In an interview with BBC, Tony Fadell claims that former Apple senior vice president of iOS Scott Forstall “got what he deserved,” when he was forced to leave Apple.
Fadell is widely known as the godfather of the iPod, and he formerly served as the senior vice president of the iPod division and as a special advisor to Steve Jobs.
After Fadell left Apple in 2008, there were rumors that Forstall and Fadell butted heads on more than one occasion. A 2011 profile of Forstall suggested that he was difficult to work with and had fought with Fadell over the operating system for the iPhone, which eventually led to Fadell’s departure from the company.
The interviewer asked about Forstall’s personality and personal problems that Fadell had with Forstall, but Fadell declined to comment further and simply reiterated his previous statement.
“I think what happened just a few weeks back was deserved and justified.”
When asked about Apple, Fadell said that he thought the company was in a “great place” but mentioned that there had been cheering in Cupertino when Forstall was ousted.
Currently, Tony Fadell is the CEO of Nest, the company that has created the popular Nest Learning Thermostat. Scott Forstall is serving as an advisor to Tim Cook and will be leaving Apple in 2013.
While the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are not expected to launch until September, there are already plenty of rumors about the devices.
Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models as of March 2025:
Aluminum frame: iPhone 17 Pro models are rumored to have an aluminum frame, whereas the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro models have a titanium frame, and the iPhone ...
Wednesday March 26, 2025 4:53 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Apple regularly refreshes the MacBook Pro models, and a new version that uses M5 series chips is in the works. Apple just finished refreshing most of the Mac lineup with M4 chips, and now it's time for the M5. Rumors suggest that we could see the first M5 MacBook Pro models this fall.
Design
There have been no rumors of a design update for the M5 MacBook Pro models that are coming this...
Wednesday March 26, 2025 12:19 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Apple is going all out with promotions for the popular Severance Apple TV+ show today, and as of right now, you'll find a new "Lumon Terminal Pro" listed on Apple's Mac site.
The Lumon Terminal Pro is designed to look similar to the machines that Severance employees like Mark S. and Helly R. use for macrodata refinement. The Terminal features a blue keyboard, a small display with wide...
Thursday March 27, 2025 1:59 pm PDT by Joe Rossignol
In the mid-to-late 2000s, Facebook was all about staying connected with friends and family. However, as the social media platform added new features and grew over time, that core experience began to get drowned out.
That changes starting now, according to Meta, which today introduced a new feature that will "bring back the joy" of classic Facebook.
Specifically, Meta has redesigned the...
Apple is expected to release iOS 18.4 to the general public as soon as next week, following more than a month of beta testing.
Apple's website says some iOS 18.4 features will be released in "early April," so the update should be out as early as Tuesday, April 1.
Apple this week seeded the iOS 18.4 Release Candidate, which is typically the final beta version, barring the discovery of any...
Wednesday March 26, 2025 4:06 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Update 7:25 pm: Based on comments from our forums, it appears the original Weibo post may have been mistranslated and "8K" actually refers to the high price of the device rather than 8K video recording capabilities. The iPhone 16 Pro currently starts at 7,999 yuan in China.
Our original article follows below.
Apple's forthcoming iPhone 17 Pro models are capable of shooting 8K video, up...
Thursday March 27, 2025 4:21 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Last week, we covered a report claiming that Apple's book-style foldable iPhone (or "iPhone Fold," as we are provisionally calling it here) will use liquid metal hinges to improve durability and help minimize screen creasing. Today, a Chinese leaker provided more details on the properties of this hinge material that help to clarify why Apple chose it for its first foldable device.
According...
Thursday March 27, 2025 7:45 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
The upcoming iOS 18.4 update for the iPhone adds an Ambient Music feature to Control Center. Below, we take a closer look at how it works.
iOS 18.4 is currently in beta, so the Ambient Music feature is not widely available yet. The update will likely be released to the general public next week.
To use the feature on iOS 18.4, open Control Center and tap on the plus sign in the top-left...
The iOS 19 mockup images that leaker Jon Prosser shared today are not representative of the actual iOS 19 design, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said on social media.
According to Gurman, the images that are "floating around" are based on "very old builds" or "vague descriptions," and are lacking key features. Gurman says that we can "expect more from Apple in June."
Gurman made the same comment ...
It's so easy to turn Forstall into a scapegoat. To all the ignorants that hurray the expel of him and give credit to Fadell, if Fadell was to take the responsibility of the iPhone software, today you would essentially be using a big iPod to do your calls. The operating system would lack expandability, with no APIs borrowed from MacOs, and with limited functionality.
Forstall was the one that managed to port the MacOs into the iPhone turning it into a flexible mobile operating system. A HUGE task...
I can understand that Forstall lately did a lot of mistakes and I am not trying to defend or oppose his leave... Things change, people change... But I get really annoyed when I see some people being so shallow to judge so easily his work and what he has provided to Apple.
Tony Faddell is clearly biased. His idea, of basing the iPhone OS on the iPod OS was shot down in favor of Forstall's idea of basing it on Mac OS X. And I think this was the right decision.
That being said, I believe iOS6 clearly indicated that Forstall had to go. He is obviously a brilliant man, but I think he had run out of ideas. While iOS6 was a great update, it wasn't the revolution I believe Apple needs in the next couple of years. And there was no indication that Forstall would be able to deliver.
In most cases, running out of ideas personally is not a huge issue in a large talented company like Apple's, because there are so many other smart people whose ideas you can leverage. But this is where Forstall's inability to get along with anyone else would potentially be a dealbreaker, because (a) he was unlikely to accept others' ideas, and (b) others were unlikely to share their ideas with him.
Now, the obvious counterpoint is Steve Jobs, who also famously did not get along very well with most people. Ignoring the obvious counterpoint is that Steve Jobs was Steve Jobs, and there is unlikely to be another Steve, the reality is that no one ever displayed the kind of animosity towards Jobs that Faddell in this case is displaying towards Forstall (note, that it was almost certain that it was Jobs who made the decision to go with Forstall's OS as opposed to Faddell's, but yet Faddell only has praises for Jobs). I think the reason behind that is people believe that Forstall is hard to get along with because he is interested in his own personal gain. Even the people who disliked Steve Jobs, and thought that he was arrogant, etc. always believed that his actions were indeed motivated by bringing out the best product. They may not have liked his ideas about what the best product was, and may have hated his management style, but they never questioned his motivations. That does not seem to be true of Forstall, where, as indicated in the Businessweek profile, Forstall's colleagues believe his motivations are purely selfish.
I think iOS7 (or maybe iOS8, if the plans for iOS7 are already baked in) will be a huge indication of the direction Apple will be taking post-Forstall.
----------
all the ignorants that hurray the expel of him
From most media reports, it seems that those "ignorants" are largely people within Apple, or as in the case of Faddell, are people with Apple who left there but without animosity towards the company.
I agree that Forstall deserves a lot of credit for iOS (and I agree that his basing it on OS X was a huge undertaking, which was far more effective than if it was based on the iPod's Pixo OS). That does not mean he was the right person necessarily to continue the job of improving iOS. It is obvious from media reports, and Apple's actions, that a significant part of Apple's management agrees with this. And with the direction iOS6 took, from a very far off (and obviously heavily underinformed) position, I also agree.
I wish someone would just tell us what the jackass (Forstall) did to deserve what he got. Can't macrumors email some former underlings and get a scoop?