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Scott Forstall leaves Apple

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Re: Scott Forstall leaves Apple

#131

Post by gfosco »

wisty wrote: post #110
mukaiji wrote: post #33

Just to be clear, he's not "leaving." He got fired. He got fired because after the map fiasco became apparent, he refused to send out an apology or sign his name to the one Tim Cook sent. (internal knowledge)

(No internal knowledge) I'm surprised he got fired over maps. Mapping is hard - comparable to writing a search engine. Apple did as well as can be expected for a first attempt. They had some kind of problem with Google Maps, and wanted to build their own capability, which was never going to be easy. He might have been fired if he cheated, by creating a well curated Valley dataset to prove to the other execs what a gr…

Mapping is very hard, and he shipped it before it was ready. That was a pretty bad event for them; caused lot of negativity from users. I'm not surprised.

Re: Scott Forstall leaves Apple

#133

Post by revelation »

I'm not an Apple insider. Pushing Google Maps away seems to me like a political decision reserved for someone like Cook, not Forstall. If Cook shoved Google out and tasked Forstall with the impossible task of developing a better maps offering in what amounts to a year, this would be a sign that upper management jumped the shark, not Forstall himself.

Re: Scott Forstall leaves Apple

#134

Post by brianpan »

wisty wrote: post #110
mukaiji wrote: post #33

Just to be clear, he's not "leaving." He got fired. He got fired because after the map fiasco became apparent, he refused to send out an apology or sign his name to the one Tim Cook sent. (internal knowledge)

(No internal knowledge) I'm surprised he got fired over maps. Mapping is hard - comparable to writing a search engine. Apple did as well as can be expected for a first attempt. They had some kind of problem with Google Maps, and wanted to build their own capability, which was never going to be easy. He might have been fired if he cheated, by creating a well curated Valley dataset to prove to the other execs what a gr…

There are ways of dealing with hard problems- managing scope, managing expectations. I'm not too surprised he was fired for not executing. Remember Papermaster and the antenna?

http://daringfireball.net/2010/08/papermaster_damn_antenna

Re: Scott Forstall leaves Apple

#135

Post by justincormack »

apike wrote: post #18

> Scott Forstall will be leaving Apple next year > Jony Ive will provide leadership and direction for Human Interface (HI) across the company And thus ended the reign of skeuomorphism at Apple. Or, at least, the reign of hyper-realism and hyper-whimsy in UI design. Jobs or Forstall always seemed to favour it, but could you imagine Jony Ive signing off on a Podcasts app where half the screen is a reel-to-reel tape tha…

Jobs loved it. He wanted us to add page turning to our app. Bizarre.

Re: Scott Forstall leaves Apple

#136

Post by mmahemoff »

GuiA wrote: post #46
pooriaazimi wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. It's not UI, it's HI (Human Interface) now! It's best we all get used to it. It'll be repeated again and again from now on :) Edit: This is what I mean: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Interface > Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. Please search for _Human Interface_ in Wikipedia to check for alternative titles or spellings. It's still a non-word, but will be an (oft-used) word soon enoug…

The academic field behind UI design is HCI (Human Computer Interaction), so HI makes more sense :)

And before HCI it was MMI (Man-Machine)...so the term evolves.

Re: Scott Forstall leaves Apple

#137

Post by rdl »

archgrove wrote: post #48

Anyone who A) likes Apple and B) has ever been in a Dixons store in the UK will be overjoyed with the other departure, Browett (head of retail and previous Dixons CEO) who is leaving immediately (compared to Forstall's year long "transition" departure). Dixons is everything that Apple should never be; terrible customer service, clueless minimum wage staff, horrible retail experience, and generally used only by people…

I had the misfortune of shopping UK retail for a few years, and especially in electronics, I can't imagine anyone using it as an example of a great way to structure anything, let alone a premium brand like Apple.

The only UK retail brands which don't seem horrible are high-end department stores (Selfridges, etc.) and grocery stores, and neither really seems like a good background for running Apple retail.

Re: Scott Forstall leaves Apple

#138

Post by spinchange »

wisty wrote: post #110
mukaiji wrote: post #33

Just to be clear, he's not "leaving." He got fired. He got fired because after the map fiasco became apparent, he refused to send out an apology or sign his name to the one Tim Cook sent. (internal knowledge)

(No internal knowledge) I'm surprised he got fired over maps. Mapping is hard - comparable to writing a search engine. Apple did as well as can be expected for a first attempt. They had some kind of problem with Google Maps, and wanted to build their own capability, which was never going to be easy. He might have been fired if he cheated, by creating a well curated Valley dataset to prove to the other execs what a gr…

While it hasn't seemed to have an appreciable affect on sales or the stock price, the shortcomings of the new Maps have been an embarrassing PR mess for Apple and a hit to its reputation for uncompromising quality that sets it so far apart from everyone else.

It does not surprise that he's being fired for this or that his departure is going to be transitional since he's so intricately involved with so many central aspects and initiatives at the company.

(also no internal knowledge)

Re: Scott Forstall leaves Apple

#140

Post by whatusername »

nostromo wrote: post #101

Does anyone but me here listen incessantly to podcasts? The latest Podcasts App from iTunes is a skeuomorphic mess. It has a superfluous animation of a reel-to-reel player of course. But it utterly fails at its most basic task: playing a goddamn podcast. But don't take my word for it, it has a 1.5 star rating on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/podcasts/id525463029 Not to mention crashes... Apple used to make…

On a suggestion from my father - I downloaded the 'downcast" app. $2 well spent in my opinion.
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