Mark Papermaster, whose departure from IBM for Apple led to some high profile legal wrangling, has now left Apple — chronologically following the antennagate saga, though no direct correlation has been reported. Apple spokesman Steve Dowling told the New York Times:

[Papermaster] is leaving the company and Bob Mansfield, senior vice president of Macintosh hardware engineering, is assuming his responsibilities. [...] Mr. Mansfield already oversees several technologies that are part of the iPhone, including the A4 chip, the retina display and touch screens,

Before being removed from Apple.com, Papermaster’s bio read as follows.

Mark Papermaster is Apple’s senior vice president of Devices Hardware Engineering. He leads the iPod and iPhone engineering teams, and reports directly to Apple’s CEO.

Papermaster has 25 years of product and technology experience, and was previously a vice president at IBM responsible for blade development including x86, POWER, storage blades, chassis, network electronics and associated ecosystem. He started his career in application-specific IC development circuit design at IBM's Microelectronics Division, and had technical and management assignments in quality, CAD tool applications, and microprocessors.

While Papermaster was notably absent from Apple’s recent iPhone 4 press conference, his replacement was up on stage with Steve Jobs and Tim Cook, Mansfield was front and center.

Update: According to Daring Fireball’s source, Papermaster was fired following antennagate:

Inside Apple, he's "the guy responsible for the antenna" — that's a quote from a source back on July 23. (Another quote from the same source: "Apparently the antenna guys used to have a big chip on their shoulder. No more.")

[NYT, Daring Fireball]

Mark Papermaster, head of iPhone hardware, leaves Apple is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

FaceTime accounts are currently tied to iPhone 4 phone numbers but new reports on iOS 4.1 beta 3 show the option to initiate a FaceTime video call via email address as well.

We’ve already seen rumors that FaceTime would be tied into Apple or iTunes IDs, and if Apple does indeed plan to roll out the service to future iPod touch and iPad devices with front-facing cameras but without phone numbers, it’s a logical and necessary step.

Why Apple didn’t use email as the basis for iPhone 4 FaceTime to start with is anyone’s guess but the idea of an Apple supported VoIP system for both video and audio (hit the home button to exit the video but keep the call going), that’s standards based and released as an open standard, is certainly interesting. If every iPod touch 4 and iPad 2 supports it, and other apps and devices running Android, webOS, etc. pick it up, it could be even more interesting.

Until/unless it supports SkypeIn/SkypeOut-like ability to call people on regular old phones it won’t be a threat to traditional telephony, but it could be a strong contender to the future.

I’m already using FaceTime whenever possible. I’d like to use it more. Opening it up to connections based on email is the first step.

Hopefully we’ll learn more at Apple’s traditional fall iPod and iTunes event, where iOS 4.1 is widely expected to debut.

[MacRumors, thanks Tristan!]

iOS 4.1 beta 3 features: FaceTime connections via Email is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Apple has added a Genius tab to the iPad version of the App Store. Tap the tab, agree to the terms of service, and Apple will upload an (anonymized) list of all your apps and games, compare them to lists of millions of other (also anonymized) users, and recommend other apps and games you may be interested in.

So if the what’s new and what’s hot sections just don’t strike your fancy, if the top selling, grossing, and free stuff has lost its charm, if the categories are just impossible to sort through, give the Genius tab a try.

Then come back here and let me know just how smart the newly enabled iPad Genius was for you.

(My results so far: it recommended Fruit Ninja based on Angry Birds, Tetris based on Flight Control, iTeleport based on Brushes, Osfooha based on Twitterrific — which is interesting because I already own all of those I just don’t have them installed currently).

[Thanks @ltaylor5311]

App Store Genius now serving up iPad recommendations is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog