An ex-Apple engineer has claimed that Apple CEO Tim Cook has made a big mistake in firing Scott Forstall. Forstall was, according to Michael Lopp: "The best approximation of Steve Jobs that Apple had left".
Lopp told Business Insider: "In my years at Apple, the Caffe Macs [Apple canteen] chatter about Forstall was that he was the only legit successor to Jobs."
It appears that Forstall was considered a natural successor to Jobs because he was a jerk. Lopp though it was a good thing that Forstall wasn't liked by his colleagues. He believes that is was the tension and disagreement that helped Apple innovate, claims the Business Insider report.
Lopp notes that the first sentence of the press release that announced Forstall's departure claimed the management changes would "encourage even more collaboration" he suggests that more collaboration isn't necessarily a good thing for Apple. "Close your eyes and imagine a meeting with Steve Jobs. Imagine how it proceeds and how decisions are made. Does the word collaboration ever enter your mind? Not mine," he told Business Insider.
We think it's worth noting here that Steve Jobs made Tim Cook CEO, not Scott Forstall. If Forstall was really such a natural successor to Jobs would Jobs not have recognised that.
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Comments received
theanimaster said on Wed, 14 Nov 2012
"It appears that Forstall was considered a natural successor to Jobs because he was a jerk." Gotta love how that was so impeccably written.
Whoever that engineer is, must be a real douche. Sir Jony Ive _IS_ the next best replacement. He is a designer and if I had Apple shares, I'd bet them on Ive running the company.
Forstall was a wanna-be. He was screwing things up since Leopard!! Remember Leopard? The FIRST version of OS X that was SO bad it wouldn't install properly on macs at version 5.0 unless you reformatted the entire volume and did a fresh install (the only good thing is that this because routine for me since then).
You see the same dodgy quality with iOS... things that just 'don't work' like they SHOULD (according to Jobs).
fredsmith said on Fri, 16 Nov 2012
Vision, genius, and relentless focus made the Jerk, not the other way round.
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