5 ms·

My take from the outside. Senior management decided to ship an incomplete project, and this manager is taking the fall. They could have evaluated the offering

by mey 14y ago

My take from the outside. Senior management decided to ship an incomplete project, and this manager is taking the fall. They could have evaluated the offering, made the hard decisions that they shouldn't remove Google Maps yet, and delayed the release. Thing is, there wasn't much interesting meat on the iPhone 5 release, so I'm sure they were scrambling for any sort of "feature" to pad out the release.

arrrg 14y ago
Scott Forstall (the guy in senior management directly responsible for maps) was also fired, so this doesn’t seem like a pawn sacrifice at all – unless when you say senior management you actually mean Tim Cook and only Tim Cook.
- mtgx 14y ago
  Ultimately it was Tim Cook's decision whether to ship it now or wait another year, just like it would've been Steve Jobs the last one to decide whether a new product is ready for prime-time or not. If Tim Cook thought the Maps isn't ready, and he really wanted to ship it this year, then he could've decided not to do it anyway, but in the same time fire the people responsible for not delivering it on time. At least that would've saved them the public embarrassment.
  - jdlshore 14y ago
    Tim Cook is the CEO. It's ultimately his responsibility--and his apology shows him taking that responsibility--but he's got to be able to delegate decisions like this. It's not like he's going to personally test every feature. He's got other things to do. (He probably reviewed Maps, but by all accounts the issues with it aren't immediately obvious in the valley.) His real responsibility is to hire people who can make solid decisions on his behalf, and to fire or move them if they can't do so. When you reach a certain level, you have to stop passing the buck. Hell, if you want to reach that level, you have to stop passing the buck. Maps was Forstall's responsibility--to ship well or sound the alarm. Unless you have evidence that he was overruled, he's the right person to take the fall. (This is setting aside all the personality politics, which likely played a bigger role in Forstall's exit. But that aside, Maps was still Forstall's job.)
    - schiffern 14y ago
      >Tim Cook is the CEO. It's ultimately his responsibility--and his apology shows him taking that responsibility My understanding is that Scott Forstall was forced to resign because he wouldn't put his name on the bottom of that letter. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57542297-37/apples-scott-forstall-ousted-over-maps-apology-wsj/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57542297-37/apples-scott-f...
      - taligent 14y ago
        No Forstall was forced to resign because of a lot of mistakes under his watch and a lot of bad blood between him and key people like Ive and Mansfield. With Samsung emphasising the design aspect in the Samsung S3/Note it is critical that Apple have a cohesive end to end experience. And that requires communication. I think the letter was just the tip of a planet sized iceberg.
  - mullingitover 14y ago
    They may have committed to launching Maps with iOS 6 early on, and been so pissed off at Google that they burned their bridge (that is, their iOS 6 branch which retained Google's maps). So in that case, the choice in front of Cook would've been a) launch iPhone 5 with shoddy maps and iOS 6 or b) launch iPhone 5 with iOS 5, or possibly c) don't launch iPhone 5 and watch the stock price crater.
  - guiambros 14y ago
