There have been several reports that have noted ex-iOS chief Scott Forstall’s fiery relationship with several Apple executives like Jonathan Ive. Despite this, according to a former Apple senior engineer, Michael Lopp, firing Forstall was a mistake. Lopp posted his thoughts on his blog, and the theme of the post was that Apple will eventually be replaced by another company’s innovations (as most usually are). He wondered if the firing of Forstall is where the downslide will begin.
Lopp said Forstall “was the best approximation of Steve Jobs that Apple had left.” He added that several people chatting in Apple’s Caffe Macs cafeteria viewed Forstall as the only real successor to Jobs. Even though it appeared Forstall did not work well with several of his co-workers, being called an “asshole,” he was successful in what he did. Lopp said this is why he could have been the next Jobs.
With the executive shakeup, Apple said this would lead to more collaboration within the walls of Apple. Lopp said this is not necessarily a good thing:
We knew Apple had a beautiful new glass store planned for Palo Alto when plans were discovered last year, but Apple made things official today by announcing a Oct. 27 grand opening for the new location at 340 University Ave. Apple sent out the email above (via FoneArena) to inform customers the store will open at 10 a.m. local time, and the first 1,000 people will get commemorative T-shirts. The 15,030-square-foot store is located just a couple blocks from the old location, which was Steve Jobs’ neighborhood Apple Store, and was expected to cost $3.15 million. We’ll bring you more this weekend with images of the new store during its grand opening.
One of the last questions in the debate concerned how to bring Apple’s manufacturing jobs ‘back’ to the United States.
Mitt Romney went first and said China is stealing intellectual property, designs, cheating on currency, hacking into computers, and isn’t playing fair to U.S. workers: “We can compete with anyone in the world as long as the playing field is level.”
Obama went second and said the U.S. doesn’t necessarily want the low-skill, low-wage jobs and education and skills will bring higher-paying jobs home: “There are some jobs that are not going to come back. [...] I want high-wage, high-skill jobs. That’s why we have to invest in advanced manufacturing [...] make sure that we have the best science and research in the world.”
And the President should know: Steve Jobs told Obama in February 2011, according to Walter Isaacson, “If you could educate these [30,000] engineers, we could move more manufacturing plants here.”
MacRumors points to a WeiPhone.com forum thread [Google translation] this morning that purports to show details of a new iMac. The poster’s brother-in-law apparently works in the factory that builds the new Macs, and he snapped the above picture on his cell phone. The design was verified by iFixit to be similar to the internals of a current iMac with the plastic radio-transparent circle on the rear.
On the iMac, the poster says:
It should be announced this month or next month (likely at the Oct. 23th announement)
The design is of”epoch-making significance”
From side to side you “almost cannot see the new iMac’s thickness” and it is compared to a drop of water and “tetragonal” elements. Still has iMac ‘chin’ below display
It appears that the display is a “very pretty special glass glued directly” (perhaps like Retina MBP) to the machine rather than a separate display assembly
The 21-inch might be ready before the 27-inch
The more expensive iMac and redesigned screen might hint at Retina. However, strangely, the poster does not mention anything related to this.
The 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro:
Codenamed D1 (Which fits with Product D2 for the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro)
Is seeing delays due to thermal issues
Interestingly, the poster mentions the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro, aside from being produced in Mexico, will see a silent update for screen blur and cooling improvements.
In another post, the poster talks about trouble with the glue and Foxconn.
My uncle told me the newly launched products will have a lot of problem. This is because Tim Cook changed the way Steve Jobs used to do things which is having multiple suppliers. The problem with one sole supplier. Obvious example Foxconn!
Now a lot of more capable supplier is under Foxconn, other smaller supplier just can\’t cope with the demand. The new iMac is using a special \”glue\” to glue the display to the frame and is facing very strict quality control.
Products from Foxconn is having a lot of issues. In this case, after the glue dried, there will be minor air gaps. Apple had no choice but to use Foxconn because most of the capable manufacturer is now all under Foxconn. Therefore defects of the iPhone 5 is not that hard to understand(because Foxconn makes them all).
The full translated post is below (thanks, Tham!): Read more
Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt sat down for an AllThingsD talk last night with Walt Mossberg. Among other topics, they not-surprisingly discussed Android and his thoughts on Apple. Much of the talk centered around Schmidt’s thoughts on the Android-Apple platform fight, which he called “the defining fight in the industry today.” He also noted there is a “huge race specifically between Apple and the Android platform for additional features,” and he commented on Apple’s Maps situation:
The Android-Apple platform fight is the defining contest. Here’s why: Apple has thousands of developers building for it. Google’s platform, Android, is even larger. Four times more Android phones than Apple phones. 500 million phones already in use. Doing 1.3 million activations a day. We’ll be at 1 billion mobile devices in a year.
At the 17:30 mark, Schmidt began to talk about Apple’s new Maps app controversy: “Apple should have kept with our maps”… Read more
