Apple allegedly in 'quiet jubilation' over Forstall's exit
updated 09:55 am EDT, Tue October 30, 2012
Workers said to have been 'caught off guard' by news
Scott Forstall's firing from Apple was greeted with "quiet jubilation" at the company, especially among engineering teams, according to GigaOm. The site quotes anonymous sources, one of whom claims that a number of workers were going out to celebrate with drinks. Forstall's exit is also described as being "fairly last minute," with many people on the iOS and OS X teams only hearing about it minutes before a press release reached the media.
Workers are said to be keen on Jonathan Ive assuming control of the new Human Interface group, but less certain about Craig Federighi, who they suggest needs to prove himself able to manage both the iOS and OS X teams. Previously Federighi was responsible for OS X alone, but he will now be taking over some of Forstall's core responsibilities.
Forstall is already known to have been unpopular with some other Apple executives, especially Ive. His departure has reportedly been linked to refusing to sign an apology for the iOS 6 Maps debacle, but Apple has been silent on reasons for the corporate shakeup. Apart from Forstall, another executive on his way out is retail SVP John Browett, who was with Apple for less than a year but made some decisions that were extremely unpopular with Apple Store crews, leaving some of them without enough hours to earn decent pay.
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Wow! I wouldn't throw Scott Forstall under the bus! He's probably the most valuable free agent in the tech industry right now. Forstall was rumored to be the next CEO at one point. I wonder if Cook will regret firing Scott just like Jobs was fired from Apple. When Scott joins Samsung or Google, Apple might be in world of hurt.
In addition, Scott Forstall invented iOS. It was his idea to use a modified version of OSX for the iPhone. The iPod group wanted a custom OS. Thank goodness Forstall won or Apple would have been looking at a disaster trying to compete with Google's Android while implementing a new OS from scratch. In a way, by using a desktop operating system on the phone (before Google bought Android) was a revolutionary concept. The iPhone on day one provided developers with a lot of OS features only found on desktop operating systems, which is why it took so long for other companies to catch up.