When outrageous businessman/personality Donald Trump finds someone unacceptable on his reality TV show, he gloats and announces with utter sarcasm, “You’re fired!” It is clear that Tim Cook, in putting his stamp on his tenure as CEO of Apple, has evidently taken that phrase to heart. Well, perhaps partly.

In an unexpected move on Tuesday, it was announced that two key Apple executives were on the way out. Of these, iOS software head Scott Forstall had the longest history at Apple. The other executive, John Browett, held the post as head of Apple’s retail division for about ten months.

Now Forstall, a NeXT veteran, had once been regarded as a potential successor to Steve Jobs, and even as a replacement for Tim Cook if the latter’s tenure as CEO faltered.

It’s fairly clear why Browett had to go. His management of the Apple Store demonstrated he didn’t have the chops, or even the style, to run the retail division originally established by Steve Jobs and his predecessor, Ron Johnson. In a particularly foolish move, Browett’s reported attempt to focus more heavily on profits from the retail stores, and engaging in MBA-style cost cutting, was quickly reversed. For now Cook will manage the division until a replacement is found. And that may not be easy. The Apple Store set the bar for company outlets, and it’s going to be difficult to find an executive with the skills and the vision to carry it forward.

When it comes to Forstall, his duties have been parceled out to other executives. Apple’s “Mr. Fixit,” Eddy Cue, the Senior Vice President for Internet Software and Services, has reportedly been given the job of fixing the flawed Siri and Map features of the iOS. Indeed, several reports claim that Forstall was given the boot because he refused to agree to sign that letter of contrition about severe Maps flaws. As you recall, Tim Cook took full responsibility.

Forstall’s main assignment, running the iOS division, has been passed on to Craig Federighi, the Senior Vice President of Software Engineering, who is also handling OS X. Putting both the desktop and mobile OS in the hands of a single person may also help better integrate the two development cycles.

Meantime, Jonathan Ive cements his post as the creative go-to person at Apple, inheriting both hardware and software Human Interface across the company. Perhaps he’ll also eliminate some of the design excesses for such apps as Calendar and Contacts in both the iOS and OS X. That, by the way, is yet another beef Apple might have had with Forstall.

According to those widely published reports, Forstall evidently had a reputation as yet another mercurial personality allegedly engaged in the worst kind of corporate politics. The stories suggest that he was the sort of person who’d be quick to claim credit for his team’s successes, and just as quick to pass on the blame to others when things went wrong. Such claims paint a picture of someone who didn’t work well with others. While Steve Jobs, himself no easy person to deal with, might have tolerated such behavior, Tim Cook appears to prefer fewer emotional extremes.

But I caution the reader that these widespread reports aren’t going to be officially confirmed by Apple, and “informed sources” reporting may not provide a full picture of what actually occurred.

With the stock market closed, it’s also hard to guess how Wall Street will respond to Apple’s executive shakeup, though that might be obvious by the time you read this article. On the other hand, there’s little to indicate that the new assignments passed on to other executives could possibly hurt the company. If Maps and Siri become better, if OS design excesses are toned down, and general hardware and software performs more reliably, it’ll be a good thing. It certainly demonstrates that Cook is using a strong hand to keep Apple going. Just tolerating executive failures would, in the end, hurt the company severely.

Indeed, you wonder why the board of directors at Microsoft isn’t exerting stronger authority to eliminate some of that company’s problems adapting to the 21st century. Did the world really need Windows 8 and the interface formerly known as Metro? Is the Surface tablet a true competitor to the iPad and Android gear? Does CEO Steve Ballmer have a clue about how to move Microsoft from its reliance on Windows and Office, and recognize where the PC is going?

If Windows 8 and the Surface bomb, and the jury is still out on that score, would Microsoft’s board have the guts to dump Ballmer, regardless of the size of his golden parachute?

You can bet that, if Tim Cook cannot right the ship at Apple — and it’s certainly not sinking — he’d be looking for a new job really quickly. Today’s Apple isn’t the sort of company to tolerate serious failure for very long. But for now, Cook’s Apple may be a nicer place to work, without needless departures from the key corporate goals of selling trend-setting products and making loads of money.

I have a client who spent years preparing reports in Microsoft Word for local educational systems. He had devised a fairly sophisticated workflow that involved using a keyboard shortcut program to trigger such functions as application launching, opening a new page, and choosing the proper text format.

Now before we go on, let me also tell you that the client in question was using Word 5.1a, a version dating back to the early 1990s, Tempo II Plus, a macro program from that decade, and a vintage Power Mac G4 running Mac OS 9.2.

