Scott Forstall to Discuss Creation of iPhone at Computer History Museum Next Week

[macduke]

View attachment 704145

All iOS releases have been very stable for me, maybe you should try setting up the phone as new and don't use a backup to bring along crappy data.

I had to do this twice while debugging issues with my iPhone 6s right after launch. Turned out to be faulty hardware and they replaced it. It took about 6-8 hours each time to get it back the exact way I wanted it, so I was pretty annoyed that Apple support would ruin my weekend like that. There are a lot of Wi-Fi, email, apps, and documents to replace for some users. For apps and games that don't use cloud storage (which are becoming few and far between nowadays), you don't get that data back.

A trick I learned at the genius bar is that they fix most people's problems by resetting all of their device settings. So they still have their apps and data, but just have to setup all their various logins and personal preferences. That trick gave my iPad 2 new life several years ago. Sometimes you can even fix it by just resetting network settings and not all the settings, so I usually do that to fix minor issues that friends and family are having with their iOS devices before resorting to a complete reset.

 

[nextuser]

I respect Forstall for not giving in and apologizing for something which wasn't his fault (data). He could have taken the "easy" route and apologized to kept his job. IMHO Cook was behaving like a goon and a bully, trying to appease the 'haters', something Steve Jobs would have never done. Kudos Forstall, we miss your work.

I believe that Cook fired Forstall because he saw him as a threat to his position as CEO. Forstall knows OS X and iOS inside and out, to just get rid of him with all of that knowledge is just irresponsible on Cook's part.

 

[DotCom2]

Remember Game Center?

Remember Mobile Me?

 

[macduke]

The Author is saying now that he has Tony Fadell on tape saying that. So even though Tony has refuted he said it, there is a tape of him saying it that I'm expecting the Author to publish if he wants to retain any credibility.

Remember at the start of the book (well the snippet the verge showed) he said Apple execs had told him not to believe a single thing Tony Fadell told him, looks like that's coming true if he indeed has a tape of Tony making **** up.

I wouldn't put it past him as he has always seemed to have a beef with Apple since leaving. He has also done a pretty crap job running Nest into the ground and then abandoning ship. He's all about himself first and getting a quick payout. But it also seems weird that the author wouldn't double check with other sources before publishing something like that. Another thing that Gruber mentioned on Daring Fireball is that most higher-up Apple execs expect the engineers that come to discuss things with them talk about them in simple terms because it shows a true mastery of their craft and understanding of the subject matter. I tend to agree with that assessment as that jibes with the way Apple seems to operate. These execs aren't idiots. If you can explain a complex subject plainly then it demonstrates a more complete understanding. It also makes it easier to make decisions about how it benefits the consumer and whether the new tech should be included or held for further development. It needs to be marketable to the average user, and what that means is that it needs to have a clear benefit that is plainly explainable.

 

[Chicane-UK]

He looks a little bit like the founder of Hooli.

"Gavin. ****ing. Belson?!"

 

[macplay]

He should replace Tim as CEO.

Thats what ill was thinking to
Gos ill mis him.

 

[harriska2]

All my upgrades have gone perfectly. Never a problem. Of course I always wait a few weeks before I upgrade for them to work out bugs . Been upgrading ipad 1, 3, air, air2, and pro 12.9. Recently 5s upgraded from 9 to 10 and 2 se iphones. I don't start from scratch and just carry over all my crap.

Don't know much about Scott Forstall but I sure remember the first iphone and thinking that thing was going places. But then what do I know, I thought the Windows CE Compaq Ipaq was going places.

 

[dysamoria]

I respect Forstall for not giving in and apologizing for something which wasn't his fault (data). He could have taken the "easy" route and apologized to kept his job. IMHO Cook was behaving like a goon and a bully, trying to appease the 'haters', something Steve Jobs would have never done. Kudos Forstall, we miss your work.

From everything I've seen over the last decade, it seemed that Steve Jobs was all about putting blame on people he thought were responsible for things he hated. It all depends on whether or not he might've believed Forstall was indeed responsible.

