One, we don't have any solid evidence that Christie left because of problems with Ive. Both John Gruber and Tech Crunch disputed Mark Gurman's story, and former Apple employee Bob Borchers called it BS on Twitter, implying the way Gurman reported it is not the way it went down inside Apple. Even if Ive and Christie didn't see eye to eye on UI design that doesn't mean Christie was pushed out. I think Cook has made it quite clear he doesn't tolerate politics and is pushing collaboration pretty hard. If Ive was highly political and not a team player Cook wouldn't tolerate it and Ive would be gone. Fact is, Cook gave Ive responsibility for Human Interface at Apple. Having that team actually report into Craig Federighi never made much sense. It could be as simple as Christie being burned out after nearly 20 years and thinking now was the right time to retire.
As far as Forstall goes, as I posted earlier, it wasn't just Ive that had problems with him. Supposedly Bob Mansfield wouldn't take meetings with him unless Cook was around. On one of Gruber's podcasts he said Phil Schiller also had issues with Forstall. Plus Tony Fadell in an interview with the BBC said Forstall "got what he deserved". Heck one report claimed people inside Apple were celebrating like when the Giants won the World Series. From what I've read it doesn't appear that Forstall was universally hated (at least not within his software team) but clearly more than just Ive had issues with him inside the company.
