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I wish he hadn't sold Nest to Google. The physical products are great, but Google intentionally blocking HomeKit compatibility and the constant nudging to migrate my Nest account to a Google account are very disappointing. Will likely eventually move away from Nest to HomeKit compatible devices because of this.

It's a bummer when a great independent company gets acquired by a company you try to avoid. I became a customer of Nest, spent a bunch of money, and then woke up to find that I'm now a customer of Google, which I didn't want to be. That's lame.
It's worse than that. Google has discontinued Nest Secure, and they show no sign of updating Nest Protect to comply with new building regulations in Scotland.
 
I don’t see how choosing Linux would have been better. It wasn’t any smaller than OS X was back in 2003/2004 when they would have started this project. Unless they were thinking about choosing an embedded version of Linux, which would have been componentized. I’m sure Avie could have done the same with OS X. But I heard a different story through the Computer History Museum interview early members if team did; that iOS (or iPhoneOS as it was then known) wasn’t actually based on OS X. That was just Steve using marketing.
 
Interesting interview.

Tony Fadell should come back and work on iPhone again :)
I’m not sure Tony Fadell worked on the actual iPhone versus competing in the prototype stage. I’ll have to double check with this interview but I don’t know for certain.
He’s really milking this “I used to work at apple” gig.
LOL yeah he definitely is but remember he was a contractor external when brought in to Apple for the supposed iPhone so.
Lucky for everyone they used a stripped down macOS instead of Linux for iPhone. Android’s update issue is due to the way Linux doesn’t really HAL well.

The update issues on Android are due to fragmentation, they are not technical ones. On the contrary, Android is much more flexible and easy to update specific parts without needing to meddle with the whole OS
Of course android components could be specifically updated as it’s POSIX compliant however that is the same problem and android that were seeing in the Linux field there’s a whole plethora of different Lennox build out there and a lot of them died very quickly because the kernels aren’t being updated and should be automatically amongst other things that that’s what android is facing and us Lenxpeld’s continually face I think that’s what was being mentioned earlier but then again I have no idea watch HAL means
 
When I was young and, consequently, naive, I use to buy books like these. Then, when I realized that almost all of them are actually written by a ghost-writer, I stopped immediately.

If it's a biography, call it one.
 
The Decoder podcast in general is usually really great, and this was no exception. A really enjoyable interview, with some great insights into Fadell's decision making processes and team size dynamics. Highly recommend.
 
Did Fadell leave Apple on good terms? What’s the backstory on why he left?
 
I think it’s safe to safe to say that Scott Forstall was the better man out of these two.
 
The update issues on Android are due to fragmentation, they are not technical ones. On the contrary, Android is much more flexible and easy to update specific parts without needing to meddle with the whole OS
Uh, no, you're wrong.

First, manufacturers don't have a fragmentation problem by definition. Samsung controls the components they use. ZTE does as well, etc etc. ZTE chooses not to support older devices because it's work.

You can research it, or spew the BS that everyone else does. Here's a start:


There is an article that I can't find anymore (because to be honest I care zero ***** about Android) that talks about the low-level issues with drivers, the kernel, device support, and how what essentially is the equivalent of DLL hell that keeps older devices from newer versions of android. The short is that android updates mean kernel updates, which means you have to update every device driver and test, which nobody wants to do because nobody who uses android cares enough.
 
Like Fadell said, Steve never saw Apple as "dollars". Instead, he was driven by innovation and changing the world with his ideas. Tim Cook on the other hand, is 100% driven by money, and not just for the company, but for himself. He is a greedy capitalist, plain and simple. Apple is still a very successful company, but in a different way from Steve's Apple. There has been very little innovation since Steve passed away, and any innovation Apple has realized were leftover ideas that he started. Cook figured out he can just keep pumping out new iPhones every September and make a bunch of money.
This is getting old, Cook was put in place BY STEVE, he might not have the charm of Jobs but he kept the boat afloat, and damn successfully. He was the best choice to run the company, he's given all the silly sizes of phones/tablets people asked for, everything people asked for he's tried to give it and still you all whine about it. M1 is a game-changer and launched under him. The Watch might not be overwhelming but it's by far the dominant wearable in the market. If you're a shareholder you should be happy with how he's run the place, if you are not a shareholder then why are you taking this so personally lol.
 
I think it’s safe to safe to say that Scott Forstall was the better man out of these two.
Isn’t Forstall still working for Snapchat? Doesn’t seem like the standard he once was at Apple with that company.
 
The guy in the picture is either paid to smile or he had a really good bowel movement that morning.
 
Like Fadell said, Steve never saw Apple as "dollars". Instead, he was driven by innovation and changing the world with his ideas. Tim Cook on the other hand, is 100% driven by money, and not just for the company, but for himself. He is a greedy capitalist, plain and simple. Apple is still a very successful company, but in a different way from Steve's Apple. There has been very little innovation since Steve passed away, and any innovation Apple has realized were leftover ideas that he started. Cook figured out he can just keep pumping out new iPhones every September and make a bunch of money.
Don't kid yourself Jobs was plenty motivated and driven by dollars. When Apple first went public Woz felt that many Apple employees were getting screwed out of shares and tried to get Jobs to give some of the shares he was getting to the other employees and Jobs basically to Woz to go f*** himself. Also who can forget when Jobs committed to an programing job when he worked at Atari he conned Woz to do the work and told him the Atari paid a really low price and Jobs pocketed most of the money himself. Or how about with Pixar when Jobs took most of the credit for the success that Pixar was having when he really had nothing to do with it except for buying the company then selling it too Disney. Or let's not even get into how he reacted when is girlfriend was having his kid and he would not pony up for any kind of child care back in Apple's very early days. Don't make Jobs into some kind of saint out to make the world a better place, he was all about lining his pockets.

