Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi Discuss Maps and 'Learning From Apple's Failures' In New Interview

[coolfactor]

I wish they could explain why transits are being introduced at the speed of two cities per month and why maps doesn't have transits, cycle and walking routes. Even why maps in the Netherlands pronounce street names wrong. All things google maps handles very well....

One can imagine just how complex this stuff is to get right. They already launched maps with flawed data, I suspect they are not willing to repeat that mistake again. Since there already is Google Maps, there's no rush for them to have everything now. They are taking the steady-as-she-goes path... and I respect that.
[doublepost=1470840935][/doublepost]

Eddie: do all the interviews you want. Pero por favor, Stay off the stage in September.

Why? Eddie's pretty cool. He's not weird or annoying or trying too hard to be cool. He's just cool.

 

[SMIDG3T]

Isn't there already a speedometer in your car already?

Nah. You can't expect him to take his eyes off his phone while driving. That's asking too much!!

 

[mtneer]

Ouch.. Scott Forstall still gets fresh bus tire tracks on him 4 years on....

 

[The Phazer]

I agree. I am no fan of Apple Maps but it's odd that there have been several interviews recently specifically talking about the Maps fiasco. I mean, that was four years ago. We all know that the product sucked when it launched and that the "The more you use it, the better it will get" line was a lie. For some people, it still sucks (or it is inferior to the competition). I wonder why Apple execs keep referring back to the debacle now? Maybe trying to set the stage for a complete reboot of the product? Although, this seems like an odd way to do that.

Maybe they're going to let users do what they should have allowed the month Maps shipped and let people uninstall the entire junk framework and let people replace it with far superior alternatives.

And yes, there are a lot of people who should apologise for pushing misinformation about it that using it helped the product get better. It didn't. Apple had no plan to do that. It was just a rubbish product. Apple claim this is why they have public betas, but there were more than enough people who told them during the developer betas of iOS 6 that Maps was junk. Apple just ignored them.

It's odd that this completely contradicts the other part of the interview -

When asked about Apple's opinion regarding the belief that companies -- including Facebook and Amazon -- are attempting to gain "ownership of the customer throughout the day," both Cue and Federighi said that Apple doesn't think of their services and products in that way. The company is encouraging of the third-party apps that flourish on iOS, like Uber, and doesn't see a need to spread itself so thin as to try and become and create these experiences itself.

Maps was entirely an ownership play, and the integration of it into the OS rather than providing a suitable API for third party map programmes was exactly Apple spreading itself too think to try and create those experiences itself.

Maps continues to be a disaster. It makes the entire iOS platform fundamentally worse by virtue of it's mere existence. Apple expends huge resource on it for little practical effect and at the expense of other projects that would be better. And for what? At this point surely only internal stubbornness that the Apple senior management should have scrapped the entire thing before it shipped and are too embarrassed to admit as such.

But no, instead we're about to repeat the process of a hugely unpopular functionality reduction with the removal of the headphone port.

 

[sehix]

Isn't there already a speedometer in your car already?

Three, if I have one on the iPhone running.

The main speedo doesn't want to show in some weather (bang!bang!bang! on the dash to wake it up), the ScanGauge is the backup to the main, and doesn't exactly match the analog display, and the GPS-reading speed display on the 'phone doesn't agree with either of the others, quite, when the truck's got snow tires on, since they're slightly smaller than the OEM tires fitted to the truck at the factory. (Hey, it's got 280K miles on now and still gets me to work.)

With one speedometer you can think you know how fast you're going, with two or more you can never be certain.

 

[smaffei]

'm afraid that they've lost their "magic" and are allowing competitors the opportunity to convince me that Apple is not what it used be..no more...Sigh

Agreed. This comes from no longer being hungry. Apple has become fat and complacent. And, it's not a single big competitor that is slowing kill them. It's bunch of smaller companies hitting them in different sectors.

 

[Bubba Satori]

Even when they're apologizing they're bragging.
Magical.

 

[ThunderSkunk]

[doublepost=1470839596][/doublepost]How difficult it is to add speed meter to maps when you are driving?

