I talked to you today about Forstall and his departure from Apple, but now I'm back with some interesting information about the effect this recent Apple change had. Although Forstall is most likely unhappy, the employees in his division they are very happy, some of them even celebrating the departure of the former SVP, even if for now it is not known what role they will occupy in the future of the Apple company.
Forstall's firing was met with a sense of quiet jubilation, especially among people who worked in the engineering groups. Or as one of my sources quipped: there are a lot of people going for celebratory drinks, even if there is a little bit of doubt about their roles in the future. There is a sense of excitement around Jony Ive taking over as in charge of the newly created human interface group. The reason for the excitement: hope for a new design direction for many software products. Most think Eddy Cue taking over Siri and Maps is a smart and natural thing to do.
Besides the engineers, those in management are breathing a little easier after this announcement, Forstall having had quite a few contradictory discussions with many of them lately. It seems that no member of the vice president team was close to Forstall, but he was accepted at Apple based on his past. Without Jobs it was only a matter of time until Forstall would leave Apple and his attitude within the company was ultimately of little help to him.
According to my sources, there have been fissures in the management team for a while. Steve Jobs and Forstall were close, but none of the executives really cared for the deposed iOS chief. He really built a reputation by executing on Steve's vision and acting as Steve's mouthpiece.
