Know is way too strong of a word here. You know a firing is good when it's a salesperson who's been with your company for 6 months and hasn't gotten a sale yet.

Know is way too strong of a word here. You know a firing is good when it's a salesperson who's been with your company for 6 months and hasn't gotten a sale yet. Scott Forstall was with Apple for what, close to 15 years?, and worked his way up to a SVP position managing the company's most important product -- there's absolutely nothing about this firing that an outsider who only "follows" Apple can confidently say that it was good. If it took Tim Cook this long to decide that the costs of keeping him outweighed the benefits, it definitely wasn't an easy decision and the repercussions are big unknowns.