Comment by rweichler

Nothing new probably - I just remember diving down the rabbit hole from the Wikipedia page on Forstall a couple years back, e.g. stuff like this: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-20514464.

But more importantly, I take issue with the main theme of your first link, as it's stuff I've heard a bunch elsewhere. I can agree that "innovation requires some tension", but I think it's a huge mistake to think that because Forstall had some (or at least looked like he had some) of the qualities of Jobs that he was the right man for the <no pun intended> job. I.e the argument usually goes something like "Hey, Jobs was disagreeable and kind of an asshole, so since Forstall is disagreeable and even more of an asshole he should be CEO."

But that clearly misses the fact that Forstall could in no way engender the level of respect that Jobs had, and I don't think people would have respected him more if he became CEO. People really admired Jobs at a deep, deep level, and that was clearly not the case for Forstall based on the many other Apple execs who couldn't stand him.