True, he also had a more recent iMac running OS 10.5, and Office 2008. But he seldom used the newer Microsoft productivity suite because it didn’t have any new features that he needed. The rest, to him, was needless fluff and not at all helpful to his work. Besides, that macro utility, and the company that created it, Affinity Microsystems, were history. Indeed, the client developed a personal association with the owner of that defunct company, so he could get assistance in making new macros, and troubleshooting.

Obviously, Microsoft continues to upgrade Office every few years, adding still more needless features. For Windows 8, the forthcoming Office 2013 even lets you, after a fashion, access the controversial ribbon toolbars via touch. They expand, you see, when you tap them. Talk about desperation.

Now I do attempt to keep my apps up to date, so I do have Office 2011 for the Mac. While Word 2011 seems a tad snappier than previous versions, it is still quite bloated, and the ribbon, though less invasive on the Mac version, is poorly done. The artwork is badly crafted, functions aren’t always clear, and buttons seem randomly placed and shaped. I cannot actually think of any new feature, of the few that are offered, that actually justifies the upgrade. As of today, Microsoft’s only concession to Lion and Mountain Lion is support for full screen apps. Auto Save and Version are still missing in action.

So I read an article from TheStreet, suggesting that Microsoft Office is the centerpiece that will determine whether the Surface tablet gains traction against the iPad.

Up till now, Microsoft’s plans about the future of Office on the Mac platform were considered crucial to its success. Let’s not forget that controversial appearance of Bill Gates, via satellite, at a 1990s Macworld Expo keynote, where he was promised that Office development would continue. After all, without Office, businesses wouldn’t buy Macs, period. But the author of that article, TheStreet’s Rocco Pendola, after working with Apple’s iWork office suite, opted to cancel his order for Office.

Understand that the various iWork apps do not have quite the number of features of Microsoft’s productivity suite. While there is file compatibility between iWork and Office of a sort, some of the special features from the latter won’t fully translate. Consider writers and editors that depend on Word’s Track Changes feature. There’s a similar capability in Pages, but the conversion is not perfect. That could be the deal breaker.

In general, Apple’s lightweight office suite is quite capable and, in the case of the Keynote presentation app, considerably better than PowerPoint in most key respects. Rather than concentrate on features most people will never use, Apple’s decision to focus on what makes for a capable word processor, spreadsheet and presentation apps might be sufficient to convert many users from Office if total compatibility isn’t essential.

Unfortunately, Microsoft Office is still required in many businesses; the promise of file compatibility isn’t enough. While more and more Macs are making it in the enterprise, the loss of Office could be the deal breaker. Perhaps that explains why it seems that Apple is walking on eggshells when it comes to updating and promoting iWork. The last major update was released in 2009, an eternity in the software businesses. While there have been occasional rumors of an iWork upgrade, there have only been minor updates, most recently to add support for Lion and Mountain Lion.

Sometimes you wonder if Apple even cares about iWork, but you can see where they went as far as developing an iOS version. That presents a real commitment. There are even occasional published reports that Microsoft wants to bring Office to the iPad and iPhone, while at the same time the presence of Office on the Surface may be an important factor in persuading some people to buy that tablet.

On the other hand, if Microsoft perceives that an iOS version would be far more profitable, particularly if the Surface tanks. As much as some of you may want to see Apple deliver a version of iWork that would encourage Microsoft to leave the platform, it’s still not certain that the effort would be worth the risk.

Then again, it’s all about money. If ongoing Office for Mac sales don’t meet Microsoft’s standards, you can bet they’ll take their business elsewhere regardless of the status of iWork. For now, I don’t expect to see any changes, but a really compelling up iWork upgrade would be really welcomed.

Anyone who has an ax to grind against Apple would have found lots of fuel for the fire this week what with Apple’s new product launches, and quarterly financials that fell short of financial analyst guesses. While Apple is not immune to criticism, these so-called analysts often take the criticisms too far, or they betray a shocking ignorance of the industry they are paid to analyze.

Just the other day, for example, a Forbes magazine contributor, who will go unnamed for the usual reasons, concluded that Apple couldn’t justify charging a higher price for the iPad mini, and use “thin” as what he called “a long term strategy you can count on.”

