Scott Forstall ‘News’

Juli Clover, writing for MacRumors yesterday: “Former iOS Chief Scott Forstall Surfaces After Quiet Year of Traveling and Philanthropy”. Where by “surfaces”, they mean “is mentioned”. The source for this breaking news is this report by Amir Efrati for The Information. The relevant bit from that report:

What he’s doing now: Laying low after some travel to places including Italy and South Africa, with occasional appearances at Silicon Valley networking events. He advises some companies and has become more active in philanthropy in areas such as education, poverty and human rights.

What’s next: Venture capital firms including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Andreessen Horowitz have maintained ties with him, but Apple insiders bet he’ll want to build something.

No news at all, other than that Forstall traveled to Italy and South Africa at some point in the last 13 months.

At Business Insider, Jay Yarow writes:

One of the biggest mysteries in technology is what has happened to Scott Forstall.

What I’ve heard is that when Tim Cook fired him, Forstall was offered (and accepted) a big truck full of money as part of a severance package. The terms of the severance agreement included a period of time during which Forstall can not (could not?) work for any other company, nor make any public statements. A garden leave, if you will — and pretty standard stuff in a tempestuous senior executive shake-up like this. The only question I’m curious about is how long the quiet / non-compete period is. I thought perhaps it was one year, which would mean he’s now free to talk and work elsewhere, which in turn was why I was at first excited to read The Information’s report yesterday. I thought perhaps they’d landed Forstall’s first post-Apple interview. (And I was jealous.)

For all we know, Forstall is free to talk and is simply choosing to remain quiet until he actually has something to announce. Shocking, right?

★ Tuesday, 10 December 2013