Two little tidbits..

Update: got the following email overnight.

Your blog entry is wrong, the VP is not Rob Schoeben. The ex-microsoft person who ran MobileMe was John Martin.

No reason to make Rob look bad publicly. Please correct, for Rob’s sake.

Re-update: just got another confirmation of the above, so I’ve changed the text below. Apologies to Rob Schoeben for tossing the fickle finger of YOU at him (but to be honest, Martin seems to be flying pretty much entirely under the online radar, which isn’t easy to do these days…). Some research on the initial contact I had makes me comfortable saying it was an Apple person of some sort, although I didn’t know him. My second contact isn’t Apple, but I know I can trust, so that seems to settle this.

Schoeben is definitely still there. Definitely not fired.

Within Apple, the blame for MobileMe’s launch is widely, if not universally, seen as lying on John Martin’s shoulders. Martin is still listed in the company directory, but apparently no longer reporting to anyone.

———————

Both should be construed as completely unsubstantiated rumors (which, unlike the rumor sites, I’m more than happy to point out are unsubstantiated….):

First, I heard via one of those “friend of a friend” connections that Rob Schoeben John Martin was (to use their words” escorted off the Apple campus friday. Schoeben Martin was the guy ultimately in charge of MobileMe, but was also VP of Applications Marketing (iLife, iWork, pro apps). He’s an ex-Microsoft exec brought in a few years ago. He them, according to this person, “brought in a bunch of his microsoft friends”. If it’s not obvious, that was not stated as a compliment.

Now, the phrasing of how this was phrased caught my ear. The implication (at least to me) was that this wasn’t a “decided to spend more time with his family” parting of the ways, and perhaps even a surprise to Schoeben Martin. Whether he was literally walked to the parking lot iwth a box of his stuff in full view of the cheering crowds of Apple employees, I don’t know – but that’s the image I get of this, based on how it was told to me. And for better or worse, I can see Steve Jobs doing something like that.

Or perhaps it was all scheduled and someone’s waxing dramatic in my direction. Wouldn’t be the first time. But it sounds like Steve has a (virtual) head on a (virtual) pike outside of IL1 for the MobileMe fiasco. Whether or not they stoned the poor sap (virtually) on the way to the gallows is sort of irrelevant, but I’m amused by the imagery.

I feel bad for him, too. Don’t know him, never worked for him, but it couldn’t have been fun recently, but ultimately, it was his ship, and it ran aground in the harbor, and captains never maintain their command when that happens; and most of the time, they’re lucky to stay in the service as a paper shuffler.

It’ll be interesting to see if I get confirmation, or if Apple actually makes a public statement on this. Or even if it’s true.

Second interesting tidbit: there’s been a lot of talk about the iPhone 3G disconnects recently, and exactly what the problem is and who’s to blame. AT&T has said “not me”, Apple hasn’t said much of anything, and I’ve seen speculation running all over the place, up to and including “millions of units need to be recalled”.

Well, I was having lunch with an ex-fruity type the other day, and we got talking about this stuff, and they know someone who knows someone who.. (okay, have I obfuscated this well enough? We’re at “my sister’s barber is Elvis’ 2nd cousin’s housekeeper’s boyfriend…).

What I was told was that 90% of the disconnects are initiated inside the phone, which would exonerate AT&T. Most of the disconnects are being generated by crashes in the driver code for the 3G chip, which comes from the chip vendor, not something Apple written and outside of Apple’s direct control. Complicating this — even though Apple is handing over “here is the bug, here is the fix, update the driver”, the turnaround from the vendor on driver updates is on the order of 2-3 months. Said, um, lack of urgency not exactly making people inside the projects happy.

Apple had a very good relationship with the company that worked on the innards of the iPod; for the G3 iPhone, it sounds like it’s not working quite so swimmingly. What makes me think there’s some validity to this is Apple’s recent purchase of the chip design house — there’s no real reason to do this unless you’re looking to bring design of these kinds ofchips in where you can control them, and you only do that if (a) it’ll save you lots of money, or (b) you’ve decided you can’t afford to let these key components out of your control. If the driver problem (and lack of vendor urgency) is true, that’d explain Apple’s interest in bringing this inhouse, because it’s not a problem they can directly control, yet they take the hit for the problems. And the phrase used to describe the quality of the drivers is “absolute travesty”

The best aspect of this rumor (if true) is that the hardware is fine; once they can get the drivers fixed (or replaced), the units should be fine. Thinking “recall” is unecessary and overkill, the real question seems to be how quickly Apple can beat the fixes out of the vendor.

Or maybe I’m being lied to again. Only time will tell…

And strangely enough, these rumors found me. I wasn’t even asking…

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