Apple senior iPhone exec leaves. Was it all about the iPhone antenna?

And heads start to roll....

Maybe this is just a generalization from an old analog guy (me), but Papermaster was a CPU big shot. I can just see how he could take all that "analog stuff" for granted and not really be qualified to filter the BS when getting reports about RF design. He probably said to Jobs, "I dunno, I believed them when they told me it was better." and is justifiably gone for it.

master of what??? sounds like rank and yank. Definitely forward thinking.

Another one leaving for Agnilux? Remember that one?

Papermaster is a chip designer. The reason he left could be Intel talked Steve into using their new chips instead of a bespoke ARM chip Papermaster hired on to lead up. That would make a lot more sense than the antenna speculation.

Obviously i can only guess here but i suspect there is more to this than the antenna non issue. IOS is a heap of crap for one. Second and possible even more important the guy appeared to have zero drive, it is rather pathetic that Steve had to corral the troops to get iPad out the door after his illness. Then we have the other iPhone 4 issues which should have been squashed in testing, for example the proximity detection.

I just think it is wishful thinking to believe this is antenna gate only. If that was the case why has the guy been off apples radar for so long? He really hasn't been in public view at all.

Maybe he left because he's opposed to building a CDMA phone for Verizon / Sprint and a few international carriers. If the rumors are true, that's what Apple is going to do.

I was guessing that Apple would wait for the all-IP all-packet-switched "real 4G" to be rolled out in 2012 instead of building an interim CDMA and/or LTE iPhone to fill the gap.

But Android is gaining too much market share. Time to crush that.

Yes this was on the History Channel..... 2 days later....on TUAW.