From Firing Jobs to Forstall: Will History Repeat?
It’s been around two years since former Senior Vice President of iOS, Scott Forstall burned bridges with Apple. When Apple purchased Steve Job’s company NeXT in 1996, Forstall came along for the ride to Apple and made several key contributions to Apple including the development of the original “Aqua” Mac OS X interface, Safari, and introducing iOS to the world. Very few people inside Apple the past 15 years have had as positive effect on Apple’s bottom line than Forstall. Notable exceptions would be Tony Fadell the father of the iPod (that Forstall beat in an internal competition for the creation of the iPhone OS) and Jonathan Ive, the man in charge of designing all the sleek hardware that Apple has created since the original iMac.
However, Apple blamed Forstall on the initial failure of paramount projects Apple Maps and Siri. This combined with less than expected profits at the time, Apple put blame on Forstall. There is of course more to the story; Steve Jobs held Forstall in high regard and besides Apple’s other pillar Jonathan Ive not caring much for the guy, he likely believed himself to be the heir-apparent.
While Apple has been spending millions on painting the next chapter coming later this year, the Apple faithful know: Tim Cook truly began his chapter when Forstall was out. Many Apple faithful are just that; faithful. Of course even the most faithful question their faith sometimes and at that very moment a lot of us got a little nervous. So it is almost eerie to see some of the parallels in the firing of two Apple’s most creative forces.
The Parallels:
Why they were officially fired:
Fired for being abrasive and was blamed for a lot of Apple’s shortcomings.
Fired for being abrasive and was blamed for a lot of Apple’s shortcomings.
When Apple wanted you to know that the CEO was taking the company into it’s next chapter, they showed off their pet projects:
On the CEO Steve Jobs appointed:
Tried to gather support for a coup against the CEO to take over.
Tried to gather support for a coup against the CEO to take over.
What they did when they left:
Hopefully history isn’t repeating itself. Still, Apple Maps has only been getting marginally better every month, mostly thanks to acquisitions and having a better understand of the underlying work that goes on in making it. Siri is more hit than miss nowadays. Maybe the more frequent iOS 8 and Yosemite bugs and crashes are just a growing pain, or maybe Apple lost it’s way when it made a stop at the fashion show.
