Network World: ‘Why Bob Mansfield Was Cut From Apple’s Executive Team’

Steven Max Patterson, writing in Network World, alleges that Mansfield was shown the door because Apple remains reliant on Samsung for semiconductors. He has no sources for this; the piece seems entirely based on his own speculation. That’d be OK if it were presented as such, with an angle like “Here’s what I think really happened…”. It’d be wrong, but it’s OK to be wrong in an opinion piece. But the headline reads as straight reporting, as does his conclusion:

It looks like Mansfield has been held accountable for the TSMC production glitches and the persistence of Apple’s dependency on arch competitor Samsung for its most strategic components — the SoC heart and brains of its mobile devices.

Based on everything I’ve heard, this is just completely and shamefully wrong.

Update: They’ve now prefixed the headline with “Opinion:”.

★ Tuesday, 30 July 2013