I don't think Tim is/was driven by dollars as much as Jobs, he is an operations guy and most operations guys are driven by having a well oiled machine one that is streamlined to be highly efficient. He would be the first person to tell you that he is not a design guy or a techie, his strength is in operations, I have had the pleasure to spend some time with Tim a few times and he is a very down to earth and pleasant person interested in hearing everyone opinion, I also had the opportunity to meet Mr. Jobs a few times both at Next and Apple and let's just say he was not near as pleasant.
 
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Don't kid yourself Jobs was plenty motivated and driven by dollars. When Apple first went public Woz felt that many Apple employees were getting screwed out of shares and tried to get Jobs to give some of the shares he was getting to the other employees and Jobs basically to Woz to go f*** himself. Also who can forget when Jobs committed to an programing job when he worked at Atari he conned Woz to do the work and told him the Atari paid a really low price and Jobs pocketed most of the money himself. Or how about with Pixar when Jobs took most of the credit for the success that Pixar was having when he really had nothing to do with it except for buying the company then selling it too Disney. Or let's not even get into how he reacted when is girlfriend was having his kid and he would not pony up for any kind of child care back in Apple's very early days. Don't make Jobs into some kind of saint out to make the world a better place, he was all about lining his pockets.

I don't think Tim is/was driven by dollars as much as Jobs, he is an operations guy and most operations guys are driven by having a well oiled machine one that is streamlined to be highly efficient. He would be the first person to tell you that he is not a design guy or a techie, his strength is in operations, I have had the pleasure to spend some time with Tim a few times and he is a very down to earth and pleasant person interested in hearing everyone opinion, I also had the opportunity to meet Mr. Jobs a few times both at Next and Apple and let's just say he was not near as pleasant.
Thank you for this... I agree that Tim seems to be passionate about getting things from point A to point B and fits into the big company that Apple now is. Jobs was a small company / startup guy and knew that the politics could only be handled by a well-mannered and genuine person like Tim.
 
Like Fadell said, Steve never saw Apple as "dollars". Instead, he was driven by innovation and changing the world with his ideas. Tim Cook on the other hand, is 100% driven by money, and not just for the company, but for himself. He is a greedy capitalist, plain and simple. Apple is still a very successful company, but in a different way from Steve's Apple. There has been very little innovation since Steve passed away, and any innovation Apple has realized were leftover ideas that he started. Cook figured out he can just keep pumping out new iPhones every September and make a bunch of money.
Agreed. I mean sure money was a big motivation for Steve’s Apple. But you could tell there was something else. Today’s Apple is just about milking every single bite as much as possible. Steve and his team (Jobs, Forstall, Ive (except the last years), etc) built a very strong foundation. Imagine Apple being led by cook in the 90s...
 
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Isn’t Forstall still working for Snapchat? Doesn’t seem like the standard he once was at Apple with that company.
I don’t know if he’s still working there. I don’t see into his head so I’m not sure why he took this job and not others.
 
Like Fadell said, Steve never saw Apple as "dollars". Instead, he was driven by innovation and changing the world with his ideas. Tim Cook on the other hand, is 100% driven by money, and not just for the company, but for himself. He is a greedy capitalist, plain and simple. Apple is still a very successful company, but in a different way from Steve's Apple. There has been very little innovation since Steve passed away, and any innovation Apple has realized were leftover ideas that he started. Cook figured out he can just keep pumping out new iPhones every September and make a bunch of money.

It is innovation in value that is lacking. Apple Store, Apple Repair, Genius Bar, App Store, iCloud, all of these are seen as cost centre by Tim Cook. While Steve was trying to bring value to Apple's customer.
 
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I don’t see how choosing Linux would have been better. It wasn’t any smaller than OS X was back in 2003/2004 when they would have started this project. Unless they were thinking about choosing an embedded version of Linux, which would have been componentized. I’m sure Avie could have done the same with OS X. But I heard a different story through the Computer History Museum interview early members if team did; that iOS (or iPhoneOS as it was then known) wasn’t actually based on OS X. That was just Steve using marketing.
There were 2 teams. One did work on a "lightweight Linux-based version called Acorn" - lead by Jon Rubinstein. While Scott Forstalls team used Mac OS X as the origin "code named purple" - just very stripped down to the core, and then built-up the APIs and such that would be specific to the phone, and optimized performance for ARM and a Touch UI. (While the initial phones raw performance was slower than other phones, the UI felt faster)

There was even a multi-touch click-wheel, and physical keyboard concepts in the very beginning - estimated up to 17 different concepts were tested to varying levels of completeness and functionality.

So depending on who was talking - they could have been working on a linux version. But the shipping version was the Mac OS X based Hybrid XNU (Mach) kernel, not just marketing.
 
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I met Tony at a mutual friend’s wedding years ago. Was a friendly down to earth guy. Will read the book. ??
 
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