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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 would be great if Apple could change the second, not necessarily the first part.)
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)...
Though I fear that it's "bye bye overt skeumorphism" for sure, but maybe it's "hello excessive minimalism/removing every last feature"? Let's hope not.
Well said. Ive's aesthetic has certainly worked for the hardware line. Even if for nothing else than just the novelty of seeing what they'll put out, I'm delighted to see him take over all HI.
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.
To be honest, the new HQ design looks both bombastic and anonymous to me. I especially wonder what it's going to look like from ground level; I have a sneaking suspicion that the circular facade is going to make it look like you're at the back of the building no matter where you are. But it's very hard to judge these things in advance from a few illustrations.
Yes. If design is language, the new Apple HQ's architecture speaks of an encircled army camp, bulwarked against any possible engagement with the world around it. Every visual feature is defensive in nature.
It's the sort of place where I'd expect a zombie movie to finish up, not where I'd expect people to be inspired to create great things. It belongs in Pyongyang, not Cupertino.
I hope it breathes some life into iOS. I feel like Cupertino is still thinking people are beating the "iOS is way more pretty than Android" moniker to death when it hasn't been true for a while, meanwhile, I understand it's an opinion, but I don't think iOS has aged as well.
I agree - we don't really know anything about Jony Ive as a UI designer. The skeuomorphism will probably be toned down, but I have a hard time believing he will follow Microsoft's lead by copying Metro. Windows 8 and especially Office 2013 are really exposing Metro's weaknesses as a desktop paradigm.
Interesting that Jony will be overseeing UI. I expect a more minimalistic polish to upcoming interfaces. In other words, this is the beginning of the end for the skeuomorphism trend at Apple.
Yes, it's widely known that Ive was one of the most strongly opposed to skeuomorphism whereas Forstall was one of its biggest proponents within the company.
I'm very excited about this. I left the Apple ecosystem over thier poorly-designed skeuomorphic interfaces (iCal and Address Book in Lion being very frustrating). I love the hardware, though, and I'm excited for a return to UX on par with that hardware.
> Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. Please search for _Human Interface_ in Wikipedia to check for alternative titles or spellings.
It's still a non-word, but will be an (oft-used) word soon enough (like that damn skeumorphism thing).
I remember HIG, surely (having read it many times, first for pleasure and now as a developer), but it was always H+I+G, never H+I+something else. But I can be mistaken...
Edit: It doesn't matter if you're an iOS/OS X developer or not. Even if you're a web designer, you should really read Apple's HIGs carefully and thoroughly. They're (by any definition of the word), "great".
Do you have any references for that? HCI has been in use since the late 70s (I believe it originated at Xerox PARC, since the earliest literature I can find using it is from there), and is now the de-facto standard term for all major conferences/publications. On the other hand, searching "MMI" on the ACM digital library only returns it as an acronym for various more-or-less related things.
Maybe MMI is a mistranslation from other languages? This Danish site [1] uses it, and I know the used French term is "Interaction Homme Machine", which I can easily imagine being translated to Man-Machine Interaction
It's mentioned here for instance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_interface. I always got the impression it was a term emerging from the military in the 1940s-50s, when they began to study the ergonomics of cockpits, flight control systems, etc.
Human Interface (as in Human Interface Device) was even used by MS during drafting of the USB standard. Admittedly that's hardware, not software, but Human Interface isn't a new thing.
I just hope that they can keep the contrast and the explicit visual of what a component does. Case in point: fire up letterpress on the ipad, get a gamecenter popover with its felt and wood finish, you can clearly identify what is supposed to happen (aside from copy[if you've used gamecenter before]).
To me it's one of the worst designs on the iPad. The buttons are way too tiny, they are arranged differently for every game, and each game seems to compete for the least intuitive layout and labeling.
Yeah why not? The metaphor works/I cant think of a better one. One thing that I like about some of Apple's approach to things is that the user explicitly enters a mode or changes frame of action. There is a mode the user enters when moving around ios icons/making folders, there is a mode when editing content that appeared to be static at one point. The faux leather/fake realism helps make that switch. If the Xbox os looks just like Metro, how does the user know when things are different?
Yes, well, I'm all for having a popup and for having it stand out in terms of design. I just say that the GameCenter-Popups is a very poor design, especially by apple standards.
In other words: The metaphor is fine but the execution is lacking.
You're the second person that mentioned skeuomorphism. Could you please explain what it is and why it's a big todo? Most of my cursory google searches don't provide any particularly insightful definition of what it is. The blogs/rants usually just dive into why it's good or bad.
Skeuomorphism is when a product imitates design elements
functionally necessary in the original product design, but that
becomes ornamental in the new product design
Examples: leather/paper/textile textures, hyper-realistic shading, analog controls/displays.
Essentially, trying to mimic real world (as in the physical world) applications and appearances. See Calendar and Contacts on iOS for a perfect example of skeuomorphism to the extreme.
Skeumorphism is when a user interface is stylized to look like real world materials (e.g. the Calendar.app on OSX is made to look like a leather desk calendar). The big argument toward it is that it either looks tacky or ruins usability.
