And since we are talking about Scott Forstall, senior vice president of iOS and someone who had worked with late Steve Jobs since NeXT, the news is getting dissected in countless ways.

A lot has already been reported – the New York Times has a fairly good summary and behind-the-scenes color. John Gruber’s analysis of the situation can be summed up in two words: Ive Up. And Gdgt’s take is pretty spot on. Now here is what my sources deep within Apple are telling me.

• There has been a lot of talk about Scott Forstall being asked to sign an apology letter for the Apple Maps debacle. He refused. None of my sources were able to confirm this bit of news, though The New York Times reported that is indeed the case.
• Forstall’s firing was met with a sense of quiet jubilation, especially among people who worked in the engineering groups. Or as one of my sources quipped: there are a lot of people going for celebratory drinks, even if there is a little bit of doubt about their roles in the future.
• While the now-rescinded resignation of Bob Mansfield was masterfully planned, my sources say that Forstall’s exit was fairly last minute and not something he initiated. Many within the iOS and OS X teams only heard about it minutes after the news went out. Engineers were caught off guard, a source told me.
• Many feel that Craig Federighi, who is taking over Forstall’s job in addition to overseeing the Mac OS X software business, is someone who needs to prove himself. He is not as decisive and divisive as Forstall.
• There is a sense of excitement around Jony Ive taking over as head of the newly created human interface group. The reason for the excitement: hope for a new design direction for many software products. Most think Eddy Cue taking over Siri and Maps is a smart and natural thing to do.
• According to my sources, there have been fissures in the management team for a while. Steve Jobs and Forstall were close, but none of the executives really cared for the deposed iOS chief. He really built a reputation by executing on Steve’s vision and acting as Steve’s mouthpiece.
• Forstall had less-than-pleasant relationships with many senior executives, including Cue and Mansfield. My sources confirm what the Times reported earlier – Ive and Forstall had a rocky relationship .

Schedule-driven follies

In conversations, I learned about something that is troubling from a long-term point of view. Unlike in the Jobs era, when the company would ship features when they were ready for primetime, a culture of schedule-driven releases has become commonplace.

The time-based schedule is one of the reasons why Siri and Maps arrived as half-baked products and were met with derision. Many engineers inside Apple could foresee problems with Maps. Why? Because Maps were driven by a time schedule.

Maps and Siri are complex products whose dependencies (for the lack of a better word) go deep into different parts of the phone and even the network. The schedule-driven release culture makes folks less daring — why take arrows in your back for failing to deliver a radical new feature on a pre-dictated time? If this cultural warp continues, Apple might have a bigger headache on its hands. Ive’s appointment as the Human Interface honcho means that more risk-taking needs to come into the products. Ironically, the news that should garner more attention has flown under the radar.

Bob Mansfield will lead a new group, Technologies, which combines all of Apple’s wireless teams across the company in one organization, fostering innovation in this area at an even higher level. This organization will also include the semiconductor teams, who have ambitious plans for the future.

In other words, Apple understands that in our cloud-centric connected future, the company needs to not only care about the “human interface” and the “industrial design” but that all of those pieces have to work seamlessly with the guts and nerves of digital devices — chips and the networking technologies. With Cue, Ive and Mansfield, Cook has ensured that Apple is putting its best foot forward. Forstall is no longer part of this future.

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As part of the reorganization, other top executives will be expanding their roles at the company. Head of industrial design Jony Ive will become responsible for a new Human Interface group. Eddy Cue, who already oversees all Apple’s online services, will add Siri and Maps to his responsibilities. Craig Federighi, recently promoted to the SVP of Mac Software Engineering, will also now oversee iOS, which was Forstall’s division. Bob Mansfield, who retired then un-retired this year as head of Hardware Engineering, will lead a new Technologies division, which includes chip development.

Browett’s stint at Apple was short. His replacement has not yet been hired, and Apple says it is on the hunt for a new head of retail operations.

In a statement, CEO Tim Cook said: “We are in one of the most prolific periods of innovation and new products in Apple’s history. The amazing products that we’ve introduced in September and October, iPhone 5, iOS 6, iPad mini, iPad, iMac, MacBook Pro, iPod touch, iPod nano and many of our applications, could only have been created at Apple and are the direct result of our relentless focus on tightly integrating world-class hardware, software and services.”

Browett’s departure comes as little surprise. His first big move after joining Apple earlier this year was to cut back on personnel at Apple’s retail stores. The move was met by a cascade of bad publicity, and Apple had him quickly apologize and reverse course.

Forstall’s departure is far more significant. He was responsible for overseeing the development of iOS, the software created to power the original iPhone. The success of iOS has catapulted Apple to the top of the mobile world. But his success has been accompanied by some gaffes that have hurt Apple’s image. Both Siri and Maps, which he oversaw, were released in beta, and it was clear neither were in the shape most customers had come to expect of an Apple finished product.

But the Maps issue is likely what pushed him out the door. Maps was not released with a “beta” tag and caused a huge uproar when released alongside the new iPhone 5 last month. The incident has been embarrassing for Apple, and Cook was forced to make a public apology for the misstep.

There were other issues too that put Forstall at odds with his fellow executives. He was a protege of Steve Jobs, but also known to have clashed with Ive in particular. Some reports from insiders at the company revealed brewing tension on the leadership team surrounding Forstall, who wasn’t known to be a very easy person to work with. Some executives, like Ive, reportedly would not attend meetings where Forstall was present. Forstall was also known as a leading force behind the skeumorphic design philosophy behind iOS. While Jobs was said to have favored it, Ive and other designers reportedly had significant disagreement over Apple’s overall design direction.

Update: Forstall’s departure was definitely related to the Maps fiasco. He was asked to leave the company after he refused to sign his name to the public apology over Maps, according to the Wall Street Journal.

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Dan Riccio

Craig Federighi

Federighi will be a familiar face to watchers of Apple keynotes over the years. He’s often brought on stage for demonstrations of new Mac software. He’s been leading Mac OS X engineering since 2009, but also worked earlier in his career at both Apple and NeXT. Riccio has been with Apple since 1998; he started as VP of Product design. Apple lists him as “a key contributor to most of Apple’s hardware over his career.” He’ll now lead all hardware engineering: Mac, iPhone, iPad and iPod.

Mansfield’s new title wasn’t given, but the company said in a press release that he will stay on at Apple to “work on future products” and he will still report to Cook. After heading up Mac, then eventually, iPod, iPhone and iPad engineering, Mansfield announced he would retire at the end of June after 13 years with the company. He named a successor — Riccio — but curiously did not give a retirement date, perhaps reflecting his ambivalence about leaving.

Either way, it’s a pretty big coup for Cook to keep Mansfield around. Mansfield was part of the leadership team developed under Steve Jobs that got Apple to where it is today, and keeping that team intact as much as possible is an important priority for Cook and for the company’s future. While not quite as big as the legal victory over Samsung on Friday, this is a great way for Cook to begin his second year at the helm of Apple.

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