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Scott Forstall leaves Apple

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Re: Scott Forstall leaves Apple

#221
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…

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 prob…

Mapping is NOT hard. I know from personal experience.

What map applications have you authored? Any links?

Re: Scott Forstall leaves Apple

#222
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes me wonder - who at Apple decided it was necessary to make their own maps app? It's easy to blame Forstall for a crappy product. But if someone else was responsible for mandating the change, assigning him the project, and pushing an impossible deadline, maybe it's more their fault.

The guy was an SVP, passing the buck isn't really an option at that level. It's about ownership.

Reminds me of this quote from Steve:

"Jobs tells the VP that if the garbage in his office is not being emptied regularly for some reason, he would ask the janitor what the problem is. The janitor could reasonably respond by saying, "Well, the lock on the door was changed, and I couldn't get a key."

It's an irritation for Jobs, but it's an understandable excuse for why the janitor couldn't do his job. As a janitor, he's allowed to have excuses.

"When you're the janitor, reasons matter," Jobs tells newly minted VPs, according to Lashinsky.

"Somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, reasons stop mattering," says Jobs, adding, that Rubicon is "crossed when you become a VP."

http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-on-the-difference-...

Re: Scott Forstall leaves Apple

#223
post #9

Jony Ive is now responsible for HI guidelines across the company? That could turn out great or horrible. (I'm not sure whether obviously great hardware designers can also be great UI designers.) I'm optimistic for now. Hopefully that means bye bye overt skeumorphism. (I do think Apple's UIs have in the past always been above average, sometimes excellent. Their fashion choices, however, have at times been horrible. It…

The man's got taste. That's good enough for me. Though I fear that it probably is "bye bye overt skeumorphism", but what if the new ideology is "hello excessive minimalism/removing every last pro feature left"? Let's hope not. I don't use iCal or Address Book much, so I don't hate that stupid skeumorphism like the rest of the world (I like it though when it's used sparingly and isn't just keep getting in your way)...

The man's got taste.

That was true of Jobs as well... but holy crap, have you seen his yacht?

Unfortunately, good aesthetic judgement in one area doesn't always carry over into other areas, even those that seem closely related. Human-machine interfaces have a functional aspect that can't be handled by dashing off yet another homage to Dieter Rams. Ive hasn't yet shown competence in this aspect of design.

Re: Scott Forstall leaves Apple

#224
post #121
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…

>If copying is wrong

That's never been the philosophical basis of copyright. Copyright is a limited, artificial monopoly designed to encourage creation. It's not that copying is "bad", it's that limiting copying for a short time might encourage people to create new works.

A paper that argues that the economically ideal copyright length is 14 years (which is exactly what the original term of copyright was in the US): http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2007/07/research-optima...

Thomas Jefferson articulates this reasoning, talking about patents:

>If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody. -- http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12....

Re: Scott Forstall leaves Apple

#225

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.

If the influence of the vesting schedule helps delay his (presumed) move to a competitor, I'd say it benefits shareholders plenty.

Re: Scott Forstall leaves Apple

#226

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…

Luckily, they didn't immediately pull all competing apps out of the store when they released this, as they have done in other cases.

Podcasts.app is crap, but there are Instacast and Downcast (I alternate between those) and probably other good choices that cost less than a half gallon of gas.

Re: Scott Forstall leaves Apple

#227
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think that they would radically redesign the next version of iOS?

> Do you really think that they would radically redesign the next version of iOS? Yes. Absolutely. After a year of the longer 4" screen I fully expect Apple to significantly revise the UI to take advantage of this extra room. Don't expect a radical change that throws out everything Apple has already achieved, but do expect new widgets that make 4" screens better.

We've already seen lots of small changes to take advantage of the extra screen height. Virtually all the iOS built-in apps and many third-party apps have made tweaks. Not just stretching the size of the main area in which you view data or other stuff, but actual interface changes as well.

Re: Scott Forstall leaves Apple

#228
post #201
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about that PR move you suggested. It's not very becoming of the market leader to publicly express that their own product that hasn't launched yet, and won't for 3 months, is buggy and incomplete - and to be patient with them while it gets fixed. I don't agree that calling it the best ever was such a great move, but that's what Apple does. In a couple years, it won't matter what happened with the Maps lau…

It's not very becoming either that the CEO of such an image concious company has to make a such grovelling apology for such an embarrassing failure... I agree that in the long term Maps will be great and people will have forgotten the ill-planned launch - except perhaps Scott Forstall.

You're right too, but that's a better move than a preemptive apology. They have the "report a problem" feature in the Maps app too, so it should help organically grow.

I do miss Scott Forstall on stage, he was a good presenter.

Re: Scott Forstall leaves Apple

#229

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…

Many times this type of fast vesting is to compensate for options lost elsewhere. Yes he was a crappy executive, but hiring ex-CEOs is costly.
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