortunately the glue all gone now, and dear Tim just isnt into conflict or managing such big egos and brilliant people imho. Anyway, Ive is gone, the Mac Pro keyboard seems sorted, ports are gone for good, software is super buggy and the new mac pro, well looks good if you can afford it...

I don't think there's a lot of hate for Forstall, but the problem is there are too many people putting him on a pedestal as if he's some ultimate genius or something.

Software is imo going into the right direction again with the recent reworking of the internal of software development, unfortunately after the iOS13 and Catalina debacle. iOS11 and subsequently 12 should've taught Apple something. And the new Mac Pro is what everybody seemed to be wanting after Apple released the trash can Mac Pro. So I wonder if those whiners will actually buy what they requested.

The only thing I am disappointed with Apple is their Apple TV+ decision. I'd rather Apple to use the money to buff up iCloud instead and making it into a real competitor against the likes of Office 365. Remember iWork for iCloud? It got a lot of promise when Apple demoed it, but we don't hear about it anymore. iCloud seems stagnant. But hey, there's some TV shows you can watch if you are happened to be in some selected markets.

 

[BaltimoreMediaBlog]

He was a casualty of the failure of Moore's 2nd Law of Thinness.
Eventually, your cool looking device is so thin it breaks, is of no use anymore, or disappears.

 

[curtvaughan]

An ironic condemnation. While Apple may have screwed the pooch on the Mac, it is but a tiny fraction of Apple’s profits. Meanwhile, the Apple Watch and AirPods have been so well received and clearly represent the future of Apple, yet no recognition of Jony Ive’s contributions here have been forthcoming.

I think time will tell that thinner and lighter is indeed the way to go with wearables.

Actually, it appears from the link below that "wearables and accessories" comprise the smallest niche of Apple products, with a slight upward bump in 2019 - I would attribute that to increased purchases of Apple sound devices and dongles after the removal of the headphone jack and ports. I have no idea whether or not the *pods and watches were designed by Ive, but the services category seems to have the most growth. Mac sales have declined a bit beginning in 2018, perhaps coinciding with QC issues with keyboards, thermal problems, and some laptop displays. Sales of iPhones remain the overwhelming profit slice, with peaks in 2015 and 2018 with releases of the 6/6S and X lines, respectively. iPhone sales have begun to decline since the 2nd quarter of 2018, though they remain high. I suspect high prices and overall public malaise with smartphones in general have something to do with it. People seem to be holding on to their old phones for longer time periods.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/382260/segments-share-revenue-of-apple/

 

[DeepIn2U]

Apparently Maps was the last straw. Forstall was notoriously difficult to work with, much like Steve Jobs himself, but it seems like Jobs was able to keep him in check.

he wasn’t really notorious to work with. That BS came a few short months from the press after the same press feeds mentioned he’s CEO inline after Steve would retire due to illness or possible death at that time. He disliked Craig and Craig, Cook as well as Mansfield felt threatened by him after that announcement. Of those mentioned notice that only Mansfield and Cook did not work with him at NeXT? Craig did and I think his issue is Forstall was just smarter and more talented than he.

iPhone OS, a truly useful backup solution for OS X, proper icons for iPhone/iOS pushing developers NOT to submit mediocre apps and shady design in the UI like Android had for decades (and in my opinion) still does.

Everyone balks at Maps intro but sorry he’s a visionary and new Apple shouldn’t keep relying on gOogles mapping solution dominance. Now maps has revolved decently. So if a public apology was so critically needed why did Apple continue its evolution? Hmm. Credit isn’t giving where it’s due.

 

[danny842003]

Hawaiian: alumini
Icelandic: ál
Catalan: aluminum
Finnish: alumiini
Albanian: alumin
Irish: alúmanam
...

I think he meant in English. Clearly it’s our language so we can’t be wrong.
Also put all the U’s back and stop going crazy with the Z.

 

[DeepIn2U]

Yeah but there are a lot of people that have left even long before that. The original researcher of the macOS kernel going back to NeXT left in 2003. The guy behind the iPod left in 2008. Other people step up.

you mean Avi Tevanian and Bertrand Serlet .... yeah they both worked from the start with Forstall hence why for a phone and iPadOS his work won out from a ridiculous iPod OS. Can you imagine the fail that would’ve been?!
[automerge]1575024073[/automerge]

Couldn't be further from the truth. Hell, the CEO is a Industrial Engineering graduate. You really should quit while you're behind.

P.S. To those whining about iOS and wondering all about the new Software Testing Initiatives is due to fellow NeXT/Apple alums who made iOS coming back to work there in more top positions.

sorry but Craig did not create iOS ... that was Forstall’s baby and He’s also from NeXT. Craig left shortly afterNeXT was absorbed by Apple for about 2yrs. Maybe some research on your end?

 

[gpat]

I wonder what year the post Ive designs will start to emerge?

MBP 16" is the first.

 

[cmaier]

I think he meant in English. Clearly it’s our language so we can’t be wrong.
Also put all the U’s back and stop going crazy with the Z.

Ah, if we are going by just English, then as I pointed out in a prior post, the Englishman who first discovered it called it first alium, and then aluminum, but never aluminium.

So the Americans are right.

 

[BoycottCookApple]

it makes sense to destroy the notch that shamelessly endorses by jony ive.

 

[pika2000]

it makes sense to destroy the notch that shamelessly endorses by jony ive.

The notch is necessary for FaceID, and at least Apple made it into a design statement that are being copied by everybody. (Unlike Google who made theirs worse into thick bezel).