{"id":83,"date":"2012-10-30T23:33:00","date_gmt":"2012-10-30T23:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/?p=83"},"modified":"2020-08-07T03:22:42","modified_gmt":"2020-08-07T03:22:42","slug":"regimechange","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/2012\/10\/30\/regimechange\/","title":{"rendered":"Regime Change"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Apple cannot afford to get too big\u00a0or too\u00a0disorganized. That\u2019s my takeaway from\u00a0yesterday\u2019s shocker<\/a>\u00a0that not only is Scott Forstall out at Apple, but also that his fiefdom is being split between\u00a0Craig Federighi,\u00a0Eddy Cue, and Jony Ive. We learned a lot about Tim Cook yesterday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First: retail chief John Browett was surely done before we on the outside\u00a0even heard<\/a>\u00a0about his scorched-earth penny pinching. My first thought when those stories started to hit was,\u00a0If this is true<\/em>\u00a0and<\/em>\u00a0Tim<\/em>\u00a0does not fire him, there\u2019s a problem in Cupertino<\/em>. What\u2019s telling is how long it took. I suspect Forstall had worn out his welcome long enough ago that Cook held onto Browett for a single press release. Canning Browett so soon after hiring him, then losing Forstall just a few months later, would have shaken a lot of confidence. Losing Forstall sooner would have disrupted teams and product launches. There\u2019s only one headline now, and it\u2019s framed in a proactive manner. From a cold business and PR perspective, I\u2019m very impressed. Tim clearly knows every side of how Apple does things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Forstall\u2019s star shot upwards from a low level to standing alongside Bertrand Serlet \u2014 the man he worked under for years. When Bertrand left Apple, I was sure that Forstall would press to expand his influence, even if he wasn\u2019t given Bertrand\u2019s turf. When Steve departed, I felt the same way. I\u2019m not surprised his style continued to ruffle feathers, but I\u2019m shocked that it cost him his job. I underestimated Cook. Scott\u2019s absence from the iPad mini event last week should have been more alarming to everybody.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If this was only about Forstall being a problem, though, Apple would replace him. They clearly aren\u2019t: the same press release explicitly states a search is underway to replace Browett. Not only is this a profound increase in responsibility for all three of these top executives, it\u2019s a profound change in Apple\u2019s organization going as far back as I can remember. There\u2019s a long-standing pattern of separating<\/em> watershed products important to the company\u2019s future. The Mac and Apple teams. Mac OS X and Classic. The iPod division. iOS and Mac OS X. Suddenly, Tim Cook has pulled the reins in. Federighi owns software. Ive owns design. Cue owns services. Period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apple\u2019s insane growth has pushed the situation over the edge. Too much size and separation inevitably bring politics, chaos, dropped balls, and finger pointing. None of those things are good for Apple\u2019s products or customers. What we don\u2019t know is whether burdening Cue, Federighi, and Ive even further will actually improve things. These guys already had enough to worry about. The worst case scenario is one where good leadership is spread too thin, and everything suffers. These are real growing pains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Four hundred million devices and five hundred billion dollars later, Apple is different. It\u2019s just finally starting to look that way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Apple cannot afford to get too big\u00a0or too\u00a0disorganized. That\u2019s my takeaway from\u00a0yesterday\u2019s shocker\u00a0that not only is Scott Forstall out at Apple, but also that his fiefdom is being split between\u00a0Craig Federighi,\u00a0Eddy Cue, and Jony Ive. We learned a lot about Tim Cook yesterday. First: retail chief John Browett was surely done before we on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}