Skeuomorphism is a design approach where digital interfaces retain certain elements from their real-world counterparts. For example, the notes app on iOS looks like a real-world notepad, with its leather binding and yellow lined pages, including a torn paper effect along the top where previous pages have been pulled out of the pad. (Obviously these pages do not exist in the digital world, and therefore this design choice is an attempt to insert "realism" into the UI for the purposes of familiarity == skeuomorphism)
Skeuomorphism has been interpreted two ways - as decorative elements (leather stitching), and in functionality that attempts to emulate a real world object (page flipping in an e-book).
The former is just a matter of aesthetic preference. Where skeuomorphism gets dangerous is in the latter case.
A perfect example is the horrible address book in OS X. It looks like a book, and therefore the user expects it to function like a book. Yet, it doesn't. It's this area of interaction design that has run afoul at Apple.
You give "page flipping in an e-book" as an example of dangerous skeuomorphism, but then cite Address Book as why it's bad. I'm a bit confused. I get why you don't like Address Book, but do you really think page flipping in an e-reader is bad too? If so, why do you think that?
The dichotomy is what's dangerous. Address Book looks like an book, so I'll try to interact with it like that. When that doesn't work, I get confused, angry, and it's generally a "failure" from a UX point of view.
Neither form of skeuomorphism is inherently bad, but it's easier to shoot yourself in the foot and ruin the UX when you move from decorative to functional.
Yes, I get the complaints about Address Book. But "page flipping in an e-book" is either really poorly written, or was not referring to Address Book to begin with, since Address Book is not an e-book. Hence my question.
Yes, I get why people don't like Address Book. But it's not an e-book or e-reader, so "page flipping in an e-book" is referring to something else (presumably, iBooks).
The point was that iBooks looks and behaves like a book, so it works even if you consider it distasteful; Address Book looks like one but behaves completely differently, leaving the user confused why this "object" doesn't work.
The speed at which you can present text to the reader is not the end-all, be-all of the reading experience. In fact, the logical conclusion, of having zero transition whatsoever, is actually a pretty terrible experience. Why do you think people use smooth scrolling on their OS? Transitions are very valuable in producing a good user experience, whether it's a simple horizontal slide as the Kindle iOS app uses by default, or a page turn animation as iBooks uses by default. And if your argument is purely about the speed of the animation, there is nothing about a page turn that inherently requires it be slower than a horizontal slide.
Speaking personally, the iBooks page curl is one of my favorite features of any iOS app, period.
I don't know when it has been introduced, or even if it was always there and I didn't notice, but iBooks also supports continuous vertical scrolling and it IS much faster than looking at an animation that shows a page turn or a slide. The default mode, "page turn" doesn't make any sense. When I scroll through an ebook through the continuous scrolling, the text appears INSTANTLY, without a perceptible delay and since it's continuous scrolling, you don't go from a page to another, but you're always "in between". The concept of a "page" 1, "page 2", "page" 3 itself is no more. It's not a physical book, it doesn't need pages.
It's a matter of personal preference. A seemingly endless expanse of text seems daunting. I like the idea of pages, they break down the text into more manageable pieces.
Scroll mode was introduced in the just-released iBooks 3.0. And I personally think think a never-ending scroll of text is not a good way to read a book. Pagination is very helpful. I realize other people like scroll mode, but that's a personal preference.
This is a case where I recognize the absurdity of pages in e-books, and yet I still like to have them. Pages give you a sense of progress through the book, and act as a proxy for time spent. They're not necessary as part of the presentation of information, or even telling a story, but I do like having them there.
Maybe this is one example of skueomorphism done right, at least from my point of view. An anachronism that helps to make the user feel comfortable with the application, even though it isn't strictly necessary.
I think a better animation would be the page 'lifting' and swiping away quickly to reveal the page underneath. You still get the affordance of turning a page, but with a new and improved SwiftTurn digital method, and without the ponderous neccessity of fake flipping a page.
Ala swipe to unlock, or elastic scroll-ending. Use affordances, rather than limiting real world analogies.
Probably not, considering their long history in "candy" UI. OSX's chrome style already strikes a good balance, I think they will keep it that way and just phase out the hyper-realistic apps.
Wasnt he supposed to be the next Steve Jobs? He was noticeably missing from the last event. It was strange that they didnt have ios updates to talk about (that is when he gets on stage).
My observation was that Scott wanted to be the next Steve, with his autoskeuomorphic behavior. That he spent the last 15 years working for Steve is probably also a factor here.
I think some people assume he was being groomed for that position, but I never sensed that.
While mere speculation, I do not think he is leaving over Maps directly. I personally think there was internal tension over making sir Jony head of leadership and direction for Human Interface and he quit over that -- also there is the possibility that he was perhaps looking to run Apple as CEO at some point but that does not seem to be in the cards.
Wow, this is great news all around. Jony Ive can only improve the Human Interfaces we've seen, and although he was obviously good at a lot of things, Forstall did tend to over-promise and under-deliver (Siri, Maps). This makes me feel great about Cook as CEO.
