Papermaster’s out. This is quite a turn of events, barely a year after IBM actually sued to keep him from going to Apple. But as the top iPhone exec, if somebody had to pay the price he was the obvious choice.
According to the WSJ, he’d lost the confidence of Himself and had delegated a lot of things that, by Apple standards, he should have been on top of personally. Personally, I don’t think it’s the antenna as much as the white iPhone 4 that sealed his fate – the fact that there’s still no ship date for half the product line is too glaring to ignore.
Starting to wonder whether Apple will be able to effectively hire from without…the “cult of Apple” is a lazy shorthand for the paste-eaters, but it’s also something to consider inside Infinite Loop. There is definitely an Apple Way, and those who cannot adapt to it will probably not do well – makes you wonder how quickly they realized this guy was not a good fit.
It’s still too soon to panic. AAPL is a long term hold, and as for the haters – well, until I see somebody pitching a “Droid killer” phone, I’m not hearing it.