Fairly often I wish the map would tell you what the speed limit of the road is. Pretty common to pull out onto a road and just guess what the limit is until you see a sign 4 miles down the road. It'd be nice if there were an option to just have it add that more useful info to the spoken directions, and have it filter out redundant spoken turn information for less of a jumble. ...or be able to ask siri. ...or have it remind you of the limit when you go over by a few mph. Clearly it knows the limits, as it uses them to calculate trip distance.

Though more importantly, Maps inability to calculate an efficient route involving more than a start and a finish is what really limits its usefulness: I've got 2 stops to make, and once on the road, it can't get a good enough connection to load more maps = useless.

Not to mention, the blue position dot, only slightly larger in dia than the also blue progress line its on. Are you trying to hide the location indicator? Not helping is the low-contrast colour schema, hard enough to make out at a glance, and harder still when you invert the colors at night so you're not driving around with it lighting up the interior & blinding you...

Pretty basic stuff that should have been worked out in the first year.

 

[2457282]

Why? Eddie's pretty cool. He's not weird or annoying or trying too hard to be cool. He's just cool.

Maybe in Canada he's cool. But much of the problems at Apple I blame Eddie for. After reading the testimony surrounding the iBooks class action, it was clear that Eddie was to blame. Apple Music, iCloud, iTunes, we can go on, but basically the services are all under Eddie and the services is where Apple really needs to get it together. The problems in those areas makes Eddie very not cool in my book.

 

[MacNeto]

"Cue: So we don't want to be Amazon and be Facebook and be Instagram and so on. Why? Or Uber. Why? I think it's awesome that Travis and his team have done Uber on our platform. It would not exist without our platform, let's be clear. But great for them for thinking of that problem, and solving it. We would never have ever solved that problem. We weren't looking that way. We would have never seen it.

Federighi: It is an interesting, ongoing press narrative, however. To the extent that anyone anywhere does anything interesting, the question is: Why isn't Apple doing that; why is Apple behind in that? We aren't the Everything Company. We take on a very small number of things that we do very well, and we find that pretty rewarding."


This state of mind pretty much sums up why Eddie Cue has no clue, and Craig Federighi should lead apple.

 

[Jimmy James]

That pic. Is he looking for a date?

 

[Rogifan]

i wish these guys could stop interviews for a while and get back to doing/making what their customers want....like updated macs that can compete on their own, and something that actually wows you and makes you say I need to have it, not just a new color, not something thinner. Something that actually is impressive and works.

I'm afraid that they've lost their "magic" and are allowing competitors the opportunity to convince me that Apple is not what it used be..no more...Sigh

You make it sound like these guys are giving interviews every day. Apple has tens of thousands of employees doing the work. That doesn't stop because an executive gave a magazine interview.

It accomplishes two things:

- Reminds people of a time when Apple was a more interesting, relevant company.

- Distracts people from their current failures and lack of direction (HA!) as a whole.

What was more interesting about Apple in 2012?

 

[LordVic]

The words that come out of some of the Apple Exec.s mouths are brain-numbing, especialyl with hindsight.

Apple Maps? So they just admitted that they basically dumped the entire project on a few people and then gave them no support and let them fail, then when it failed, they threw the lead of that team under the bus...

or Cue claiming the only reason Uber exists because of Apple's Platform. Everytime Cue opens his mouth I want bees to fly down his throat. his ego is so big he thinks he invented the smartphone, the smartphone OS and Applications that can be run and installed on a smartphone. And he seems to want to take most of the credit.

More and more when I read the Apple Executive team speak I realize that these guys have absolutely no clue what actually is in the real world anymore. They're kings sitting in their castle on mountains of gold, having parties and hanging with celebrities, and then wondering why their peasants don't also act and want the same things as those celebrities.

 

[TheTissot11]

I wonder if Apple has actually learned anything from Maps debacle. These days both macOS and iOS are full of bugs until the last version. And then a new version is released with new bugs and not necessarily fixing the bugs in the old OS. I really don't like Eddie Cue and Craig Federighi. These guys just try to defend any ridiculous move by Apple and pretend that everything is okay on the software development front, which is definitely not the case.

 

[S.B.G]

I appreciate they want to do the best they can and listen to customer feedback, but I can't help think of the Mac Pro. We're coming up on 1,000 days since its last update and I see many people here clamoring for an update to stay current with technology. While I'm not in the market for one, I still (want) to look at the Mac Pro as the flagship Mac by which to compare all of other Mac's [and PC's] by, similarly like the Chevrolet Corvette is the flagship vehicle of General Motors.

