Jobs and Forstall (Image via Getty)
According to a leaked email from the Sony Pictures hack, Snapchat has given former Apple executive Scott Forstall a 0.11 percent stake of its company for being an advisor. According to the email, Forstall was given his stake in early 2014 with his advisory occurring in January of that year.
Snapchat would not comment on the role of Scott Forstall as an advisor. In a statement to TechCrunch, however, the company said, “We have a number of advisors, but we don’t comment on the specifics of their relationship with the company.”
Snapchat was given a valuation of $10.5 billion in a recent round of investing, which would make Forstall’s share worth $16.5 million and the options vesting after 24 months. The email shows that Snapchat gave small portions of its stock to a number of employees, but none were given as much as Forstall. Several engineers were given 0.022 percent of the company, while a former Google VP supposed to get 0.5 percent before leaving the company after just 6 months and therefore not vesting his options.
Forstall left Apple in late 2012 and was replaced by Craig Federighi. Forstall, who was Apple’s SVP of iOS Software, reportedly had a fiery relationship with many coworkers. A report from late 2013 claimed that Forstall was advising startups, traveling overseas, and investing in charitable causes post-Apple. That report lines up with today’s revelation of Forstall being an advisor to Snapchat.
Other interesting tidbits from recently leaked Snapchat emails include that the company turned down an offer “significantly bigger” than $3 billion from Facebook. Snapchat has also been exploring the possibility of launching a music feature, according to the emails.
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I miss Forstall.
I miss him too…
Forstall is the Father of iOS and was a terrible mistake to fire him.
Now I can understand why he had clashes with Ive. I would too. The iOS7 redesign was a step backward in so many ways.
Step forward in virtually every single way
I’ve been using both iOS UX concurrently for a while now. iOS6 and iOS8. I still find the iOS6 experience superior. It has a more mature, human and perception friendly interface.
The flatness, uniformity, and unergonomic aspects of the Ive UX design is hard on my eyes, from the overuse of white to the lack of cues such depth, textures and shadows.
And the most irritating aspect of it all is that it was designed for millions of customers for a person that has no experience nor professional training in UX and there is nothing users can do about it other than stick with iOS6.
I disagree the redesign was needed but what has happened is a focus on only Design and the code behind it has been “rushed crap”. Also the redesign was not completely thought out. A great example is Apple’s Alarm app. The buttons in the timer portion are unbelievable crap.The green Start text on the hard gray makes it hard to read. But Forstall was a bit of a twit as well. The look and feel we was adding to all the Apple apps was disgusting. I prefer the calendar now than that stupid leather look. That looked like something Samsung would come up with. Or even the tape deck for the Podcast app
The calendar app sucks. Its very difficult to visualize the boundary between months because instead of discretely stepping from one month to the next, like a real calendar hanging on the wall, I have to smoothly scroll from one to the other. And then the names of the months scroll with the grid lines marking days. I also hate that I can’t see individual colored blocks representing multiple events in a single day. Instead, I just see a single dot to that tells me I have something scheduled. I then have to go into the day view to see my individual events. Even then, I can’t see the whole day, I have to scroll from morning till night.
Well, I don’t know all the truth about Forstall fire but I really disagree the excess of flat design. As with every design, it has its pros and cons. Flat design could be felt as a more clean, fresh look, which makes easier to read text but at the same time it makes more difficult to interact with active elements, since usually only color distinguises them. Consequently we have lots of unusable buttons (example: the shift key in the keyboard – I’m never sure if the caps are on or off).
Another reason that I don’t like flat design is that it makes the interfaces dull and boring which impregnates apps themselves (except for games). The focus to the screen size should not have come with such simplification of the interface.
I hope that flat design evolve to provide a richer interaction.
But perhaps more important than look & feel is the lack of robustness behind iOS 7 & 8. I find iOS 6 to be extremely reliable. It worked (and still does) really well. Compare that quality from iOS 8 versions, where we have a needed beta each 2-3 weeks. I’m not the only one who has suffered this decline in quality, just take a look at the developer community.