    Oh, the Steve Jobs argument again. The omnipresent Steve Jobs, with his golden fingers and eagle eyes. The same Steve Jobs that launched Mobile Me. The same Jobs that launched Ping as the next big social idea. The same Steve Jobs that allowed iPhone 3G to be upgraded to iOS 4 and become an expensive electronic brick. Every CEO knows the worst thing you could do is to micromanage your team. And while every now and then you do have to step in, look over the shoulder and do course correction, even Steve Jobs knew he should spend time on the big things than to second guess every little decision of his team. And Tim Cook has a dream team, probably the best in the industry. Yes, they will screw up eventually - as they did with maps, as they did before during Jobs era, and will certainly do it again in the future. When that happens, you take full responsibility (like Tim Cook did), make the changes internally (which may or may not mean changing people), and make them clean up the mess. Certainly the Maps brouhaha somewhat impacted Scott Forstall, but I doubt anybody in their conscious mind would fire the most experienced sw guy in the company (and arguably in the industry) just because ONE mistake on a by-product feature. People simply don't buy an iPhone because of the Maps. And there's 200 other apps, some much better than the Google/Apple Maps anyway. It's a well known fact that Forstall was a divisive guy. Love him or hate him. And over time people get tired of managing conflicts. It was time for a change. And as of this guy in charge of maps.. well, he f'ed-up. As Steve Jobs once said, "When you're the janitor, reasons matter". Sadly for this guy, he wasn't the janitor anymore.
mdasen 14y ago
Maybe it's just me, but I'm not sure how much better Apple could have made Maps before launching it. The thing that gets me is that I can only view driving directions fully zoomed out or fully in (rather than being able to zoom in and out). However, in terms of map accuracy, their data is coming from TomTom/Tele Atlas. Google's data is better. Not only that, but Google has been working hard on local search. Apple simply doesn't have that data. I've really yet to hear how Apple could have launched a better product. Google has been getting data for many years now and when Google Maps launched, it didn't have nearly as complete data. As users used it, data improved. Apple has less chance for improvement because Apple doesn't do local search and non-phone maps in the way that Google does. It's why I think Apple should make a web interface to provide an easy way for people to add businesses and make corrections via their browser. I mean, I vaguely remember when Google Maps switched from Navteq to Tele Atlas for a while and users disliked the Tele Atlas data. However, if you don't own your own mapping data, you need to buy it from someone selling. Given Nokia's ownership of Navteq, it seems unlikely that Apple would have gotten that data. Other than improving the data over time, what else was egregiously wrong? On the data side, I think it takes time with the app being used by the public to correct that. If they were to make the hard decision not to ship Apple Maps, would the data be in pretty much the same situation a year later?
- baddox 14y ago
  Firstly, Apple certainly could have provided public transit directions. Plenty of third party apps already did this (or at least claimed to), so there's no real excuse there. Another issue is the goofy cosmetic problems with the 3D maps. Of course, you could argue that it's still "a data problem," but it's not the type of data problem that magically gets better as more users use the app. Lastly, there are usability issues that have nothing to do with data. As another user noted, I can only view navigation either fully zoomed in (with slightly variable tilt that doesn't even work well) or fully zoomed out. The overview shows a list of all the turns, but doesn't let me click on each one to zoom in on it (like every other directions app I've seen). It doesn't show speed or any other useful statistics except for estimated duration and distance. The old GPS app I used on my iPhone 4, which I believe was Navigon, was a far superior product even ignoring the lackluster data of Apple Maps.
rjzzleep 14y ago
it's funny you say that, I see it exactly the same way. In my opinion they should have "mistakenly" collected a little bit more data.

