Scott Forstall

Scott James Forstall (born 28 August 1969) is an American software engineer, known for leading the original software development team for the iPhone and iPad.

He is also a Broadway producer known for co-producing the Tony award-winning Fun Home and Eclipsed with Molly Forstall, his wife, among others.

Enrolling at Stanford University, he graduated in 1991 with a degree in symbolic systems.

The next year he received his master's degree in computer science, also from Stanford.

During his time at Stanford, Forstall was a member of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity.

Forstall joined Steve Jobs's NeXT in 1992 and stayed when it was purchased by Apple in 1997.

Forstall was then placed in charge of designing user interfaces for a reinvigorated Macintosh line.

In 2000, Forstall became a leading designer of the Mac's new Aqua user interface, known for its water-themed visual cues such as translucent icons and reflections, making him a rising star in the company.

He was promoted to SVP in January 2003.

During this period, he supervised the creation of the Safari web browser.

Lisa Melton, a senior developer on the Safari team, credited Forstall for being willing to trust the instincts of his team and respecting their ability to develop the browser in secret.

In 2005, when Jobs began planning the iPhone, he had a choice to either "shrink the Mac, which would be an epic feat of engineering, or enlarge the iPod".

Jobs favored the former approach but pitted the Macintosh and the iPod team, led by Forstall and Tony Fadell respectively, against each other in an internal competition.

Forstall won that fierce competition to create iOS.

The decision enabled the success of the iPhone as a platform for third-party developers: using a well-known desktop operating system as its basis allowed the many third-party Mac developers to write software for the iPhone with minimal retraining.

Forstall was also responsible for creating a software developer's kit for programmers to build iPhone apps, as well as an App Store within iTunes.

In 2006, Forstall became responsible for Mac OS X releases after Avie Tevanian stepped down as the company's Chief Software Technology Officer and before being named SVP of iPhone Software.

Forstall received credit as he "ran the iOS mobile software team like clockwork and was widely respected for his ability to perform under pressure".

Having spent his career first at NeXT and then Apple, he was the senior vice president (SVP) of iOS Software at Apple Inc. from 2007 until October 2012.

Forstall grew up in a middle-class family in Kitsap County, Washington, the second-born of three boys to a registered-nurse mother Jeanne and an engineer father Tom Forstall.

His older brother Bruce is also a senior software design engineer, at Microsoft.

A gifted student for whom skills such as programming "came easily where they were difficult for others", Forstall qualified for advanced-placement science and math class in junior high school, and gained experience programming on Apple IIe computers.

He was skipped forward a year, entering Olympic High School in Bremerton, Washington, early where classmates recall his immersion in competitive chess, history, and general knowledge, on occasion competing at the state level.

He achieved a 4.0 GPA and earned the position of valedictorian, a position he shared with a classmate, Molly Brown, who would later become his wife.

He had established the goal of being a "designer of high-tech electronics equipment", as he proclaimed in an interview with a local newspaper.

He has spoken publicly at Apple Worldwide Developers Conferences, including talks about Mac OS X Leopard in 2006 and iPhone software development in 2008, later after the release of iPhone OS 2.0 and iPhone 3G, and on January 27, 2010, at Apple's 2010 iPad keynote.

At WWDC 2011, Forstall introduced iOS 5.

Forstall also appears in the iOS 5 video, narrating about three-quarters of the clip, and in almost every major Apple iOS special event.

At the "Let's talk iPhone" event launching the iPhone 4S, he took the stage to demonstrate the phone's Siri voice recognition technology, which was originally developed at SRI International.

The aftermath of the release of iOS 6, on September 19, 2012, proved a troubled period for Apple.

The newly introduced Maps application, completely designed in-house by Apple, was criticized for being underdeveloped, buggy and lacking in detail.

In addition, the clock app used a design based on the trademarked Swiss railway clock, which Apple had failed to license, forcing Apple to pay Swiss railways a reported $21 million in compensation.

In October, Apple reported third-quarter results in which revenues and profits grew less than predicted, the second quarter in a row that the company missed analysts' expectations.

On October 29, 2012, Apple announced in a press release "that Scott Forstall will be leaving Apple [in 2013] and will serve as an advisor to CEO Tim Cook in the interim."

Forstall's duties were divided among four other Apple executives: design SVP Jonathan Ive assumed leadership of Apple's Human Interface team, Craig Federighi became the new head of iOS software engineering, services chief Eddy Cue took over responsibilities for Maps and Siri, and Bob Mansfield (previously SVP of hardware engineering) "unretired" to oversee a new technology group.

On the same day, John Browett, who was SVP of retail, was dismissed immediately after only six months on the job.

Neither Forstall nor any other Apple executive has commented publicly on his departure beyond the initial press statement, but it is generally presumed that Forstall left his position involuntarily.

All information about the reasons for his departure therefore come from anonymous sources.

Cook's aim since becoming CEO has been reported to be building a culture of harmony, which meant "weeding out people with disagreeable personalities—people Jobs tolerated and even held close, like Forstall," although Apple Senior Director of Engineering Michael Lopp "believes that Apple's ability to innovate came from tension and disagreement."

Steve Jobs was referred to as the "decider" who had the final say on products and features while he was CEO, reportedly keeping the "strong personalities at Apple in check by always casting the winning vote or by having the last word", so after Jobs' death many of these executive conflicts became public.