> Jony Ive will provide leadership and direction for Human Interface (HI) across the company
And thus ended the reign of skeuomorphism at Apple. Or, at least, the reign of hyper-realism and hyper-whimsy in UI design. Jobs or Forstall always seemed to favour it, but could you imagine Jony Ive signing off on a Podcasts app where half the screen is a reel-to-reel tape that bounces when you pause?
Next version, probably not unless there is the perception of a burning platform.
But over the long haul, I don't see how Apple can stick with an increasingly dated and arbitrary visual paradigm. How many people have actually been around real to real tape decks or owned a leather desk calendar? And as digital devices like smartphones become more ubiquitous, fewer and fewer people will.
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.
Metro is defined by flat background colors, square corners and no shading. You can have a non-skeumorphic interface without any of those features, and given Apple's history of interface design, it would surprise me if they adopted any of them. Apple loves rounded rectangles, gradient backgrounds and shading to indicate depth, though shine and real-like textures may be on the way out.
Shading and round corners are skeuomorphic, as is indicating depth on a piece of glass.
What Apple loves is irrelevant (if one is willing to ascribe emotional states to corporations). Daimler-Benz loved steering tillers. Ford loved hand throttles.
Think about the way in which the interfaces of automobiles changed over the first forty years as they went from horseless carriages to widespread adoption. That's what we're seeing in computer interfaces.
Rounded corners aren't necessarily skeumorphic; they're a style choice just as rounded cabinets and trim are a (popular) style choice. Likewise, shading and gradients to give an impression of depth and lighting are often used to distinguish items that are clickable or as a separator. These are artistic tools that can be used to various effects, but are not skeumorphic in the sense of trying to imitate a familiar object from everyday life. Virtual representations of objects can be 3D without being skeumorphic; the illusion of depth can be used to convey information.
Skeumorphic features are defined by the fact that they are unnecessary carry-overs from older or different objects. They can be useful and style choices too, but a digital button does not need to indicate depth, whereas a mechanical button does, because it needs to protrude from the surface in order to be pressed.
Not so slippery. "Tape reels" won't make sense to someone who has never seen a reel to reel. A knobby thing that protrudes, as if you could feel it if you ran your hand over the surface, transcends culture and applies to any normally functioning human being.
The difference between skeumorphism and visual affordance is the difference between "intuitive" and intuitive. One makes a reference to past experience, and is built on natural affordances. The other is not.
That said, I think what you're getting at is it might be impossible to completely eliminate skeumorphism. I agree with that. There's going to be at least a sliver left in almost any interface. That's just one of the byproducts of our having a culture.
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?
A mechanical button absolutely does not need to protrude from the surface to be pressed - not only can it start at surface level and be pressed into the device, it can return to starting position and remain flush. Look at most microwaves - totally flat, presses in very slightly, returns to flush. The power button on the mac pro (that neglected tower!) does the same. Also, capacitive buttons exist which, although not strictly mechanical, have a similar behavior.
Protruding buttons are merely a user interface choice. They were never a functional requirement.
Round corners on physical objects are less often stylistic than functionally driven. From reducing drag on moving objects, to reducing injury on objects subject to bodily contact or grasping, they are functional.
Rounding the edges of a toaster reduces the material required, reduces the space required for packaging and allows better working clearances to reduce the user's likelihood of being burned.
Rounding the corners of a picture of a toaster is generally makework, not artisic production. Rounding the corners of a picture of the phrase "WiFi Settings" is just mental masturbation, or "chart junk" as Tufte would say.
>Shading and round corners are skeuomorphic, as is indicating depth on a piece of glass.
And flat background colors represent a uniformly lit smooth surface. I don't think that mimicking some basic material properties is really skeumorphic.
It's more when that's taken to the point of looking/acting like a specific physical object (like Game Center's pool table felt) that I'd apply the term.
Skeuomorphic implies that a design feature is no longer necessary or useful. That's not the case here - you still need visual indicators of the extents of a window, and of what's manipulable versus what's static content, and of what's the currently active or selected object. Apple's current set of visual indicators are obviously not the only option, but if they went to a UI as flat as a typical minimalist web design, usability would suffer.
I don’t think Apple will go that far. I don’t even think they will overtake stock Android when it comes to ditching skeumorphism and removing affordances.
I also don’t think there will be radical changes. Remember how OS X looked before Corinthian leather arrived? That’s what I see more off in the future. Probably with an updated look (like the new iTunes?), but not much more.
If you want to know how that looks on iOS I would maybe look at something like the editing interface of iMovie, Safari, or Mail.
I was so confused when I saw that app a couple of months back. Why spend so much effort creating an admittedly aesthetically pleasing design, name check Rams and his principles, and so completely miss the point of "as little design as possible" and have a non-functional spinner display for the current conditions?
And having such a prominent °F/°C switch is just baffling. This is not a function used regularly by the vast majority of users.
(Shrug) I don't know anything about this app but I don't immediately get the hate for it. It looks cool.
The spinner dial may not be functional, but it could be and should be, because weather conditions change incrementally and (more or less) predictably. If it's humid and cloudy and the barometric pressure is falling, then it would make sense for the spinner dial to move slowly between "cloudy" and "raining" positions, for instance.
