re credentials and plans
While I don't have any idea what the internal corporate ladder political dynamics are, this does beg the question of whether Jobs values loyalty more than competence
This is exactly what I meant when I said I didn't know his credentials. I was trying to politely avoid accusing him in public of being a bozo yes-man brown-noser when all I had to go on was a record of public failure. I can imagine in theory other explanations, and I don't know Forstall, so I wanted to steer clear of the ad hominem explanation without that kind of evidence.
It's possible he's good at the things he's entrusted with, but that this list is short -- or that he's really incompetent but talks the right game. But since I really don't know I didn't want ... you know ... to just drop this kind of accusation, though this turn of conversation has led me to voice the very speculation I was keeping to myself.
But hey, maybe it stings less if you cast it as Jobs valuing loyalty above competence than if you cast it as Forstall getting ahead by sucking up!
if Apple was living in a fantasyland of delusion that it could control all access to the next major computing platform prior to introduction, it's undeniable that they knew in the immediate aftermath that that wasn't going to happen
I think they may not have really "gotten it" until the one-click unlocking apps and the swarm of software for unlockers had appeared. Then, the issue became: how do we manage this unstoppable trespass in our lovely garden? I think Apple has known less than a year that it's plan to be the sole vendor on the platform was a bust (not because you and I didn't see the writing on the wall, but because Apple wasn't looking for it and didn't want to see). And, Apple isn't committed to expanding this new vision into a piece of corporate art, as it was never Apple's vision. They may not see the App Store as anything but damage control.
I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think the folks at Apple really have a lot of commitment to the outside developer idea. Jobs said the SDK on iPhone was the APIs exposed to web developers in Safari, and I think that's what he meant. He was hissed, and Apple just edited this out of the webcast of the WWDC.
I'm optimistic that most of this gets sorted out and taken care of eventually. But when you see strategic or managerial blunders being repeated, what fan of Apple and the iPhone platform wouldn't be at least a little concerned?
Well, maybe yes and no. I don't think the leopard will necessarily change its spots. I think Apple might get dragged unwilling into developer support on iPhone and leave it unfinished like it was dragged unwilling into providing integration with Microsoft's Kerberized directory services several versions ago (by an Apple employee in sales who knew what the customers wanted, not by an engineer following engineering orders) and hasn't yet delivered something that's a complete drop-in replacement. I suspect Apple's capacity to do half-assed things in which it doesn't really believe exceeds the expectation of ordinary people. (Enterprise? This company has machines in the fricking Supercomputer 500, which Microsoft does not, and can't make a case to back-offices for data mining and mass storage?)
But I fully appreciate that fans should be concerned: I am concerned myself.
Let's hope there's a paradigm change.
On that I think there's little question.
Take care,
--Tex.
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