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Scott Forstall leaves Apple

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Re: Scott Forstall leaves Apple

#301

Post by codeulike »

wisty wrote: post #234

I think there's a few layers to this: 1) Forstall apparently wants to be CEO, and run the company. That puts him at odds with Cook (the CEO), and Ive (who wants to drive Apple's design decisions). 2) He's divisive. There's claims that neither Jonny Ive nor Bob Mansfield would talk to him without Tim Cook mediating. There's also claims that he "managed up" (showed off to the boss) better than he "managed down", and st…

So with Forstall gone do you think the Apple front of the patent wars might calm down a little?

Re: Scott Forstall leaves Apple

#302

Post by weaksauce »

henrikschroder wrote: post #282
lostlogin wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never got into the helpful staff thing. I dislike being helped when in shops. Clearly I have been in New Zealand too long. Something that really irked me in the US was the way taxes worked. I never knew what I was going to pay, as taxes weren't included in the label price. It wasn't a large percentage, but I never could quite understand why anyone would take the time to make a price label which showed a price diffe…

(Completely off-topic here, but my understanding is that sales tax in the US can vary from county to county, and definitely varies from state to state, so it's simpler in the case of labelling, and impossible in the case of national advertising, to show the final price. Contrast with Europe where sales tax is nationally fixed, which makes it easy to show the final price. (and in some places illegal not to!))

In California it definitely varies county by county.

Re: Scott Forstall leaves Apple

#303

Post by veidr »

taligent wrote: post #217
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…

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…

OK, but that's like saying, "Defeating the aliens is NOT hard... The biological vulnerabilities of human DNA are the problem... you just have to be impervious to ionizing radiation."

Much like machine translation and teledildonics, once you start to try to scale globally, mapping is actually one of the hardest problems that is remotely viable at our current technological level. There's a tiny handful of companies that can do a barely usable job, and everything else is worthless garbage.

In Japan, at least, Apple has gone from the former to the latter with iOS 6. (Maps.app did work great last week on a business trip to Austin, TX, however.)

Re: Scott Forstall leaves Apple

#304

Post by ksec »

waiwai933 wrote: post #244
nilsbunger wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why did someone like this Dixon guy get in to begin with? He seemed like an odd choice from day 1, but I figured maybe apple knew something the rest or us didn't. Apparently not. Apple retail head is one of the most desirable executive positions on the planet. Why couldn't they recruit a true superstar? I'm a little confused and worried ...

> Apple retail head is one of the most desirable executive positions on the planet. Why couldn't they recruit a true superstar? I think the problem is identifying the superstar in the first place. Quite frankly, there is no company whose retail comes close to Apple, and so there isn't anyone who has a track record of being able to do the SVP Retail job. In addition, the Apple SVP Retail job is different from head of…

It isn't even about identifying. Browett has to be one of the worst choice on the planet in terms of executive. I dont even know how he got into CEO of Dixon in the first place. Anyway all that is past, now that he is gone lets hope they either find someone great or simply promote what they already have.

Re: Scott Forstall leaves Apple

#305

Post by ksec »

raverbashing wrote: post #272
nikcub wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Great decision from Cook Cook hired him, which many commentators pointed out was a mistake in the first place.

People make mistakes, good that he could recognize he made a mistake.

The problem is it took him too long to know this as a mistake.

Re: Scott Forstall leaves Apple

#306

Post by jfb »

danilocampos wrote: post #163
Steko wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as Apple's software and hardware are talked about, Eddie Cue is also the guy largely responsible for negotiating Apple's superior media offerings which is arguably Apple's biggest lead on their competitors internationally.

No kidding! Anywhere you can recommend I read more about this?

I don't know of any external sources, but this was most definitely the case when I was there (left in 2009.)

Re: Scott Forstall leaves Apple

#307

Post by roc »

rdl wrote: post #245
olliesaunders wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Assuming you're American) what specifically makes retail in the US so much better?

Aside from prices and selection (for some reason the number in USD is equal to the number in GBP for almost everything, even when GBP is 1.6-2.2x the USD), it's size and layout of stores and staffing. There were two main kinds of stores -- pale imitations of Best Buy, Circuit City, and Microcenter (out in the suburbs/small towns) (which is ironic since those businesses have had serious problems in the US market now,…

> "for some reason the number in USD is equal to the number in GBP for almost everything, even when GBP is 1.6-2.2x the USD"

Price is set by willingness to pay. full stop. Cost for goods is almost always worked to, backwards, from price targets. Exchange rates don't enter into it, except as pertains to costs.

GBP prices remain 'close' to numeric USD, because people still buy products at those prices. Looking into why they do, leads to interesting questions and analysis about disposable income, taxes, psychology, etc - but it's largely irrelevant.

It is that way because it works.

Re: Scott Forstall leaves Apple

#308

Post by roc »

roc wrote: post #307
rdl wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from prices and selection (for some reason the number in USD is equal to the number in GBP for almost everything, even when GBP is 1.6-2.2x the USD), it's size and layout of stores and staffing. There were two main kinds of stores -- pale imitations of Best Buy, Circuit City, and Microcenter (out in the suburbs/small towns) (which is ironic since those businesses have had serious problems in the US market now,…

> "for some reason the number in USD is equal to the number in GBP for almost everything, even when GBP is 1.6-2.2x the USD" Price is set by willingness to pay. full stop. Cost for goods is almost always worked to, backwards, from price targets. Exchange rates don't enter into it, except as pertains to costs. GBP prices remain 'close' to numeric USD, because people still buy products at those prices. Looking into why…

I will never understand why this concept gets downvoted every single time it comes up. Price comes first. It's not really a secret. Everything else follows from that.

Re: Scott Forstall leaves Apple

#309

Post by mietek »

toomim wrote: post #242
mietek wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indicating depth in a digital button is a clear affordance.

But likewise, indicating "tape reels" in a recording app is a clear affordance that you can record audio. This is a slippery slope. There's no hard boundary between skeumorphism and visual affordance, even though you'd like there to be.

No, this is not similar at all.

An image of a tape reel is to recording audio as an icon of a floppy disk is to saving documents — a lazy visual shortcut, requiring a non-trivial semantic context. What is the percentage of humans alive today who have used a tape reel recorder?

The boundary between affordances and skeuomorphs is perfectly clear. Just ask yourself — does the form of the design element in question follow its function?

Re: Scott Forstall leaves Apple

#310

Post by wisty »

codeulike wrote: post #301
wisty wrote: post #234

I think there's a few layers to this: 1) Forstall apparently wants to be CEO, and run the company. That puts him at odds with Cook (the CEO), and Ive (who wants to drive Apple's design decisions). 2) He's divisive. There's claims that neither Jonny Ive nor Bob Mansfield would talk to him without Tim Cook mediating. There's also claims that he "managed up" (showed off to the boss) better than he "managed down", and st…

So with Forstall gone do you think the Apple front of the patent wars might calm down a little?

I doubt it. They'll still sue Samsung. They just won't try to beat Google at search.
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