My personal take is that Forstall leaving was bad for the software. I have no idea if it was ultimately good for the company. At this point, I suspect Jony Ive leaving, or being put on a "hardware design only" limitation would be good for the software.

 

[hawkeye_a]

I believe that Cook fired Forstall because he saw him as a threat to his position as CEO. Forstall knows OS X and iOS inside and out, to just get rid of him with all of that knowledge is just irresponsible on Cook's part.

I completely agree, I think the 'apology'(or lack there of) was just a convenient excuse.

@dysamoria In my earlier post, I was referring to the fact that Steve Jobs would never pander to or apologize to haters the way Cook was so quick to do (Of course this is just my opinion).

 

[LordQ]

Remember Mobile Me?

"Why should I believe them? They're the ones who brought me MobileMe! Well, it wasn't our finest hour, but we learnt a lot!"

 

[doelcm82]

Tim ultimately signed off on it, the buck stop with him. Tim should have stepped down.

That's what Steve would have done.
/s

 

[mudflap]

That's what Steve would have done.
/s

Really? After everything Jobs went through with Apple he would just step down because of a bad rollout of one measly app?

 

[DotCom2]

"Why should I believe them? They're the ones who brought me MobileMe! Well, it wasn't our finest hour, but we learnt a lot!"

"leant". LOL!

 

[Rogifan]

From everything I've seen over the last decade, it seemed that Steve Jobs was all about putting blame on people he thought were responsible for things he hated. It all depends on whether or not he might've believed Forstall was indeed responsible.

My personal take is that Forstall leaving was bad for the software. I have no idea if it was ultimately good for the company. At this point, I suspect Jony Ive leaving, or being put on a "hardware design only" limitation would be good for the software.

How much involvement do you think Jony Ive has on software right now? He's handed off his duties to two VPs who now report to Tim Cook. You never hear him talk about software. My guess is his oversight of software has been exaggerated.

I do find the revisionist history of Forstall quite amusing. People complained about the look of iOS making fun of faux leather and green felt, The Verge even ran a story called It's Always 73 and Sunny in Cupertino basically complaining about how stale iOS had become. Now it's Scott should never have been fired and iOS 1-6 was amazing and everything after sucks blah blah blah.

 

[_Refurbished_]

Scott you should have just dropped your ego and said sorry about Apple Maps. Sucks you were so difficult to work with and got fired.
We've missed you and your ego is why we haven't heard any news from you for years. You've become that guy that has already done his best work. Thank you for it but man, you could have done so much more. I hate egos sometimes.

Do you REALLY think this was about Apple Maps? No way. They all didn't like working with him.

 

[Rogifan]

The Author is saying now that he has Tony Fadell on tape saying that. So even though Tony has refuted he said it, there is a tape of him saying it that I'm expecting the Author to publish if he wants to retain any credibility.

Remember at the start of the book (well the snippet the verge showed) he said Apple execs had told him not to believe a single thing Tony Fadell told him, looks like that's coming true if he indeed has a tape of Tony making **** up.

Well someone is lying. I read somewhere that current Apple executives refer to him as Tony baloney. There's obviously a reason Apple didn't go after Nest. And a reason Tony Fadell is no longer at Google. Some of the stories from his time there paint the picture of someone I wouldn't want to work for. Let's not forget too in a BBC interview Fadell was asked about the firing of Scott Forstall and said "he got what he deserved". So clearly no love lost between those two.

 

[iReality85]

Seriously? He was considered to be even more of a SOB than Steve Jobs at his worst. Tim Cook is doing okay, and you can't expect the company to follow this cookie-cutter pattern to emulate Jobs' vision (and they haven't). I don't necessarily like where Cook has taken Apple - with less of a focus on form and function and more of a focus on brand name - but macOS and iOS are still the two best OS out there. Putting Forstall in charge would create a toxic environment.

Agreed. How times have changed.