And maybe the author of the app is an advocate of the metric system and wants to encourage users to treat the °F/°C switch as a prominent educational feature. Like I said, I don't know anything about it, but the amount of negativity being aimed at the app seems difficult to justify.
I'm not sure if that part of the comment was aimed at me: I don't hate it, I just think it fails at reaching or perhaps even understanding its stated design goals.
Mostly referring to 89a's criticism ("Same goes for this stupid piece of shit.") I usually reserve language like that for politicians, Sony products, and iTunes, not cheesy weather apps.
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 designs. Why take a 30 year old tape recorder and mimic that, is that really the mark of originality that Apple stands for? It seems quite hypocritical to me.
It’s most certainly not hypocritical to believe that there should be time limited monopolies on designs and copying designs for which that monopoly has run out. Simple as that.
Don’t argue over ridiculous stuff like that. There is no need for these cheap polemics.
1. That Braun thing was produced decades ago, and probably they haven't sold a single one of them in the last decade or so.
2. A podcasts app on an iPad, is in no way competing to an ancient cassette player.
3. They're in different categories. It's like if I "copy" a Mercedes logo for a window. Though I'm not particularly in favor of Apple/Samsung case ruling, it's clearly different to copy an element for a competing product (a tablet) or another product that's a whole different beast and is no longer for sale.
There is a world of difference between being influenced by something and doing an exact copy. One is legal, accepted as beneficial to society and common place within the design community. The other isn't.
You are either woefully naive or being disingenuous to assume that the two are the same.
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.
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....
I could matter. Companies that have highly valuable patents can create what are called "patent portfolios" which take some patents, layer them with other patents and use the legal trick of "continuation" to effectively get patent coverage for portfolio as a whole by constantly developing newer, tightly-coupled patents.
Braun, if they wished, could have done so. Of course, I'm sure in that case, Apple would have probably licensed the patents or worked around them.
Doubt we'll be seeing any major change like that at least until iOS8. For iOS7 it seems too soon. We might also see it in Mac OS XI, but I also doubt that's coming until 2014.
iTunes 11 is obviously not free of skeuo. There is at least the brushed metal volume knob and the pseudo-LCD display. I don't see how the new iTunes went away from the old iTunes, skeuo-wise, apart from the less-but-still-skeuo-looking LCD display.
This was also my first thought on the departure. The announcement did look ambiguous on whether Ive would be the final sign-off for software UI. I certainly hope he is, for the reasons you mentioned.
+1. The app should have never been created in the first place. The old podcast functionality was basic, but was better than having to switch back-and-forth between two different apps as it is now.
I actually like a lot of apple's skeuomorphism. I think it makes digital interfaces more natural. I think at least some of the iPhones success can be attributed to the fact that less savvy people find the skeuomorphisms easy to relate to everyday things and helps bridge the gap between, for example, using a real reel-to-reel vs. using a digital representation thereof. Although I agree that the podcast app is too much, I would really miss the leather textures and whatnot of other iOS apps.
There are some interesting ways iOS uses fabric patterns, it's quite clever. But I don't think that making things look like their old-school equivalents really helps people, rather hinders.
Excellent news. I have always been surprised by the opposing philosophies guiding hardware vs software design in Apple products. They consistently offer beautiful hardware designs that emphasize simplicity, sometimes at a cost in usability (e.g. the sharp edges of the newer iPhones are less ergonomic than the first models). On the other hand, their software makes few compromises in usability, which is a good thing. But it never showed this taste for simplicity and purity that makes Apple devices so appealing from the outside. From the brushed metal windows and shiny plastic scroll-bars of early OS X, to the leather borders in iOS applications, Apple under Jobs and Forstall has pursued the opposite direction. Stock Android actually has the edge here (although inconsistently), something I would not say about the hardware or usability. Hopefully this change means we will see Apple software that preserves usability without the tacky visuals.
I remember watching him in a keynote showing the piano app on iphone when they announced appstore/iphone. I was blown away by that demo.. those were the days maan..
Interesting to see confirmation of Bob Mansfield's continued role in the company. He'll lead a new group, "Technologies", responsible for wireless and semis.
It's unusual for Apple to hype something like this, but in that note they mention Mansfield's semiconductor team "have ambitious plans for the future". I doubt that simply refers to making the A7 faster and more power-efficient.
Apple's semiconductor plans have always been something that's been interesting to watch develop over the last few years. I was wondering what they were going to throw Mansfield on ever since they appointed his replacement and just designated him as basically someone who was going to work on a special project.
Sounds like a thrust towards driving Apple deeper into the bottom of the hardware stack to me. Apple currently is very good at setting up good solid deep relationships with hardware suppliers and designing lots of stuff to make things work together. But they've been pushing further and further down the stack ever since the PASemi acquisition. I wonder when they're going to start building fabs.
It seems like if you've got >$30B sitting around, devoting a VP to making a new team and are worried about your competitors controlling your supply chains for memories and other core technologies...
I guess we're going to find out. If I'm right, the earliest indicators will probably be hiring the types of people you'd need to spin up serious fabs.
"Forstall has made it abundantly clear inside Cupertino that he would like to eventually be Apple's chief executive, adding that "he wears his ambition in plainer view than the typical Apple executive.""
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.
