Friend-of-a-friend-of-a-former-Apple-employee (no names!) has just fed an awfully convenient (and admittedly unsubstantiated) rumor to the mill: MobileMe was run by Rob Schoeben, VP of Applications Marketing (including Pro Apps, iWork, and iLife) at Apple, who was a former Microsoft executive and who brought in fellow former Microsofties as well. Blogger Chuq Von Rospach intimates that Schoeben’s head may well now decorate, pike-top, Steve Jobs’ figurative wall outside 1 Infinite Loop. In more realistic terms:

Whether he was literally walked to the parking lot iwth a box of his stuff in full view of the cheering crowds of Apple employees, I don’t know – but that’s the image I get of this, based on how it was told to me. And for better or worse, I can see Steve Jobs doing something like that.

Since the term “getting Steved” is, rightly or wrongly, a near legendary tech-industry meme, it’s safe to say so can a lot of other people. But did this all really go down, and in the way suggested? And is the Microsoft connection merely being played up entirely for the benefit of the “smarts”?

Maybe.

Meanwhile, Chuq also gets into the recent 3G chipset issues, which we covered earlier today and will update with his further rumormongering…

C’mon. A day without a MobileMe post is like a day without rain. Or something. So after yesterday’s John Gruber vs. Om Malik showdown, former Apple insider Chuq Von Rospach has strapped on the gloves and joined the fray — in impressive fashion.

Says Chuq, after joking that Jobs is likely walking the MobileMe halls with a flame thrower round about now:

Gruber nails this (see below). MobileMe is a tiny thing compared to iTunes. Apple gets it, and executes it amazingly well. That this release was botched isn’t about Apple not having a clue, but about the MobileMe people either blowing it (I can think of any number of scenarios — scaling it hard). The ultimate failure seemed to be more capacity planning mistakes than anything else, if I’m guessing right. but the ultimate failure was not being willing to tell Steve “we aren’t ready” and taking that heat. They thought they could release and make it work, and guessed very wrong (or thought they were in good shape, which is worse).

The entire post is a fascinating read — chock full of insights, especially about new Apple VP of Internet Services (iTunes + MobileMe + App Store) Eddy Cue, whom comes off looking like a boss just a little to the right of Darkseid…