It's not so much as petty as it is a need to control the direction of the conversation. By placing a stake in the ground, the conversation will stay in the general area that the company (and I'm not including only Apple here) wants it to. Part of the field called "public relations".

^ a phenomenon known as "anchoring", for anyone interested.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring

A lot of people about the top care more about their position and the power it represents rather than what it actually means for the company. Yeah, they are egomaniac children, most of the time.

The Iron Law of Institutions:

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_institutions

Nice reference, I did not know it. "The people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution 'fail' while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to 'succeed' if that requires them to lose power within the institution.

I like the reference to Milton as well : "It is better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven."

I actually see this rather as evidence of a strong corporate culture which recognizes the need for execs to take responsibility for mistakes, as the chapter from the Lashinsky book on Apple management famously quoted about the rubric being crossed when VP's are promoted: http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-on-the-difference-...

(Kinda wish a few more companies made this expectation clear... too much deadwood at the VP level in many IT companies I deal with...)

It's hard to say what happened since we haven't heard Forstall's side of the story but maybe then Cook or the board saw the tension between Ive and Forstall camps, and recognized that losing Ive to another company would be devastating. So they set Forstall up to fail by setting him up to get Maps done in two years (or however long they were planning)

Regardless, even if Maps is totally Forstall's fault, they still threw him under the bus with this story.

I think it's mostly a signal to the market that they've heard the ridicule.

the game to get into that seat is not exactly set in favor of the magnanimous nice guys.

It's mostly sociopaths in the upper ranks of companies.

It's not really that petty. This stuff is the essence about what leadership teams tend to deal with.

Not just executives, a majority of non-leaf nodes (but not all). The more money that's at stake, the more petty and childish people act. Acting like a child is an actual strategy people use. If people act rationally it provides a stronger basis for criticism and makes them a target. If someone acts like a child then people say "wow that person's a real stupid jackass that only wants power." If someone tries to rationalize bumping off their competition, its "wow that person is a real threat."