He is asked to sign an apology letter for the short comings of an app that he was in charge of and was at least confident enough in to present to the world. When it was time to pay the piper and accept responsibility for the app he told the world was great, he shirks all responsibility.
I fully support the decision to remove him from his position.
Or, he was against releasing, but was overridden (by Cook perhaps), then refused to apologise because it wasn't his mistake...
The reality is, we don't, and probably won't know. Seems strange though, that Forestall did exceptionally good releases [1] up until iOS 6 and then all of a sudden he just dropped the ball with maps...
[1] Excluding the fact that new iOSes generally suck for older iPhones, and force a hardware upgrade.
If you've accepted the role of svp of IOS software, you're at fault if there is horribly broken IOS software.
Cook is a bean counter with no vision. He is very good at bean counting and has a lot of success at it. He is not appropriate as anything more than transitionary CEO for a visionary company.
Replace visionaries with bean counters that have allegiance to the established hierarchical order of bean counters? This works well for commodity companies that sell fizzy sugar water. Will it work for Apple this time around? Last time they went this route with Sculley there were some problems.
Why can't you just say soda, pop or whatever regional dialect you prefer? I don't understand why any time anyone ever says this it has to phrased in the most condescending way possible.
This quote has since been simplified to asking people in technical fields if they want to make fizzy sugar water. Familiarity with this story is widespread in the industry and not an obscure reference, and in this case I wanted to discuss both Jobs, Sculley, Apple, and the result of having a bean counter type person who is excellent at reducing manufacturing costs within a commodity company be in charge of a company whose entire value is based on not being a commodity.