I suspect the stock options were to help maintain the illusion of stability and unity in the period before and after Jobs' death. 75,000 shares is a lot of money for one person but if it keeps the stock price a couple of dollars higher it is a net benefit to shareholders.
Apple has more than 939 million shares, maintaining $1.00 in share price is nearly a billion dollars in shareholder value.
Interesting timing on the announcement, given that the stock market is closed today and likely tomorrow too.
As both a fan and shareholder of Apple, I'm very pleased to hear Browett is out. The stories that came out a couple months ago about the changes in Apple Retail did fill me with admiration for his management style.
Also, given how Forstall is described in a Business Week profile[1], and that Bob Mansfield is not only sticking around, but heading up a new team, I wonder if Mansfield laid out an ultimatum to Tim Cook about 'him or me'.
I think retaining key talent is one of Tim Cooks' most important jobs... and this shows pretty clearly that Mansfield was tired of his previous job, wanted to retire, and Tim found a way to create a position that interested him, or at least, would keep him around for a couple more years.
And this new section, I think, could be really important.
Apple has been really innovating in silicon and wireless technologies, and they're at a point where this will increasingly be the source of key competitive advantages.
I suspect Mansfield's job is to integrate this division, get it whipped into shape and then recruit a replacement to lead it.
Pretty standard (and smart) timing of the announcement. They release it while the media is focused on Sandy and the election so the minimum amount of scrutiny will be placed on Apple.
One of the biggest questions about Tim Cook was whether he could keep the management team together. Now one of the longest serving and most importance pieces of that unit is leaving. Whether or not it was a good decision, the market is going to interpret this negatively and they'll be scared there will be more of this.
If this were good news this is the last time Apple would have released it...
John Browett didn't last long. Jony Ive overseeing UI should be interesting and might bring an end to the skeuomorphism bug at Apple.
I wonder how this will affect iOS. Forstall has been in charge from the beginning (afaik) so we might see some big changes and even better integration with OS X now that Craig Federighi is in charge of both teams.
Edit:
I wonder if Forstall's departure has anything to do with Mansfield staying on?
Jury's still out at this point[1], but this certainly makes me optimistic. Or, at the very least, intensely interested in what this new arrangement will yield.
[1] He seems to certainly not be a bad CEO if we're talking about the set {All CEOs}. But you'd have to be really really good to not look awful if you're following Jobs.
I don't know if anyone ever doubted Tim Cook as a good/credible CEO. The only issue is whether or not he can be jobs-level which is unlikely but remains to be seen.
I'm actually surprised that they allowed John Browett to receive his first batch of grants before they showed him the door. Didn't seem like he had long after some of his recent communication problems.
I'm not - it's part of the requirement to provide some renumeration (esp. in stock) for departing executives regardless of tenure as their inside knowledge is very dangerous in the wrong hands.
It's also a lesson to the hiring team: you know you'll be paying some decent compensation regardless of who you hire or for how long, so learn to do your job well and hire the right person. Ounce of prevention and all that.
Just to be clear, he's not "leaving." He got fired. He got fired because after the map fiasco became apparent, he refused to send out an apology or sign his name to the one Tim Cook sent. (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 great job he'd done. That would annoy people.
I've heard rumors that he was seen as "better managing up than down" (impressing his boss, at the expense of results), and that doesn't strike me as something Tim Cook would like very much (both from his reported management style, and the number of stock options he has). I can see that being a last straw from Tim - "You screwed up, now own up to it. Or else."
> 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.
The problem is that they released that first attempt. iPhone and iPad weren't their first attempts at phones and tablet computers, they were simply the first ones good enough to take to market.
Mapping is very hard, and he shipped it before it was ready. That was a pretty bad event for them; caused lot of negativity from users. I'm not surprised.
There are ways of dealing with hard problems- managing scope, managing expectations. I'm not too surprised he was fired for not executing. Remember Papermaster and the antenna?
While it hasn't seemed to have an appreciable affect on sales or the stock price, the shortcomings of the new Maps have been an embarrassing PR mess for Apple and a hit to its reputation for uncompromising quality that sets it so far apart from everyone else.
It does not surprise that he's being fired for this or that his departure is going to be transitional since he's so intricately involved with so many central aspects and initiatives at the company.
I learned a long time ago honesty and taking ownership is the best policy.
It possible that he though he did no wrong. Or maybe he thought he was above the fray. But if he wanted to save his job, owning the wrong is the best way. People forgive when the apology is genuine.
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 problem themselves.
A basic map application just requires data, projections (which is a solved problem, if a little tedious), and a rendering system. Path finding is also basically solved (it's Algorithms 101, though you need something a bit more sophisticated to make it scale). A basic mapping app can be hacked up in a week. A good mapping app is obviously much harder, but it's still doable.
But like taligent said, it's data that's the real problem. Mapping data tends to be dirty and heterogeneous. Do you have a point, or a polygon? You're in trouble if you just have a street address (geocoding can be very hit and miss). Metadata (like the projection) can be missing. Locations can be slightly wrong, and you'll draw a highway running through a shopping mall, or connect streets which don't quite connect, or have gaps in a street because it changes street names and there's a tiny gap between the two streets (which doesn't exist in the real world). How do you normalise the field names? How do you even get the data? Once you've got everything into your database, you move onto the next city / state / country.