Also, I can’t believe that iOS9 will be famous thanks to its reliability. Apple has enough cash and bright talent to enforce quality while striving for innovation without forgetting “art” and “humanity” in their products. I’m looking forward to new innovations in iOS9 and expect any future developments from Apple to have a better quality.
That would explain why they refuse to make a Windows Phone application for Snapchat.
I miss Forstall too. Under Forstall, iOS was run like a tight ship. Mistakes were rare.
Every time I see Federighi walk out on stage like Daniel from the Karate Kid, I go, “What did he fuck up now?”
I mean they cant even get the camera roll issue right. First they ditch it, then they bring it back, then they throw it out of order.
Ture leaders are “fiery” because they demand perfection and have no room for mediocrity.
“Mistakes were rare.”
Mistakes are often rare when there is no change. There’s no question that iOS remained stagnant for too long.
Ive is the only reason I buy Apple and havent converted to Samsung.
But, one has to admit that there have been far too many iOS releases lately that have caused major inconveniences for customers. We should not have to spend hours troubleshooting for an update. An update should be a positive, welcomed enhancement, not a sign to find new ways to do old things.
And with each new update we should know that our content is safe and is not going to disappear, get messed up, or get reduced, like photos in 8.3.
IMHO The buck here stops with Craig, and he needs to do more to ensure a better experience for customers. Just my .02
True. Maps is flawless.
Yeah like Maps. It was so good that Forstall refused to apologize for it.
LOL why do you need an apology, will it make you feel better? he was working on fixing it, and knew it wasn’t ready for launch.
iOS was so smooth under forstall, just play with an iphone on iOS 6
iOS 6 had its problems just like every OS. You just don’t remember. iOS 6 looked like garbage. One of the worst parts were the colored status bars..vomit. They completely slaughtered contrast and you could hardly read the time in a lot of the OS.
Uh Oh! Looks like snapchat will be getting felt backdrops and wood for everything! But i will say there were less bugs and optimisation issues when he was in charge, but i love the new design from Craig and Jon
I’m being 100% honest here, Snapchat is one of the worst apps I’ve ever experienced. It is a convoluted awful mess. Not only that but they drastically change basic functions all the time, and not once has it been good or simple. It’s just going from bad to bad.
I don’t miss Forstall. He oversaw iOS during the stagnation period where Android went from 0% market share to 70+%. Skeuomorphism maybe made sense in 2007 but by 2010 it was no longer was necessary and felt dated. He didn’t play well with others (when other department heads wouldn’t meet with him without CEO being present, you know Forstall was a problem). And his grand finale of not apologizing for the disaster that was Apple Maps? Good riddance.
As to the fact that iOS has more issues now, that is largely driven by how much more the OS is trying to do, and the number of devices it is interacting with. Personally, I love how I can get text messages on my computer at work or home on my Mac. That required the OSX team work with iOS. That wouldn’t have happened under Forstall. Apple is a much bigger company than it was and needs people who can work together and not throw temper tantrums like my 5 year old.
The father of iOS.
Unlike Jony Ive, Scott knows how to make an UX, he has a PH Degree on it and it showed.
Is not a coincidence that 98% of the game Apps are….oh the horror. Skeuomorphic!
Nope Jony knows how to design virtually anything from an aesthetic sense. He has insanely great taste. iOS before Jony looked horrible. Thank god for Jony. What in the hell are you talking about with game apps?
Designing an UX is not a trivial task and is a complete different animal.
People go to School for that.
Jony is just an Industrial Designer.
Not surprised that you dont understand the Game Apps example.
His taste is a trillion times better than yours. iOS 7 looks sooooo much better than iOS 6 and below. Every time I see a device running iOS 6 I gasp at how old and bad it looks. Game apps, you clearly have no idea what you’re talking about, you can’t even describe what you’re talking about so you just don’t.
After reading this story last night, I had a dream where I ran into Scott on the street where he revealed to me that he was actually running Tesla O_O