While Mark Papermaster may yet to be confirmed in his new role as senior vice president of devices hardware engineering, one thing is certain: former iPod hardware chief Tony Fadell is still gone, baby, gone. We imagine that he’s had to pack up his office, bid adieu to all his former teammates, and even give back his top-secret iPod prototypes (like the one that can broadcast songs directly into your head). Heck, we’d even imagine that Steve Jobs has swipe-deleted Tony from his iPhone Favorites list. I wonder what that would look like? (Fast-forward to 5:15).
Cold, Steve. Ice cold.
[via Daring Fireball]
Once again we undertake a journey to the wonderful world of Mark Papermaster. The court case between Papermaster and his former employer, IBM, continued this week, with the almost-minted veep of devices hardware engineering filing a countersuit against Big Blue (PDF link).
The key issue at stake here is whether or not IBM’s non-compete agreement is valid. Papermaster contends that Apple and IBM are not direct competitors and that the division he’d be heading would not draw upon knowledge that he’d used when at IBM, meaning that he should be free to go work in Cupertino. The counterclaims also argue that IBM’s non-compete is “unreasonably broad” and imposes an “unreasonably lengthy” period of one year in which Papermaster is not allowed to work for competitors. There’s also the geographic matter of the non-compete agreement being based in New York law, Apple being in California, and Papermaster living in Austin, Texas.
And round and round we go: it seems like this could easily go the way of “who wants to throw more money at lawyers?” If you’re interested, you can go look at all the case’s documents and then fall asleep, which is what I did.
According to The Mac Observer, there’s a bit of shaking going on in Apple’s executive team. No, we’re not referring to the whole Papermaster drama. It seems that Apple’s senior VP of Enterprise Sales, Al Shipp, is leaving the company. Mysteriously, his post will not be filled, and the people below him will report instead to John Brandon, the Senior Vice President of Sales, Americas, and Asia Pacific.
Suspicious? Well, who knows, really? Shipp was with the company since 2004; it’s true that Apple’s presence in enterprise is not its bread and butter, but it seems like the company has been seeing growth there in recent years. We’re sure people will be leaping to any number of spurious conclusions about what this means for the company as a whole. Personally, we’re of the opinion that this is all just a ploy for Apple to ramp up their real enterprise market.
For better or worse, Apple is a one-man show. And once that man inevitably shuffles off his mortal coil, 1 Infinite Loop will not be the same.
Yesterday, Fortune magazine made the case that COO Tim Cook would be the logical choice, saying: "He's essentially been running much of the company for years." (The Wall Street Journal made a similar case back in 2006.)
As COO, Cook essentially runs the show and makes stuff happen. If Jobs is the brain, the creative visionary, Cook is the brawn, making sure the money is there, Apple gets the right parts, and so forth.
As Adam Lashinsky writes:
Think of Cook's contribution like this. There are two basic ways to get great profit margins: Charge high prices or reduce costs. Apple does both. The marketing and design drive consumers wild with desire and make them willing to pay a premium; Cook's operational savvy keeps costs under control. Thus Apple is a cash-generating machine. Cook has called the company a place that is "entrepreneurial in its nature but with the mother of all balance sheets." At last count that meant $24.5 billion in cash and no debt.
Further, Cook, like Jobs, is known for his brashness and demanding style, writes Lashinsky:
Cook's stamina is the stuff of legend at Apple. He often begins e-mailing the executives who work for him at 4:30 a.m.; worldwide conference calls can take place at any time of day. For years, Cook held a standing Sunday night staff meeting by telephone in order to prepare for yet more meetings on Monday morning.
And if there's any other indication of Cook's worth to the company, remember this:
Cook also gets a bigger paycheck than any other Apple executive - including Jobs, a multibillionaire and a dollar-a-year-man in terms of salary. Cook's salary, though peanuts compared to his stock grants, is $700,000, about $100,000 more than that of CFO Peter Oppenheimer and retail chief Ron Johnson. And when the company doles out restricted stock, Cook gets the biggest pile; in September that came to 200,000 shares, a bigger grant than anyone else at Apple got.
I'm convinced.