Lets see if I understand you right. Mapping is not hard. You just have to get good data. Getting good data is hard though. And getting good data is part of doing Mapping. So basically you said Mapping wasn't hard and then said that a crucial part of Mapping was really hard.
All of which is a roundabout way of contradicting? yourself.
This answers my point better. The fact is that many of these mapping companies that even Google still licenses to this day have been driving around countries in some cases for decades.
That is the real hard part. Trying to obtain all that data. Because every mistake is potentially one person complaining loudly on the internet.
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.)
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.
It was a decision that was forced by a number of factors. Google wouldn't agree to providing directions for turn-by-turn navigation, so Apple had to seek other solutions.
Scuttlebutt is that it was an executive-wide decision based on the coming renegotiation of their 5 year agreement with Google regarding Maps. Google has been letting iOS maps lag behind Android maps (e.g., Android has turn-by-turn navigation, iOS maps didn't), so Apple was understandably not excited about renewing that agreement, and leaving themselves very vulnerable to one of their biggest competitors. But they didn't have something comparable, so they pushed a weak maps app early to catch Google off-guard--and they did. Google didn't have an app ready in the app store to replace the one they lost in the OS.
That's my synthesis of the analysis of a bunch of Apple watchers, so take it with a bowl of salt. But it makes sense to me.
"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."
It seemed obvious that his back-to-back failures with Siri + Maps and the fact that lots of people inside Apple hated him were the reason for this, but it was impossible to know for certain without somebody inside taking a risk and saying that.
Care to speculate on who would be next in line to be CEO now? That was presumably Forstall. Now it would be Cue or Ive or...?
...but on the other hand, there's been speculation for years that his management style was very bad, and the source of frustration in the engineering teams, as well as his friction with the industrial design team.
At first I was shocked by the headline, but after reading the story, I actually think, this could be amazing.
Getting Jony Ive to oversee both industrial and software design, could lead to something very exciting, that provides the innovation, the software, has been lacking.
I have full confidence, in Eddy Cue, Craig, and Bob their new roles, and hope this means Bob will stay on longer.
As per the direct no apology firing of Browett.. Sweet! I was actually hoping for that. I was insane to gamble with the Apple stores reputation and service for a litle more margin. Having now seen a Dixons, I have no idea, why he was hired
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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 would be great if Apple could change the second, not necessarily the first part.)
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)...
Well said. Ive's aesthetic has certainly worked for the hardware line. Even if for nothing else than just the novelty of seeing what they'll put out, I'm delighted to see him take over all HI.
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.
On the other hand, have you seen the designs the approved for the future HQ?
It's the sort of place where I'd expect a zombie movie to finish up, not where I'd expect people to be inspired to create great things. It belongs in Pyongyang, not Cupertino.
Toning down overt skeumorphism is just the start.
It's best we all get used to it. It'll be repeated again and again from now on :)
Edit: This is what I mean: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Interface
> Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. Please search for _Human Interface_ in Wikipedia to check for alternative titles or spellings.
It's still a non-word, but will be an (oft-used) word soon enough (like that damn skeumorphism thing).
Edit: It doesn't matter if you're an iOS/OS X developer or not. Even if you're a web designer, you should really read Apple's HIGs carefully and thoroughly. They're (by any definition of the word), "great".
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#DOCUMENTATION/UserEx...
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/userexperience/Con...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Tognazzini
Maybe MMI is a mistranslation from other languages? This Danish site [1] uses it, and I know the used French term is "Interaction Homme Machine", which I can easily imagine being translated to Man-Machine Interaction
[1]: http://www.eit.ihk-edu.dk/subjects/mmi/intro.php#0
To me it's one of the worst designs on the iPad. The buttons are way too tiny, they are arranged differently for every game, and each game seems to compete for the least intuitive layout and labeling.
In other words: The metaphor is fine but the execution is lacking.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph
Take for instance some of the apps on iOS. The have book bindings, rings, shadows, etc.
The former is just a matter of aesthetic preference. Where skeuomorphism gets dangerous is in the latter case.
A perfect example is the horrible address book in OS X. It looks like a book, and therefore the user expects it to function like a book. Yet, it doesn't. It's this area of interaction design that has run afoul at Apple.
Neither form of skeuomorphism is inherently bad, but it's easier to shoot yourself in the foot and ruin the UX when you move from decorative to functional.
If you can render the next page faster, then why fake a 'page turn' that takes time to animate.
It's the very definition of skeuomorphism.
Speaking personally, the iBooks page curl is one of my favorite features of any iOS app, period.
Maybe this is one example of skueomorphism done right, at least from my point of view. An anachronism that helps to make the user feel comfortable with the application, even though it isn't strictly necessary.
Ala swipe to unlock, or elastic scroll-ending. Use affordances, rather than limiting real world analogies.
I think some people assume he was being groomed for that position, but I never sensed that.
