Om Malik on the Mood at Apple

Om Malik, after talking to sources within Apple:

Forstall’s firing was met with a sense of quiet jubilation, especially among people who worked in the engineering groups. Or as one of my sources quipped: there are a lot of people going for celebratory drinks, even if there is a little bit of doubt about their roles in the future.

I’ve heard some of this too. But there were many people on Forstall’s team who liked him and were loyal to him. It was people on other teams that disliked Forstall. Forstall was divisive, polarizing — not universally disliked. That’s what made this move surprising, and what made it difficult.

★ Tuesday, 30 October 2012