ScottForstall
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Daily Update for October 13, 2011
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen.
Businessweek profiles Scott Forstall
Apple's iPhone 4S press event showcased the talents and personalities of Apple's executive leadership including CEO Tim Cook and Phil Schiller. One standout was vice-president Scott Forstall who, in the absence of Steve Jobs, is expected to take a bigger role at Apple. In a lengthy article, Business Week takes a closer look at this up and coming executive. Forstall's in charge of Apple's mobile software division and oversees the development of iOS. At the tender age of 42, he is Apple's youngest senior executive. He's also the most like Steve Jobs and the executive most likely to preserve Jobs's vision. If you want to learn more about Forstall and his role at Apple, then you should take some time to read Business Week's six page profile.
iOS 5 will be available October 12, iCloud launching the same day
Mark your calendars, kids. Scott Forstall's on stage here at "Let's Talk iPhone" and just gave a hard date for iOS 5's arrival: expect it to hit next week, on October 12th, with Apple's iCloud service launching that same day. Though developers have been playing with it for four months now, this will be the first time the general, non-tinkering public gets to taste its 200-plus new features -- a list that includes Newsstand, Reminders, iMessage, WiFi sync, Find My Friends, split keyboards, AirPlay mirroring for the iPad 2 (and iPhone 4S!) and the Notification Center. (And, you know, greeting cards, if you're into that sort of thing.) iOS 5 will be free for iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches, while iCloud's standard 5GB of email / storage will come gratis to folks already using iOS 5 and Lion. Take note that if it's iTunes Match you're after (and you live in the states), you'll have to sit tight a few more weeks yet. %Gallery-135713%
Square's name, design influenced by a meeting at Apple
For a while now it's been known that the popular iPhone credit card payment system known as Square was originally known by a different name and had a very different look. The familiar white plastic square-shaped plug-in dongle was originally made of wood and shaped like an acorn (no joke) and its name was "Squirrel." However, the current name and shape of the credit card reader we all know and love came about after Square CEO Jack Dorsey had a lunch at Apple's Caffé Macs. On Wednesday night, according to TNW, Dorsey told the attendees of San Francisco's Commonwealth Club, where he was accepting the 21st Century Visionary award, that he was set on the "Squirrel" name until he was having lunch with Apple's senior vice president of iPhone Software Scott Forstall. Dorsey noticed that the point-of-sale system used in Caffé Macs was from Squirrel Systems so he had to change the name of his device. While Dorsey didn't say Forstall had anything to do with the change of the dongle's shape, it's easy to assume that the Apple's SVP took one look at the wooden acorn and said "I have a better idea." Square first launched in 2010 and just a few days ago announced that it has shipped 500,000 Square card readers and processed 1 million transactions in May to the tune of about US$3 million worth of mobile payments a day.
A look at Apple's "all-star" executives
Tim Cook, Phil Schiller, Jony Ive, and Steve Jobs are big names at Apple. These top executives are known around the technology industry and around the world for their operational excellence, marketing know-how, design genius and powerful reality distortion fields. While these four men often get credit for much of Apple's success, the company boasts an enviable collection of talented "chiefs" and senior vice presidents who help carve its skyward path. A new gallery from CNN Money takes a brief look at eleven of Apple's all-stars. For avid fans of Apple, some of the names mentioned in CNN Money's gallery may be familiar. But if you don't recognize names like Craig Federighi, Scott Forstall, Bob Mansfield, Ron Johnson, Peter Oppenheimer, Bruce Sewell, Jeff Williams, Eddy Cue, Katie Cotton, Dr. Guy "Bud" Tribble, or Greg Joswiak, this may be a good opportunity to brush up on the men and women who help shape one of the world's most successful companies.
Phil Schiller's Twitter account gets verified
Apple's Phil Schiller has joined Scott Forstall (though not Steve Jobs) over on Twitter -- he now has a verified account to tweet from, and is following a few celebrity and official company accounts so far. The account's actually been around for a while (Schiller tweeted from France while there and mentioned 500 million app downloads when it was announced last January), but only recently got verified, which means there's one more official Apple voice on the networking service. It's strange that Apple still doesn't have a real official presence on Twitter -- Schiller follows an account called @AppleIncNews, but it appears to be a simple RSS feed of Apple website news, and it's not verified by Twitter as official at all. There are certainly plenty of fake Steve Jobs accounts, but none of those have been verified either. Especially since Steve seems so easygoing with his Stevemails, you think Twitter would be a perfect place for him to interface directly with the Apple community. But so far, all we've got is Forstall and Schiller, and neither of them seem very forthcoming about interacting with the community of Apple fans online. [via 9to5Mac]
Forbes calls Scott Forstall a 'name you need to know'
Do you know who Scott Forstall is? According to Forbes Magazine, you should. As part of a crowd-sourcing project for the January issue of the magazine, Forbes asked readers to suggest the names of people who will be important in 2011. One of the picks was Forstall, Apple's senior vice president of iPhone software. Forstall was one of the NeXT engineers who followed Steve Jobs back to Apple, and in his current role he's the man behind the wild success of iOS. It's estimated that iOS currently runs on over 100 million devices worldwide. Apple's executive profile for Forstall notes that he "is one of the original architects of OS X," and was "responsible for several releases of the operating system, most notably Mac OS X Leopard." Looking forward to the future release of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, we can expect to see Forstall's genius at work as elements of iOS make their way onto the Mac. [via The Mac Observer]
Apple affirms: no software fix for iPhone 4 antenna issue
In case it wasn't obvious enough from Apple's agitated response to our question during today's iPhone 4 Q&A session in Cupertino, there's no software fix in the pipeline for the antenna issues that are plaguing users today. A prior report in the New York Times seemed fairly confident that the troubles could (and would) be solved in the near term by a simple software update, but the company's own Scott Forstall called said report "patently false." So, there you have it -- the only thing that'll be fixed via software is how big your smallest bar of signal is. Beyond that, you'll need to grab some Duct tape, a free case or a white glove if you're looking to avoid attenuation entirely.
