“Facebook Inc. has nabbed another member of Apple Inc.’s original iPhone team, hiring Richard Williamson, the manager who had led Apple’s mapping efforts, according to people with knowledge of the hire,” Adam Satariano reports for Bloomberg.
MacDailyNews Take: Led ’em off a cliff, down the toilet, and God only knows where else at launch.
“Williamson joined Facebook in the past couple of weeks to be a manager within its expanding mobile-software group, said two of the people, who declined to be identified because the information isn’t public,” Satariano reports. “Williamson, who worked at Apple for more than a decade, was one of the engineers assigned by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs to build software for the iPhone. He was later put in charge of the effort to replace Google Inc.’s mapping service for the iPhone and iPad. ”
Satariano reports, “Williamson was fired by Apple in November as part of a management shakeup after its mapping product was criticized for misguided directions and inaccurate landmark locations.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Williamson did do one thing well: He got rid of Forstall.
Related articles:
Tony Fadell: Scott Forstall ‘got what he deserved’ – November 29, 2012
Apple to Maps manager Williamson: Get lost – November 27, 2012
Forstall pushed out by Cook, source says; news met with ‘quiet jubilation’ inside Apple – October 30, 2012
Tim Cook takes full control of Apple: John Browett and Scott Forstall out; Jony Ive, Bob Mansfield, Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi get expanded responsibilities – October 29, 2012
Maybe they’ll give him better direction….
Pretty soon Facebook is going to start to get deeper into the mobile business just like Google did and develop an OS linked to your Facebook account and they call it Face OS or something. Then, they’ll have a Face phone or something oh, and Face glasses or something.
Joy of Tech might not be so off track, then.
http://www.joyoftech.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/1828.html
See also Gruber’s The Talk Show episode, Stockpiling the Nuclear Weapons of Design War
http://www.muleradio.net/thetalkshow/36/
No… MDN.
Apple did a mistake to fire Forstall. They should rehire him.
I wasn’t happy with that firing also. Forstall was the only one with any “stage presence” or Steve-like qualities. A change of responsibility may have been smarter than a total ditching. Who knows, mabye he’ll come back as CEO someday.