> Jony Ive will provide leadership and direction for Human Interface (HI) across the company
And thus ended the reign of skeuomorphism at Apple. Or, at least, the reign of hyper-realism and hyper-whimsy in UI design. Jobs or Forstall always seemed to favour it, but could you imagine Jony Ive signing off on a Podcasts app where half the screen is a reel-to-reel tape that bounces when you pause?
But over the long haul, I don't see how Apple can stick with an increasingly dated and arbitrary visual paradigm. How many people have actually been around real to real tape decks or owned a leather desk calendar? And as digital devices like smartphones become more ubiquitous, fewer and fewer people will.
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.
What Apple loves is irrelevant (if one is willing to ascribe emotional states to corporations). Daimler-Benz loved steering tillers. Ford loved hand throttles.
Think about the way in which the interfaces of automobiles changed over the first forty years as they went from horseless carriages to widespread adoption. That's what we're seeing in computer interfaces.
This is a slippery slope. There's no hard boundary between skeumorphism and visual affordance, even though you'd like there to be.
The difference between skeumorphism and visual affordance is the difference between "intuitive" and intuitive. One makes a reference to past experience, and is built on natural affordances. The other is not.
That said, I think what you're getting at is it might be impossible to completely eliminate skeumorphism. I agree with that. There's going to be at least a sliver left in almost any interface. That's just one of the byproducts of our having a culture.
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?
Protruding buttons are merely a user interface choice. They were never a functional requirement.
Rounding the edges of a toaster reduces the material required, reduces the space required for packaging and allows better working clearances to reduce the user's likelihood of being burned.
Rounding the corners of a picture of a toaster is generally makework, not artisic production. Rounding the corners of a picture of the phrase "WiFi Settings" is just mental masturbation, or "chart junk" as Tufte would say.
And flat background colors represent a uniformly lit smooth surface. I don't think that mimicking some basic material properties is really skeumorphic.
It's more when that's taken to the point of looking/acting like a specific physical object (like Game Center's pool table felt) that I'd apply the term.
I also don’t think there will be radical changes. Remember how OS X looked before Corinthian leather arrived? That’s what I see more off in the future. Probably with an updated look (like the new iTunes?), but not much more.
If you want to know how that looks on iOS I would maybe look at something like the editing interface of iMovie, Safari, or Mail.
That would be my guess.
The skeuomorphic look of Podcasts was based on a physical product design by Ive's legendary design influence, Dieter Rams:
http://www.cultofmac.com/176008/heres-the-braun-tape-recorde...
In retrospect, the tension inherent in this odd compromise seems palpable. It's like listening to the last album a band releases before they break up.
And having such a prominent °F/°C switch is just baffling. This is not a function used regularly by the vast majority of users.
The spinner dial may not be functional, but it could be and should be, because weather conditions change incrementally and (more or less) predictably. If it's humid and cloudy and the barometric pressure is falling, then it would make sense for the spinner dial to move slowly between "cloudy" and "raining" positions, for instance.
And maybe the author of the app is an advocate of the metric system and wants to encourage users to treat the °F/°C switch as a prominent educational feature. Like I said, I don't know anything about it, but the amount of negativity being aimed at the app seems difficult to justify.
Don’t fight patents with cheap lies. There are plenty of reasons why patents are bad, bad, bad, no need to resort to untruths.
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 designs. Why take a 30 year old tape recorder and mimic that, is that really the mark of originality that Apple stands for? It seems quite hypocritical to me.
Don’t argue over ridiculous stuff like that. There is no need for these cheap polemics.
1. That Braun thing was produced decades ago, and probably they haven't sold a single one of them in the last decade or so.
2. A podcasts app on an iPad, is in no way competing to an ancient cassette player.
3. They're in different categories. It's like if I "copy" a Mercedes logo for a window. Though I'm not particularly in favor of Apple/Samsung case ruling, it's clearly different to copy an element for a competing product (a tablet) or another product that's a whole different beast and is no longer for sale.
You are either woefully naive or being disingenuous to assume that the two are the same.
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....
Braun, if they wished, could have done so. Of course, I'm sure in that case, Apple would have probably licensed the patents or worked around them.
http://www.apple.com/itunes/new-itunes/
So it could be coming sooner than you think.
Even worse than maps, which are a huge ongoing problem.
I remember watching him in a keynote showing the piano app on iphone when they announced appstore/iphone. I was blown away by that demo.. those were the days maan..
Sounds like a thrust towards driving Apple deeper into the bottom of the hardware stack to me. Apple currently is very good at setting up good solid deep relationships with hardware suppliers and designing lots of stuff to make things work together. But they've been pushing further and further down the stack ever since the PASemi acquisition. I wonder when they're going to start building fabs.
It seems like if you've got >$30B sitting around, devoting a VP to making a new team and are worried about your competitors controlling your supply chains for memories and other core technologies...
I guess we're going to find out. If I'm right, the earliest indicators will probably be hiring the types of people you'd need to spin up serious fabs.
So you've never heard about what the ARM was originally designed for?
http://acorn.chriswhy.co.uk/Computers/A500.html
I guess that was a while ago! And it certainly was desktop-class. It beat the pants off a 12 MHz 286.
I think it was evident he lost the power struggle and it killed his enthusiasm. His heart just wasn't in it anymore.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57425920-37/apple-exec-sco...