9 41 9 42: The secret of Apple's recurring numbers
For years, Apple has featured a recurring number in all of its iPhone ads and screen shots. The time in the status bar always reads 9:42. What's more, since the debut of the iPad, the time in every iPad ad and screen shot always reads 9:41. 9:42 or 9:41. Every single time. What can those specific times mean? Well since Locke isn't answering my pleas for help (you'd think he was dead or something), I'll just have to turn to another Jon. Apple's iPhone number question has bugged Jon Manning, lead developer of Secret Lab, for years. Did the numbers have some sort of cosmic significance or were they just randomly selected by an Apple graphic designer with a thing for the 9:40ish time slot? Jon dug around for answers, but after the search led nowhere, he eventually all but gave up on finding out what the numbers meant. Then, this past January, he began noticing the iPad's reoccurring numbers and knew it couldn't be random chance -- these numbers did mean something. How would he find out what that something was, though?
Jobs: If you see a stylus or a task manager, 'they blew it'
Steve Jobs is never one to mince words when taking questions from the press, and he just made it very clear how he feels about other platforms during the iPhone OS 4 event when asked about task management: Q: How do you close applications when multitasking? A: (Scott Forstall) You don't have to. The user just uses things and doesn't ever have to worry about it. A: (Steve Jobs) It's like we said on the iPad, if you see a stylus, they blew it. In multitasking, if you see a task manager... they blew it. Users shouldn't ever have to think about it. Yeah, that pretty much sums up the Apple Way, but hey -- tell us how you really feel, Steve.
Poll: Who's gonna keynote?
Tomorrow, Apple will introduce its iPhone OS 4.0 roadmap. And we'll be there, metaliveblogging our hearts out as the events unroll. The big mystery tonight, at least here in TUAW-land, is who will give the speech. Is this going to be a big-time Steve Jobs keynote? Or can we expect Phil Schiller to pick up the slack? Is it time for Scott Forstall to take his turn in the sun, or is there someone else waiting in the wings? Get on your best predictive sunglasses and let us know who you think will be pitching the 4.0 update tomorrow in the poll below. %Poll-44108%
Sony's John Koller: Apple's entrance into gaming market drives consumers to PSP
Um, okay? Just days after Apple introduced its exceedingly underwhelming iPad while simultaneously attempting to convince that masses that said product was the portable gaming device they had been waiting their whole lives for, Sony's own hardware marketing honcho has come forward and extolled Cupertino's decision to finally make the gaming leap. In a recent interview, John stated the following: "Apple's entrance into the portable gaming space has been a net positive for Sony. When people want a deeper, richer console, they start playing on a PSP." While we can't seem to shake the suspicion that Mr. Koller is drawing links that probably don't exist (at least fully) in reality, research firm NPD does show that sales of the PSP have "nearly tripled since the iPhone went on sale in June 2007." Of course, it's not like the PSP has gained functionality, become the home of more than a few killer titles and spawned a UMD-less sibling since the heydays of '07, but hey -- who are we to question the suit?
Apple shuffles execs, Scott Forstall now head of iPhone Software
Looks like El Steve's getting the house in order before all the guests roll in for WWDC -- AppleInsider says there's been some exec reshuffling at the top. Most prominently, Scott Forstall has been bumped up to Senior Vice President of iPhone Software, which means he now reports directly to Jobs. Given Apple's big push into the mobile devices space, that's a big responsibility, but Forstall's got the chops -- he's been working on the core of OS X since the NeXT days, and he was responsible for the release of OS X Leopard. Also getting a fatter paycheck is Bob Mansfield, who's the new SVP of Mac Hardware Engineering and will report to COO Tim Cook. MHE hasn't had a leader since 2004, when a committee of Mansfield, Jonathan Ive, and Dan Riccio was put in place to lead development. Of course, all these guys are merely puppets in the grand schemes of Dear Leader anyhow, but hey, someone's got to do the paperwork, right?[Thanks, Mark]