Well, obviously Apple isn’t just claiming the iPad mini is better because it is thinner. During his presentation at the San Jose media event, VP Philip Schiller made a huge deal over the fact that the iPad mini, by dint of its standard aspect ratio and larger display size, provided a better user experience compared to 7-inch tablets. Consider an iPad mini and a 7-inch Android tablet in landscape mode, and launch the Web browser. With the iPad mini, you get to see an acceptable amount of content, while the Android tablet’s display barely shows much more than a site’s headers without lots and lots of scrolling.

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On the eve of the release of Apple’s fourth quarter financials, the stock price had been drifting, perhaps because some analysts thought the iPad mini was too expensive. How can Apple dare charge $329 for a product that was in the same category — at least according to their perceptions — as a $199 Amazon Kindle Fire or Google Nexus 7?

Now when it comes to Apple’s revenue, this had to be a nail biter. Microsoft is growing, but not as fast. Wall Street was naturally concerned when Google didn’t earn quite as much as they expected. So that left Apple, where questions were raised about Mac sales in a declining PC market, and how many copies of the iPhone 5 were moved in the September quarter.

Well, when the financials were released, Apple’s stock price tumbled, but you may wonder why. Quarterly revenue, at $36 billion, was a tad above Wall Street expectations, and net profits of $8.2 billion, or $8.67 per diluted share, was a tad below. All in all, it would seem to be a wash, except for one thing. Apple reported selling 14 million iPads. While that was a 26% unit increase over last year, it was still below analyst expectations of 15 million.

So has iPad ardor cooled, or is it just the consequence of being unable to predict trends and sales in what’s still a relatively new product category?

During the quarterly conference call with financial analysts, CEO Tim Cook attributed a seasonal reduction in iPad sales, at least compared to the last quarter, on the fact that K-12 educational buyers usually make their purchases in the June quarter. He didn’t suggest that anticipation of an iPad mini might have also put some potential customers on the sidelines.

That takes us to the current quarter with a fourth generation iPad and the iPad mini fleshing out the product lineup. It could be a blowout, and Wall Street will quickly forget the fact that their estimates, which usually have little basis in fact anyway, weren’t met.

As you recall, in the last quarter, iPhone sales were subpar, and Apple’s stock price took a hit for a while. On that occasion, Apple did attribute the perceived shortfall to anticipation of an iPhone 5.

When it comes to iPad mini pricing, there’s a published report that Apple is paying a premium for the GF2 touchscreen modules used on the smaller tablet, estimated at roughly $5 less than the comparable part on the full-sized iPad. So maybe prices will be reduced once production becomes more efficient, and component cost is reduced to a more reasonable rate. Or maybe not, if the iPad mini becomes the hot ticket for the holiday season.

Surprisingly, Apple still throws cold water on the prospects for 7-inch tablets, with Cook saying, “We don’t think they’re good products, and we would never make one.” Clearly Apple places the 7.9-inch iPad mini in a very different category.

Cook also had some pithy comments to make about the Microsoft Surface. Labeling it a “fairly compromised, confusing product,” Cook remarked, “You could design a car that flies and floats, but I don’t think it would do all of those things very well.”

With the launch of the iPhone 5 near the end of the September quarter, a total of 26.9 million units were sold of all models. This figure represents a unit growth of 58% compared to last year. Demand continues to exceed supply. So Apple has nothing to apologize for, although the backlog could hurt total sales for a while, amid reports that the iPhone 5 is really difficult to build, but that’s nothing new for Apple.

When it comes to the Mac, Apple actually did better than estimates and, in fact, surveys of U.S. sales, where fewer Macs were allegedly sold. According to Apple, Mac sales totaled 4.9 million. Note-books occupied 80% of sales, though that breakdown is apt to change somewhat with the arrival of the new Mac mini and, later this year, ultra-thin iMacs. In all, Mac sales grew, but only by one percent. But PC sales were down 8%, as PC OEMs and Microsoft hope and pray that the arrival of Windows 8 will change things for the better. All this comes despite the fact that reviews of Windows 8 are far less favorable than I’ve seen for any previous Microsoft OS.

For this quarter, Apple is expecting revenue of $52 billion, with earnings per share of $11.75. But if any individual product appears to miss estimates, you can bet that Wall Street will freak.

Despite giving out dividends to stockholders, Apple’s cash hoard continues to soar. At the end of the September quarter, Apple had $121.4 billion in cash on hand, up from $117.2 billion the previous quarter. Despite this largesse, I do not expect Apple to be making any huge acquisitions anytime soon, even for Twitter or, if failure looms, Microsoft.

Those of you who want to go deep and dirty into the raw figures can get the rest of the information from Apple’s site.