"Forstall has made it abundantly clear inside Cupertino that he would like to eventually be Apple's chief executive, adding that "he wears his ambition in plainer view than the typical Apple executive.""
Apple has more than 939 million shares, maintaining $1.00 in share price is nearly a billion dollars in shareholder value.
As both a fan and shareholder of Apple, I'm very pleased to hear Browett is out. The stories that came out a couple months ago about the changes in Apple Retail did fill me with admiration for his management style.
Also, given how Forstall is described in a Business Week profile[1], and that Bob Mansfield is not only sticking around, but heading up a new team, I wonder if Mansfield laid out an ultimatum to Tim Cook about 'him or me'.
[1] http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/scott-forstall-the-sorc...
Then Cook convinced Mansfield to "unretire" and become an advisor: http://gigaom.com/apple/shedding-light-on-apple-exec-drama-w...
And now, Mansfield heads up a huge new group called Technologies (wireless, semiconductor, etc).
What a roller coaster for Mansfield... but not just him, the entire management team because they're all working together and dependent on each other.
And this new section, I think, could be really important.
Apple has been really innovating in silicon and wireless technologies, and they're at a point where this will increasingly be the source of key competitive advantages.
I suspect Mansfield's job is to integrate this division, get it whipped into shape and then recruit a replacement to lead it.
One of the biggest questions about Tim Cook was whether he could keep the management team together. Now one of the longest serving and most importance pieces of that unit is leaving. Whether or not it was a good decision, the market is going to interpret this negatively and they'll be scared there will be more of this.
If this were good news this is the last time Apple would have released it...
Apple has always strived to couple great hardware design with great software. Excited to see them bring the two departments closer again.
I wonder how this will affect iOS. Forstall has been in charge from the beginning (afaik) so we might see some big changes and even better integration with OS X now that Craig Federighi is in charge of both teams.
Edit:
I wonder if Forstall's departure has anything to do with Mansfield staying on?
[1] He seems to certainly not be a bad CEO if we're talking about the set {All CEOs}. But you'd have to be really really good to not look awful if you're following Jobs.
(http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/scott-forstall-the-sorc...)
It's also a lesson to the hiring team: you know you'll be paying some decent compensation regardless of who you hire or for how long, so learn to do your job well and hire the right person. Ounce of prevention and all that.
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 great job he'd done. That would annoy people.
I've heard rumors that he was seen as "better managing up than down" (impressing his boss, at the expense of results), and that doesn't strike me as something Tim Cook would like very much (both from his reported management style, and the number of stock options he has). I can see that being a last straw from Tim - "You screwed up, now own up to it. Or else."
The problem is that they released that first attempt. iPhone and iPad weren't their first attempts at phones and tablet computers, they were simply the first ones good enough to take to market.
http://daringfireball.net/2010/08/papermaster_damn_antenna
It does not surprise that he's being fired for this or that his departure is going to be transitional since he's so intricately involved with so many central aspects and initiatives at the company.
(also no internal knowledge)
It would be because he over promised and under delivered.
Sure, it was embarrassing to Apple to release a half-assed Maps app, but even more so to tout it just a few weeks earlier as being soooo good.
And alledgedly refused to own up to it.
Was he pushed to do Maps, and he told everyone it was going to be a nightmare, and then made the best of a bad situation?
It possible that he though he did no wrong. Or maybe he thought he was above the fray. But if he wanted to save his job, owning the wrong is the best way. People forgive when the apology is genuine.
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 problem themselves.
What map applications have you authored? Any links?
But like taligent said, it's data that's the real problem. Mapping data tends to be dirty and heterogeneous. Do you have a point, or a polygon? You're in trouble if you just have a street address (geocoding can be very hit and miss). Metadata (like the projection) can be missing. Locations can be slightly wrong, and you'll draw a highway running through a shopping mall, or connect streets which don't quite connect, or have gaps in a street because it changes street names and there's a tiny gap between the two streets (which doesn't exist in the real world). How do you normalise the field names? How do you even get the data? Once you've got everything into your database, you move onto the next city / state / country.
All of which is a roundabout way of contradicting? yourself.
That is the real hard part. Trying to obtain all that data. Because every mistake is potentially one person complaining loudly on the internet.
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.)
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.
That's my synthesis of the analysis of a bunch of Apple watchers, so take it with a bowl of salt. But it makes sense to me.
"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-...
It seemed obvious that his back-to-back failures with Siri + Maps and the fact that lots of people inside Apple hated him were the reason for this, but it was impossible to know for certain without somebody inside taking a risk and saying that.
Care to speculate on who would be next in line to be CEO now? That was presumably Forstall. Now it would be Cue or Ive or...?
Getting Jony Ive to oversee both industrial and software design, could lead to something very exciting, that provides the innovation, the software, has been lacking.
I have full confidence, in Eddy Cue, Craig, and Bob their new roles, and hope this means Bob will stay on longer.
As per the direct no apology firing of Browett.. Sweet! I was actually hoping for that. I was insane to gamble with the Apple stores reputation and service for a litle more margin. Having now seen a Dixons, I have no idea, why he was hired