Who’s Scott Forstall?

If you follow Apple’s news, you will surely have seen the small stir that has formed in the different news media about Apple when they announced the departure of Scott Forstall and John Browett from the company . Tim Cook himself has been in charge of announcing this news, which makes it clear that these changes are relatively important within the company, but surely many of you are wondering Who was Scott Frostall? What was his role within Apple?

Scott finished his studies in symbolic systems at Stanford University in 1991 and just one year later he got a Master’s degree in Computer Sciences (something like Computer Engineering in Spain) and just a few years later he was already part of the development team of NEXT.

As you probably know, NEXT was the computer company founded by Steve a few years after he left Apple. This company was intended to create high-end computers for precision work and university centers.

NEXT used a fairly revolutionary operating system for the date which was based on UNIX (Linux was only a few years old at the time). Scott joined the development team of this operating system . His work during this time was based on what we all know as a “piece-of-crap” although he always stood out for his great lucidity and creation of ingenious ideas for the solution of complicated problems.

Once Steve Jobs returned to Apple, and the company bought NEXT, Scott was part of the group of engineers who moved from Jobs’ newly formed company to Apple. This group of engineers was in charge of shaping the operating system already created by NEXT to arrive at what would become Mac OS X.

His great work as one of the chief architects of Mac OS X and later one of the thinking heads behind the system’s Aqua interface earned him the title of Project Manager in January 2003 .

Scott went to the operating systems, what Ive was to the designs for Jobs, that is, his right hand. Scott gradually gained Jobs’ trust until he became his right-hand man when it came to operating systems. In 2006 he became the head of Mac OS X , after Avadis Tevanian left the company.

His figure is beginning to take more and more prominence within the company, the main reason for this (apart from his impeccable personal trajectory) lies in the supposed similarity in Jobs’ vision . Scott has always been catalogued as a radical person and also with a very specific character, curiously very similar to that given to Jobs. Apparently, this radical character was a double-edged sword and what Jobs saw in him as a continuation of his vision, seems to feel more like a senseless rebellion in the new Apple.

¡Importantes cambios en las altas esferas de Apple! Scott Forstall y John Browett abandonarán la compañía

But let’s go back to the past, in 2007 (after the iPhone was introduced), we discovered that Scott has been again one of the thinking minds behind the iOS operating system (iPhone OS at that time) and as such, once announced the team becomes the manager of its operating system and a year later gets the same position but for the iOS development SDK.

This would be his crowning moment within Apple. His figure would start to be part of the most visible Apple and as such he would become the one in charge of showing the world the different iOS novelties in each of Apple’s Keynotes . Two projects have been key in his career in recent years.

The first was Siri at the iPhone 4S launch in October 2011, where Scott showed the world Siri for the first time. The second one would cost him his job, as he was another person behind the Apple Maps project and as such one of the main responsible for the project.

As Miguel told us this morning, this could have been one of the drops that topped the glass. In any case, it is clear that Scott has been a key player in almost all the products Apple has launched in the last 10 years and as such his employee rate will be quite high in any other company.

He no longer holds any of these positions and will report directly to Tim Cook as a consultant until the end of the year.

Interestingly, Scott Forstall was always considered by some people as a worthy successor to Steve Jobs, unlike Tim Cook, and it was even rumored on more than one occasion that he would be the next person to take over the company.

At Apple