Apple has just announced that Scott Forstall will be leaving Apple as of early next year, ending his tenure as SVP of iOS Software. As part of the management change, Jony Ive, Bob Mansfield, Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi will take on new responsibilities. Forstall will remain on as an advisor to Tim Cook between now and next year, but appears to be departing the SVP role immediately, according to an official Apple press release. 
 
 In addition to Forstall, John Browett will also be leaving Apple. Browett was brought on board as Apple’s head of retail back in January, having served previously as CEO of UK retail chain Dixons. Apple recently reported on its retail progress, having done $4.2 billion of sales through that channel in Q4 2012, beating its Q3 earnings. It’s unclear from the release what exactly was behind Browett’s departure, but it seems like he was likely not a good fit, and his hiring was criticized by a lot of people who didn’t find the Dixons shopping experience particularly compelling. 
 
 While Apple says a search is on for Browett’s replacement, it seems to be spreading out Forstall’s duties among existing executive team members. Jony Ive will add Human Interface leadership to his existing design role, Eddy Cue will take on Siri and the nebulous cloud of Maps in addition to iTunes and App Stores, as well as iCloud, and Craig Federighi will fold iOS into his OS X supervision as Apple “brings together the OS teams.” 
 
 Bob Mansfield, who had previously been on the way out at Apple, will now head a new group called Technologies covering all of Apple’s wireless and semiconductor teams. That’s an interesting new department, and one that could have significant control over Apple’s future given its deepening emphasis on semiconductor design in-house. 
 
 Forstall’s departure is the biggest shakeup by far, however. Forstall joined Apple in 1997, having worked for Jobs at NeXT before that. Many had pegged him as a CEO-in-waiting, both before and after the death of Apple founder Steve Jobs last year. Some on Twitter are suggesting that perhaps Forstall took the brunt of the blame for Apple’s problems with Maps, but it’s also reasonable to hypothesize that with little or no chance of attaining the top spot, Forstall himself wanted to seek out other opportunities where he might take more of a leadership role. 
 
 This is definitely the most significant shift in Apple’s make up since Tim Cook took over the CEO role, and even though Forstall leaving is the flashiest aspect, the redistribution of duties shows a very different approach to the way Apple thinks about its products and product lines internally than what we’ve seen the past. The unification of iOS and OS X under one umbrella is, I think, particularly telling, and might signal increasing unity across Apple’s desktop and mobile software. ||||| Photo 
 
 Apple has fired a manager who oversaw its mobile mapping service, continuing to clean house after a bad stumble. 
 
 Eddy Cue, senior vice president for Internet software and services at Apple, fired the manager, Richard Williamson, according to two people briefed on the matter who did not want to be named to avoid Apple’s ire. The firing happened shortly before Thanksgiving, according to one of these people. 
 
 Trudy Muller, an Apple spokeswoman, declined to comment. Mr. Williamson did not respond to a message sent to him through the business networking site LinkedIn, which as of Tuesday evening still had a profile listing him as Apple’s senior director of iOS platform services. 
 
 Apple had been using Google’s mapping service in its mobile software, but in an update released in September it replaced Google’s maps with its own. The new service added some features, like turn-by-turn directions and sharper graphics, but it was widely criticized over incorrect addresses, misplaced landmarks and misleading driving directions. 
 
 In a rare move, Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, publicly apologized for the deficiencies of the service and recommended that disappointed customers use mapping services from Apple’s rivals while the company worked out the kinks. 
 
 Some early problems with the maps have been fixed. When providing directions for travel from San Francisco to Sausalito, Calif., Apple’s maps used to say the trip required taking a ferry; now it shows a simple drive on the freeway. The Flatiron building in New York and the Washington Monument are no longer a block or two from their rightful homes. But some directions still lead drivers astray, and flaws in the 3-D imagery persist; for example, the London Eye still has no spokes. 
 
 The firing of Mr. Williamson, which was first reported by Bloomberg News, follows a management shake-up at Apple in late October, when Mr. Cook fired Scott Forstall, the former head of Apple’s mobile software development. Mr. Cook made the change after months of simmering tensions between Mr. Forstall and other executives, which were exacerbated by the map problems. 
 
 As part of that shake-up, Mr. Cook gave Mr. Cue oversight of Apple Maps, along with Siri, the company’s voice-activated assistant technology in the iPhone. 
 
 Apple prepared for years to shift to its own mapping system. It acquired three start-ups and formed a partnership with TomTom, a Dutch maker of navigation systems. Tony Costa, a Forrester analyst, said Apple’s move was a necessary one, because iPhone owners were the most active users of mobile maps. 
 
 “To leave those people in Google’s hands is just something Apple can’t do,” Mr. Costa said. “Their ability to control and evolve and innovate with maps was limited by their dependence on Google.” 
 
 While they wait for Apple’s maps to get better, some Apple customers have also been waiting for Google to release its own maps app for Apple devices. People working on the app say they are seeking to finish it by the end of the year. 
 
 Tyler Bell, a product director of Factual, a company that Apple has listed as one of its data providers for business listings, said mapping services had become extremely challenging to produce because smartphone owners demand more from maps than ever before. 
 
 Apple, or any company that provides maps, has to collect data from many different vendors and then stitch it together to overlay onto a map, he said. Often there are duplicate entries, or locations are labeled or placed differently depending on the vendor. Along with using computer algorithms to cobble together the data, human testers are needed to smooth things out. 
 
 “All these things need to be improved, and it’s a never-ending problem,” Mr. Bell said. He added that he felt Apple had the proper tools in place to quickly improve its database, like a system that allows users to report problems. 
 
 But Marc Prioleau, a managing director of Prioleau Advisors, which provides consulting services for mapping companies, said it would take Apple a long time to fix its maps fully because of the scale and complexity of the effort. 
 
 Google had a huge head start, he said, because it began doing maps for stationary computers, a less demanding task, and could gradually build on the data as smartphones and tablets emerged.
– Now we know why Apple canned iOS guru Scott Forstall: He refused to sign a letter apologizing for iOS 6's much-maligned map app, sources tell the Wall Street Journal—a letter that CEO Tim Cook wound up signing himself. Forstall was close with Steve Jobs, and indeed was once considered a potential successor, but he had a contentious relationship with other Apple executives. Forstall had recently been heard complaining that Apple had no "decider" without Jobs. Chief designer Jonathan Ive reportedly refused to sit in on meetings with Forstall unless Cook was there to referee, according to ComputerWorld. Ive, interestingly enough, will be taking over Forstall's responsibilities—which, Harry McCracken at Time writes, could make him "the most important person at Apple." Yesterday's other departure, retail chief John Browett, was asked to leave as well, sources say, though in his case it was simply because he hadn't fit in at the company, and had botched the implementation of a new staffing formula.