Apple hired Mark Papermaster to head up the companys iPod and iPhone hardware engineering teams only after litigation was cleared up between him and his former employer IBM. A year and a half later, Papermaster is leaving under another tense situation, following widely reported problems with the iPhone 4s antenna.
Link:
Apple iPhone Exec Mark Papermaster Departs Following Hardware Problems
The New York Times reports that Mark Papermaster, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Devices Hardware Engineering, has left the company. Papermaster has been heading up Apple’s iPhone and iPod engineering teams since he began work with the company in April 2009.
Mark Papermaster, the Apple executive in charge of hardware for the company’s flagship iPhone, has left the company in the wake of widely reported problems with the antenna of the recently introduced iPhone 4.
It is not clear if Mr. Papermaster was ousted or left on his own accord.
Papermaster has been replaced by Bob Mansfield, who is an existing member of Apple’s senior executive team in his role as Senior Vice President of Mac Hardware Engineering.
In retrospect, today’s news explains what should have been seen as a curious aspect of Apple’s iPhone 4 press conference last month. The Q&A portion of the press conference was conducted by Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook, and Mansfield. Papermaster, whose division designed the iPhone 4, was to our knowledge not in attendance at the event.
In fact, even Apple’s promotional video for the iPhone 4 released at the device’s introduction in early June and featuring a number of Apple executives talking about it does not include Papermaster. Mansfield is, however, featured with the job title of Senior Vice President of Hardware, dropping the “Mac” qualifier that had been part of his official job at that time. According to The New York Times, Mansfield was involved in the design of several aspects of the iPhone 4, including its A4 chip and Retina display.
Papermaster’s curious invisibility in all aspects of iPhone 4 publicity suggests that he may even have been on his way out even before the iPhone 4 was released, but whether his departure is due to iPhone antenna design issues that might have been discovered prior to its launch or to other factors is unknown.
Papermaster was initially recruited to Apple from IBM in late 2008 to replace departing iPhone/iPod executive Tony Fadell, but IBM filed suit, claiming that Papermaster had violated his employment agreement with IBM by taking a position with a competing firm. Papermaster very briefly began work at Apple in early November 2008 before a judge ordered him to stop working until the IBM lawsuit was settled. In January 2009, Apple announced that the litigation had been settled and that Papermaster would officially begin work at Apple on April 24th of that year.
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Earlier today, a Consumer Reports post made headlines after they concluded that they simply could not recommend the iPhone 4 due to the widely reported signal issues related to touching the lower-left corner of the device. This single issue alone has prevented them from fully recommending the iPhone 4. However, their formal testing otherwise revealed that the iPhone 4 ranked the highest amongst all smartphones in their testing.
AllThingsD (via LoopInsight) summarizes the report (subscription required).
The [iPhone 4] scored 76 out of 100 pointstwo points ahead of its closest rivals, the iPhone 3Gs and the HTC Evo 4G.
…
The product evaluation agency rated the iPhone 4 Excellent in its display, navigation, Web browsing, multimedia and battery life categories, Very Good in phoning and messaging and Good in voice quality.
The iPhone 4 beat out the HTC Evo as well as all the other Smartphones and had the highest score of 76/100. The signal issue described is that holding the lower-left corner of the iPhone 4 can reduce cell phone signal and affect calls in areas with lower reception. The issue depends on your local coverage and can be alleviated with a phone case.
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About that new iPhone, I smell gas! For starters, Apple is officially saying “uncle” for now regarding the widely reported antenna problems with the new iPhone 4. Yes, there is an emergency software update (patch) coming out to address this. However, Gizmodo (quoting AppleCare operators who said the same thing on three different calls) is reporting that Apple’s official partyline to customers is …
The rest is here:
iPhone 4: Officially A Hot Mess
The conversation was published Thursday by The Boy Genius Report and linked to by more than three dozen other sites. In it, a writer pretending to be Apple’s CEO tries several times to mollify a customer called “Tom” who is furious about the iPhone 4′s widely reported signal attenuation problem. In separate e-mail messages Jobs purportedly tells “Tom,” who grows angrier with each exchange.
Boy Genius Report had originally published and vouched for the emails claiming the exchange was legitimate. Apple PR says the entire conversation was fabricated. The statements originally attributed to Steve Jobs included:
“No, you are getting all worked up over a few days of rumors. Calm down.”
“You are most likely in an area with very low signal strength.”
“You may be working from bad data. Not your fault. Stay tuned. We are working on it.”
“Retire, relax, enjoy your family. It is just a phone. Not worth it.”
Note that even before Apple PR’s response, BGR had already retracted the last statement that they had originally attributed to Steve Jobs. The “Retire, relax, enjoy your family. It is just a phone. Not worth it.” statement was later attributed to the customer, not Steve Jobs. Though, now it appears the entire exchange was fabricated. Adding further doubt to the motivation behind the original email poster, AppleInsider reports that the emailer had shopped the story around to several sites. It’s not clear if BGR paid for the the rights to publish the story.
Apple’s total iPhone user base may reach as high as 100 million users by the end of 2011, according to Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty. In a widely reported research note, Huberty expects to see about 42 million iPhones sold by the end of 2010 and that number could reach as high as 48 million, as reported in Fortune.