In what is being largely seen as the biggest senior management shake-ups since the passing away of erstwhile Apple CEO Steve Jobs, the company’s Mobile Software head Scott Forstall was asked to leave the company. According to reports, Forstall was forced to resign after he refused to sign an apology letter acknowledging that the company’s new mapping service, iOS Maps was far from perfect. Apart from Scott Forstall, Apple’s recently hired retail chief John Browett was also asked to leave.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the removal of Scott Forstall, a 15 year old veteran of the company came after repeated clashes between him and other senior executives within the company. Forstall, who is widely believed to be very close to Steve Jobs was blamed for being very vocal about his closeness with the erstwhile CEO. Apart from that, he was also blamed to be very unco-operative. This had led to mounting tensions between him and other senior executives.
The final nail in the coffin came in the form of iOS 6 Maps, the company’s newest native Mapping tool for iOS devices. Soon after its official announcement and subsequent launch with iOS 6, it was criticized for being inferior to the much more popular Google Maps application – which most iOS users were used to. It is also being reported that unlike CEO Tim Cook, who was all for issuing an apology to iOS users for goofing up with iOS Maps, Forstall was of the opinion that there need be no apology and that Apple can handle the issue without an apology – like they did with the Phone 4 “antennagate” fiasco. Eventually, Tim Cook did issue an apology. Forstall on the other hand reportedly was adamant on not signing such an apology letter – which finally led to his removal.
Forstall had recently revealed that with Steve Jobs gone, there was no “decider” on matters like these. He had also sent an email to members of Apple’s iOS team voicing his opinion that the team is not working on enough big ideas in mobile software.
It remains to be seen where Scott Forstall would be headed to and what his future plans would be.