I'm actually surprised by the favorable comments here. I remember reading MR articles back in 2012, and in the forum there was near unanimous praise for Cook canning Forstall, and the subsequent death of skeuomorphic design.

Remember skeuomorphic?

Don't get me wrong, Forstall did a lot for Apple and was certainly pivotal to the success of OSX and iOS (he developed iOS), especially while under Steve Jobs. But his tenure at Apple was marked by lots of drama during the iPhone years of 2008 - 2012.

 

[Rogifan]

Do you REALLY think this was about Apple Maps? No way. They all didn't like working with him.

That's what the rumors suggested. John Gruber said even Phil Schiller had problems working with Forstall in part because Forstall would wait until the last minute to give marketing any information on new iOS releases. There were also stories at the time that he would bad mouth other teams to his own teams via email. And that Bob Mansfield wouldn't be in a meeting with him unless Tim Cook was present.

 

[hawkeye_a]

Agreed. How times have changed.

I'm actually surprised by the favorable comments here. I remember reading MR articles back in 2012, and in the forum there was near unanimous praise for Cook canning Forstall, and the subsequent death of skeuomorphic design.

Remember skeuomorphic?

Don't get me wrong, Forstall did a lot for Apple and was certainly pivotal to the success of OSX and iOS (he developed iOS), especially while under Steve Jobs. But his tenure at Apple was marked by lots of drama during the iPhone years of 2008 - 2012.

I remember skeuomorphic... I remember it looking better and being more intuitive than flat-gawdy-gradients and skinny fonts. I also remember a Music app which was intuitive.

 

[sunapple]

Fun reading all these comments that are anywhere in the range of hating Forstall to loving him or his work.

That screenshot of the first (?) control center on page 1 brought back some memories, wow. I loved the tiny animated reflections on the 'metal' buttons. Now it just looks really bad in my opinion. Design wise, purely looks, I didn't love everything about iOS 7, but with iOS 11 it's gotten a lot better.

Can't believe how ugly some icons still are, wasn't it the marketing team who screwed that up?

I loved what Google did with Material Design way better even though I never use Android products.

It's all so personal, but they're definitely aspects that affect the way one can understand and use the iPhone. iOS is -becoming more complicated every year, hard to say if the Forstall way would've worked any better.

 

[lostczech]

Agreed. How times have changed.

I'm actually surprised by the favorable comments here. I remember reading MR articles back in 2012, and in the forum there was near unanimous praise for Cook canning Forstall, and the subsequent death of skeuomorphic design.

Remember skeuomorphic?

Don't get me wrong, Forstall did a lot for Apple and was certainly pivotal to the success of OSX and iOS (he developed iOS), especially while under Steve Jobs. But his tenure at Apple was marked by lots of drama during the iPhone years of 2008 - 2012.

Oh I remember skeumorphic.. Maybe everyone here forgot about how awful the Calendar app (iCal) was during his tenure? If I wanted to jump 6 months ahead I had to wait for the stupid page-turning animation to complete for each month. Good riddance.

 

[weup togo]

He should replace Tim as CEO.

If Scott hadn't been fired and Craig elevated, OS X would have been killed.

 

[smacrumon]

View attachment 704145

All iOS releases have been very stable for me, maybe you should try setting up the phone as new and don't use a backup to bring along crappy data.

Not the solution. Newer versions don't have the optimizations older versions had.

 

[Solomani]

People miss him like they miss Lindsay Lohan.

Err, what ever happened to her?

 

[weup togo]

I believe that Cook fired Forstall because he saw him as a threat to his position as CEO. Forstall knows OS X and iOS inside and out, to just get rid of him with all of that knowledge is just irresponsible on Cook's part.

Scott is a completely bizarre human being. He likes to talk about his mastery of lucid dreaming, so that he can work 24 hours a day. He fashioned himself the CEO of the fastest-growing startup in silicon valley (iOS the company he ran within Apple.) He thought he was SJ's natural successor and he treated his peers accordingly. His departure was not regretted beyond the iOS bubble.