Oh, snap. IBM threw scissors after all. In the continuing saga of Mark Papermaster—torn between two worlds—IBM has won the latest round. The company had sued Papermaster, its former employee, for violating a non-compete agreement in his contract when he went off to work for Steve Jobs’s Magical House of Candy and Wonder.
The courts have backed IBM in the immediate future, granting a preliminary injunction that prevents Papermaster from going to work at 1 Infinite Loop while the whole matter is settled. U.S. District Judge Kenneth Karas has told Mr. Papermaster to “immediately cease his employment with Apple Inc. until further order of this court.” The big issue at question here is just how enforceable the non-compete clause of a contract is, and the decision in this case could have far-reaching implications.
Papermaster is supposed to be starting his job as senior vice president for devices hardware engineering (here’s his bio at Apple, via the magic of Google cache), a post that he snagged after the departure of Tony Fadell. Apple is optimistic about the future of the lawsuit, with spokesman Steve Dowling telling Bloomberg, “We will comply with the court’s order, but are confident that Mark Papermaster will be able to ultimately join Apple when this dust settles.”
We can’t pretend to know what Steve Jobs is thinking here, but if we were in his shoes, here’s what we’d suggest: Bertrand Serlet and an engineer to be named later. Eh? Eh?
Do not mess with the master of paper, friends. He will file his way into court so quick even The Flash gets dizzy. Firing back at the suit launched by IBM that the former employee violated his contract when he went to Apple, the company’s new senior vice president of devices hardware engineering Mark Papermaster said that he believed he was in the clear.
IBM says that the executive’s contract contained a non-compete clause and that his acceptance of employment at Apple constituted competition. Papermaster maintains that Apple and IBM are not competitors, and that his knowledge of IBM trade secrets is irrelevant, since he will be working on the iPod and iPhone.
“To the best of my knowledge, IBM does not design, manufacture or market consumer electronic products,” said Mark Papermaster, in a court document filed Thursday. “Instead, IBM focuses on high-performance business systems such as information technology infrastructure, servers and information storage products, and operating systems software,” Papermaster noted.
[…]
“I do not recall a single instance of Apple being described as a competitor of IBM during my entire tenure at IBM,” Papermaster stated.
Big Blue is asking the court to prevent Papermaster from working at Apple, so it’ll be up to a judge to decide whether the claim has merit. Now, we’re certainly not legal scholars here, but we’re pretty sure that Papermaster will come on top in the ensuing contest—unless, of course, IBM throws scissors.
In a sudden, surprising move, the Wall Street Journal and Reuters are both reporting that Tony Fadell (yes, that Tony Fadell), the now former senior VP of the iPod Division, is leaving the company.
Apple has now confirmed the move, and the fact that Fadell will be replaced by Mark Papermaster who recently left IBM, triggering a lawsuit from Big Blue. Papermaster’s title is senior vice president of Devices Engineering, which is in charge of the hardware for both the iPod and iPhone.
Reports the WSJ:
[Fadell] was also part of the executive team involved in the development of the iPhone, which has become the fastest growing part of Apple’s business. People familiar with the matter said Mr. Fadell planned to take time off after leaving the company though he may still keep a role at Apple as a consultant.
Fadell is indeed staying on as a consultant to the CEO. However, Fadell’s wife, Danielle Lambert, who also works at Apple as vice president of Human Resources, is leaving the company for good. Apple’s press release says that they’re both leaving to “devote more time to their young family.” We wish them both the best of luck.
Did you know that you have something in common with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev? Yes, you both have dashing good looks and control of the largest country in the world, but I was referring to something far more personal.
I refer of course to these pictures from President Medvedev’s latest Dungeons & Dragons session high-level government meeting where it’s revealed that the world leader is a Mac user, sporting a brand new MacBook Pro. This isn’t that surprising: we knew that Dmitri is a tech nut: he was sporting an iPhone last year, well before they were actually available in his country. And he posts occasional videoblogs on his website (not recorded on the MacBook’s iSight, though—he keeps those more personal posts for his LiveJournal account under the name lonelyprezdent15).
Personally, I’m relieved to know that should I ever have to brush off those four years of high school Russian upon running into President Medvedev at a state function of some kind, I will at least have something to talk about. Вы любите Макинтош? Я тоже!
[via Macenstein]
