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Scott Forstall leaves Apple

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Re: Scott Forstall leaves Apple

#211

Post by mietek »

adam-a wrote: post #192
WiseWeasel wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rounded corners aren't necessarily skeumorphic; they're a style choice just as rounded cabinets and trim are a (popular) style choice. Likewise, shading and gradients to give an impression of depth and lighting are often used to distinguish items that are clickable or as a separator. These are artistic tools that can be used to various effects, but are not skeumorphic in the sense of trying to imitate a familiar obje…

Skeumorphic features are defined by the fact that they are unnecessary carry-overs from older or different objects. They can be useful and style choices too, but a digital button does not need to indicate depth, whereas a mechanical button does, because it needs to protrude from the surface in order to be pressed.

Indicating depth in a digital button is a clear affordance.

Re: Scott Forstall leaves Apple

#212

Post by alwaysinshade »

danilocampos wrote: post #53

Interesting that Eddie Cue remains the company fixer, taking on the quirky Siri and the flakey Maps app just as he was once given a completely fucked up MobileMe. This is good news. Even better news is Browett's ouster. The business with his cutting operational corners in retail was a very, very bad omen. If they'd left him in, he might have poisoned a very important well for the company. Hopefully his replacement is…

> Hopefully his replacement is closer to Ron Johnson's set of retail and service values.

I wonder if the scope of Human Interfaces extends to the Apple Store. If Apple is taking a holistic approach to coordinating its products, it's worth considering that the store is one of the most important aspects for human interaction and industrial design. Maybe Jony will take some level of control in terms of design and leave the management and promotional aspects to the retail SVP?

Re: Scott Forstall leaves Apple

#213

Post by taligent »

tisme wrote: post #121
arrrg wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wouldn’t matter. Design Patents are valid for fourteen years. Every single product Dieter Rams designed for Braun is decades older than that. Don’t fight patents with cheap lies. There are plenty of reasons why patents are bad, bad, bad, no need to resort to untruths.

What cheap lies? I'm well aware of how old that design is. If copying is wrong it is wrong regardless of how long ago the original was made. Or is there some magical cut-off date by which copying suddenly is ok? Why 14 years? Why not 13 or 10 or 50? It strikes me as pretty arbitrary. For a company to go all out in accusing others of copying I think they should be above all that and come up with entirely original desi…

There is a world of difference between being influenced by something and doing an exact copy. One is legal, accepted as beneficial to society and common place within the design community. The other isn't.

You are either woefully naive or being disingenuous to assume that the two are the same.

Re: Scott Forstall leaves Apple

#214

Post by taligent »

mtgx wrote: post #63
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…

Doubt we'll be seeing any major change like that at least until iOS8. For iOS7 it seems too soon. We might also see it in Mac OS XI, but I also doubt that's coming until 2014.

I think it's pretty clear where the direction of Apple is going:

http://www.apple.com/itunes/new-itunes/

So it could be coming sooner than you think.

Re: Scott Forstall leaves Apple

#215

Post by Bud »

w0utert wrote: post #103
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…

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

Viewed from the other side, though, he did convert $3 million, yes, but Apple saved $57 million.

Apple can afford to lose the three mil. They'll make that back in a few days once somebody who actually gets Apple's retail concept is running the show again. Somebody who respects the model that brought Apple top-of-the-charts customer service ratings. Somebody who respects that if you're making more money per square foot than any other retail store in the world, you might be doing something right.

Re: Scott Forstall leaves Apple

#216

Post by brudgers »

WiseWeasel wrote: post #129
brudgers wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shading and round corners are skeuomorphic, as is indicating depth on a piece of glass. What Apple loves is irrelevant (if one is willing to ascribe emotional states to corporations). Daimler-Benz loved steering tillers. Ford loved hand throttles. Think about the way in which the interfaces of automobiles changed over the first forty years as they went from horseless carriages to widespread adoption. That's what we'r…

Rounded corners aren't necessarily skeumorphic; they're a style choice just as rounded cabinets and trim are a (popular) style choice. Likewise, shading and gradients to give an impression of depth and lighting are often used to distinguish items that are clickable or as a separator. These are artistic tools that can be used to various effects, but are not skeumorphic in the sense of trying to imitate a familiar obje…

Round corners on physical objects are less often stylistic than functionally driven. From reducing drag on moving objects, to reducing injury on objects subject to bodily contact or grasping, they are functional.

Rounding the edges of a toaster reduces the material required, reduces the space required for packaging and allows better working clearances to reduce the user's likelihood of being burned.

Rounding the corners of a picture of a toaster is generally makework, not artisic production. Rounding the corners of a picture of the phrase "WiFi Settings" is just mental masturbation, or "chart junk" as Tufte would say.

Re: Scott Forstall leaves Apple

#217

Post by taligent »

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 NOT hard. I know from personal experience.

The reason Apple screwed up maps is because of one reason and one reason only. Licensing. The app itself is great. The 3D maps are great. The data is the problem.

Apple chose not to license data from many of the key players they should have to at least be competitive. My guess is Apple arrogantly thought they could get enough feedback from users to fix up the problem themselves.

Re: Scott Forstall leaves Apple

#218

Post by taligent »

brianpan wrote: post #134
wisty wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(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

Exactly. Why do you think the AppleTV is called a 'hobby' ?

Re: Scott Forstall leaves Apple

#220

Post by brudgers »

cpeterso wrote: post #153
brudgers wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

75,000 options vesting in 2013 and 100,000 vesting in 2014 probably explain the year as adviser - i.e. fiscal year 2013 ends October 1, 2013 so one year from today is probably adequate for those options to vest and may have been an equitable way to resolve severance negotiations.

Why even have a vesting period if the company is going to give them to executives anyway? If Tim wants Scott out, then why pamper him with free money? It's not benefiting shareholders.

I suspect the stock options were to help maintain the illusion of stability and unity in the period before and after Jobs' death. 75,000 shares is a lot of money for one person but if it keeps the stock price a couple of dollars higher it is a net benefit to shareholders.

Apple has more than 939 million shares, maintaining $1.00 in share price is nearly a billion dollars in shareholder value.

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