Apple rarely makes big executive cuts because it’s a company that, by and large, succeeds. The flip side of continued success, though, is that any failures become all the more apparent. Just ask Scott Forstall, the man who’s currently clearing his Cupertino desk. Is this what happens when you lose your lead?
For the past year or two, iOS has gone from looking futuristic to stale. This hasn’t been helped by a slew of new first party apps like GameCenter and Find My Friends employing enough differing skueomorphs to make the whole thing feel incredibly disjointed – even archaic.
That may well be the fault of Scott Forstall, the man who – up until now – has been Apple’s head of software development for iOS devices. It now seems that the disaster that was Apple Maps was the final straw, as Apple’s forcing a company shakeup.
Read Tim Cook’s astounding Maps apology
Forstall reportedly refused to put his name to Apple’s incredible apology for the new Maps app, and will be out of the picture come the new year as a result. In a 2012 that’s seen great leaps forward in terms of Apple hardware and a stagnation of its software, that shakeup can only be a good thing.
Going forward, Apple’s hardware development guru/god/prophet Jonathan Ive will move in to oversee the software side of things, too.
Hopefully, Ive’s influence will guide iOS 7 to being a huge leap forward in terms of design and usability, rather than the disappointing rehash that was iOS 6.
