Writing was on the wall with this one. Forstall was MIA at the last Apple Press Event, Schiller is the new presentation guy. I’ve read stories that Forstall didn’t get along with others and blah, blah, blah, frankly I don’t really care about any of that. For one reason or another Forstall is leaving and Apple will be fine.
The shifts in who does what is far more interesting, and telling:
– Jony Ive is now not only in charge of the hardware designs, but it sounds like he is taking on all design at Apple. God willing we will no longer have to put up with leather, felt, and linen textures everywhere. (Side note: I always wondered what Ive thought of the designs of things like iCal, or Game Cetner.)
– Eddy Cue gets Siri and Maps. Who has Game Center? That thing is a dog. I don’t know much about Cue, but iCloud is solid — more so than MobileMe — so here’s hoping Maps and Siri start iterating faster.
– Craig Federighi now runs OS X and iOS. Makes sense right? Yep.
– Bob Mansfield is all about wireless and semiconductors. Probably the two most important hardware areas for Apple right now.
– John Browett is out and Cook himself is taking over Retail for the time being. There’s been a lot written about this, but Browett needed to go and I for one am glad Cook is grabbing those reigns for the time being.
Smart shifts that subtly reorganize the company allowing the people that are best at running particular division to have control over all aspects of those devisions. Ive is design, Cue is cloud, Federighi is OS, Mansfield is hardware internals. Hard to argue with that logic.