by mey 14y ago

arrrg 14y ago

Scott Forstall (the guy in senior management directly responsible for maps) was also fired, so this doesn’t seem like a pawn sacrifice at all – unless when you say senior management you actually mean Tim Cook and only Tim Cook.

mtgx 14y ago
Ultimately it was Tim Cook's decision whether to ship it now or wait another year, just like it would've been Steve Jobs the last one to decide whether a new product is ready for prime-time or not. If Tim Cook thought the Maps isn't ready, and he really wanted to ship it this year, then he could've decided not to do it anyway, but in the same time fire the people responsible for not delivering it on time. At least that would've saved them the public embarrassment.
- jdlshore 14y ago
  Tim Cook is the CEO. It's ultimately his responsibility--and his apology shows him taking that responsibility--but he's got to be able to delegate decisions like this. It's not like he's going to personally test every feature. He's got other things to do. (He probably reviewed Maps, but by all accounts the issues with it aren't immediately obvious in the valley.) His real responsibility is to hire people who can make solid decisions on his behalf, and to fire or move them if they can't do so. When you reach a certain level, you have to stop passing the buck. Hell, if you want to reach that level, you have to stop passing the buck. Maps was Forstall's responsibility--to ship well or sound the alarm. Unless you have evidence that he was overruled, he's the right person to take the fall. (This is setting aside all the personality politics, which likely played a bigger role in Forstall's exit. But that aside, Maps was still Forstall's job.)
  - schiffern 14y ago
    >Tim Cook is the CEO. It's ultimately his responsibility--and his apology shows him taking that responsibility My understanding is that Scott Forstall was forced to resign because he wouldn't put his name on the bottom of that letter. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57542297-37/apples-scott-forstall-ousted-over-maps-apology-wsj/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57542297-37/apples-scott-f...
    - taligent 14y ago
      No Forstall was forced to resign because of a lot of mistakes under his watch and a lot of bad blood between him and key people like Ive and Mansfield. With Samsung emphasising the design aspect in the Samsung S3/Note it is critical that Apple have a cohesive end to end experience. And that requires communication. I think the letter was just the tip of a planet sized iceberg.
- mullingitover 14y ago
  They may have committed to launching Maps with iOS 6 early on, and been so pissed off at Google that they burned their bridge (that is, their iOS 6 branch which retained Google's maps). So in that case, the choice in front of Cook would've been a) launch iPhone 5 with shoddy maps and iOS 6 or b) launch iPhone 5 with iOS 5, or possibly c) don't launch iPhone 5 and watch the stock price crater.
- guiambros 14y ago
  Oh, the Steve Jobs argument again. The omnipresent Steve Jobs, with his golden fingers and eagle eyes. The same Steve Jobs that launched Mobile Me. The same Jobs that launched Ping as the next big social idea. The same Steve Jobs that allowed iPhone 3G to be upgraded to iOS 4 and become an expensive electronic brick. Every CEO knows the worst thing you could do is to micromanage your team. And while every now and then you do have to step in, look over the shoulder and do course correction, even Steve Jobs knew he should spend time on the big things than to second guess every little decision of his team. And Tim Cook has a dream team, probably the best in the industry. Yes, they will screw up eventually - as they did with maps, as they did before during Jobs era, and will certainly do it again in the future. When that happens, you take full responsibility (like Tim Cook did), make the changes internally (which may or may not mean changing people), and make them clean up the mess. Certainly the Maps brouhaha somewhat impacted Scott Forstall, but I doubt anybody in their conscious mind would fire the most experienced sw guy in the company (and arguably in the industry) just because ONE mistake on a by-product feature. People simply don't buy an iPhone because of the Maps. And there's 200 other apps, some much better than the Google/Apple Maps anyway. It's a well known fact that Forstall was a divisive guy. Love him or hate him. And over time people get tired of managing conflicts. It was time for a change. And as of this guy in charge of maps.. well, he f'ed-up. As Steve Jobs once said, "When you're the janitor, reasons matter". Sadly for this guy, he wasn't the janitor anymore.

mdasen 14y ago

Maybe it's just me, but I'm not sure how much better Apple could have made Maps before launching it. The thing that gets me is that I can only view driving directions fully zoomed out or fully in (rather than being able to zoom in and out). However, in terms of map accuracy, their data is coming from TomTom/Tele Atlas. Google's data is better. Not only that, but Google has been working hard on local search. Apple simply doesn't have that data. I've really yet to hear how Apple could have launched a better product. Google has been getting data for many years now and when Google Maps launched, it didn't have nearly as complete data. As users used it, data improved. Apple has less chance for improvement because Apple doesn't do local search and non-phone maps in the way that Google does. It's why I think Apple should make a web interface to provide an easy way for people to add businesses and make corrections via their browser. I mean, I vaguely remember when Google Maps switched from Navteq to Tele Atlas for a while and users disliked the Tele Atlas data. However, if you don't own your own mapping data, you need to buy it from someone selling. Given Nokia's ownership of Navteq, it seems unlikely that Apple would have gotten that data. Other than improving the data over time, what else was egregiously wrong? On the data side, I think it takes time with the app being used by the public to correct that. If they were to make the hard decision not to ship Apple Maps, would the data be in pretty much the same situation a year later?

baddox 14y ago
Firstly, Apple certainly could have provided public transit directions. Plenty of third party apps already did this (or at least claimed to), so there's no real excuse there. Another issue is the goofy cosmetic problems with the 3D maps. Of course, you could argue that it's still "a data problem," but it's not the type of data problem that magically gets better as more users use the app. Lastly, there are usability issues that have nothing to do with data. As another user noted, I can only view navigation either fully zoomed in (with slightly variable tilt that doesn't even work well) or fully zoomed out. The overview shows a list of all the turns, but doesn't let me click on each one to zoom in on it (like every other directions app I've seen). It doesn't show speed or any other useful statistics except for estimated duration and distance. The old GPS app I used on my iPhone 4, which I believe was Navigon, was a far superior product even ignoring the lackluster data of Apple Maps.

rjzzleep 14y ago

it's funny you say that, I see it exactly the same way. In my opinion they should have "mistakenly" collected a little bit more data.