The Skinny On iPod "Father" Fadell's Exodus From Apple

We recently reported on the departure of Tony Fadell--the "father" of the iPod--from Apple Inc. At that point the how's and why's were rather vague. John Gruber of Daring Fireball sheds some light on this move by the man who made the iPod happen. Gruber references Cringely's column regarding Fadell's replacement with Mark Papermaster. So here’s what’s going on with Tony Fadell. First, he was vulnerable as a charismatic leader in his own right who has been talked about in the press as a possible heir to Jobs. That alone meant he had to die, but it wasn’t enough to mean that he had to die just now. That decision required an external variable in the form of former IBM executive Mark Papermaster. Gruber points out that Papermaster was not hired to take Fadell's exact position. Papermaster's position is a superset of that held by Fadell. Fadell was the "senior vice president of the iPod Division." Papermaster is "senior vice president of Devices Hardware Engineering." Apple today announced that Mark Papermaster is joining the Company as senior vice president of Devices Hardware Engineering, reporting to Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Papermaster, who comes to Apple from IBM, will lead Apple’s iPod and iPhone hardware engineering teams. You see, then new hot kid on Apple's block is the iPhone. (And I don't mean that in a pedophilic way.) Fadell had nothing to do with the iPhone or the iPod touch. The last product Fadell was involved with was the iPod nano. Gruber tells it like this, The iPhone’s software is overseen by Scott Forstall (Senior Vice President, iPhone Software), and, at a technical level, Bertrand Serlet (Senior Vice President, Software Engineering). There is no such division between hardware and software with the traditional (pre-Touch) iPods. The story I’ve heard is that at the outset of Apple’s iPhone initiative, there was a heated debate within Apple as to what OS should be used. Forstall and Serlet pushed for using OS X. Fadell (and, according to one source, former Apple executive Steve Sakoman) pushed for using something else.1 Obviously, Forstall and Serlet won this debate, and, hyperbolic though it may sound, it may prove to be the single best early design decision in the entire history of the company. It seems hard to imagine the iPhone any other way now, but at the outset it was not a foregone conclusion that a stripped down and revamped version of OS X would work for a mobile phone. Apple's new golden child is the iPhone, and Fadell is not a second-fiddle sort of guy. And so explains his departure from the company that he injected with an astounding amount of success (and cash).