I suspect Maps was just the public facing reason. Scott worked great with Jobs because Jobs knew how to harness his intelligence and intensity. For someone like Cook, I suspect Tim didn’t enjoy those intense conversations nearly as much as Steve did. I’ve only read a bit about the feud between Forstall and Ive, but it’s pretty clear without Steve as a buffer the two of them would have had too much friction.
No idea if keeping Ive was the best choice. As a former shareholder, my investment grew heaps under the current version of Apple. But they spent years focusing so much on hardware. The OS on various platforms, and the iLife and iWork apps have very much become things that regularly get refinement, but we don’t see nearly as much “oh wow I never thought of that!” Like we did under Steve when it came to new apps or app features. I often wonder how much of that was Steve and how much was Jobs. (Also how much of that wasn’t Ive or Cook.)
Apple definitely lost something when they decided to focus more on making platforms that everyone else could make things in. Like don’t get me wrong, there lots of cool creative apps made by third parties. But I have to wonder how much more accessible Apple could have made video editing, 3D modelling, illustration, Books, and app development if Steve was still alive. He really understood that one thing that drew creatives to the platforms was the capacity to create.