Without having knowledge of their teams, goals and priorities, and just looking in from the outside, it seems to me that Apple should have more than enough resources, given the wealth of the company, to have a team working on the Mac Pro and keeping it up to date.

 

[LordVic]

Maybe in Canada he's cool. But much of the problems at Apple I blame Eddie for. After reading the testimony surrounding the iBooks class action, it was clear that Eddie was to blame. Apple Music, iCloud, iTunes, we can go on, but basically the services are all under Eddie and the services is where Apple really needs to get it together. The problems in those areas makes Eddie very not cool in my book.

Don't lump all us flappy headed canucks together. Can't stand Cue. Think he's a terrible designer who borrowed a lot of his design looks from others, put it together in one or two packages, and has been riding those same designs for almost a decade. Cue has been living on the same basic designs since and has only been repeating "THINNER!" as his design acumen.

It makes it worse when he then speaks and actually talks like he thinks he's all hot **** and that everything that made Apple today was his designs. And now in this post, he even goes to far and start taking credit for other's success, like Uber

 

[bdkennedy1]

All these wonderful articles and insights from the Apple execs are great. Now get back to updating the fu**ing hardware.

 

[chabig]

Agreed. This comes from no longer being hungry. Apple has become fat and complacent. And, it's not a single big competitor that is slowing kill them. It's bunch of smaller companies hitting them in different sectors.

And yet when asked to elaborate, nobody can name the wow feature they are waiting for. Why is that?

 

[Rogifan]

"Cue: So we don't want to be Amazon and be Facebook and be Instagram and so on. Why? Or Uber. Why? I think it's awesome that Travis and his team have done Uber on our platform. It would not exist without our platform, let's be clear. But great for them for thinking of that problem, and solving it. We would never have ever solved that problem. We weren't looking that way. We would have never seen it.

Federighi: It is an interesting, ongoing press narrative, however. To the extent that anyone anywhere does anything interesting, the question is: Why isn't Apple doing that; why is Apple behind in that? We aren't the Everything Company. We take on a very small number of things that we do very well, and we find that pretty rewarding."


This state of mind pretty much sums up why Eddie Cue has no clue, and Craig Federighi should lead apple.

That comment from Cue is just so bad. One dissing Uber, and two saying Apple would never have thought of something like that. I don't think you'd hear anyone else at Apple ever make a statement like that. I remember earlier this year when Tim Cook was in Europe and in interviews was talking up the iPad Pro as a PC replacement. Then Cue does an interview with CNN about Apple TV and when asked about the iPad Pro said he thinks it's great for checking email, browsing the web and consuming content. Facepalm.

I think the guy needs to go but at a minimum keep him off stage and don't let him do interviews.

 

[citysnaps]

Apple maps is still garbage compared to google maps, but it's more used because it's built in and the default

So congrats apple?

Garbage? For me it's solid. Have been using Apple Maps exclusively for almost two years (except for when I need street view). I have a choice and use Maps because I like it better, not because its built-in or the default.

 

[44267547]

Eddie, you are a failure. Next in line please.

 

[loby]

Ouch.. Scott Forstall still gets fresh bus tire tracks on him 4 years on....

I was thinking the same thing. But what egos....indirectly still blaming him and saying that they made mistakes to sound like they take responsibility for the maps failure. Saying that the maps team was small and isolated, did Their own thing. And who are they saying did what they wanted with no accountability...Forstall. Please..stop blaming him and suck up to what mistakes they have done in the last four years...

I will not list any...it is most of what I see and read on macrumors for the last 4 years....before the new era for Apple, macrumors was a place to come and read and learn about Apple products from the users comments, but now it seems that this forum is the complaining forum or the issue forum for Apple products. It is not macrumors fault...

 

[newdeal]

Yet maps still sucks

 

[TheRainKing]

Oh, Craig <3

Seriously though, this bit made me smile. Tim is not Steve and people here need to realize that and get over it.

How is not trying to emulate the man who saved Apple and turned it into the biggest company in the world a good thing?

 

[LordVic]

Garbage? For me it's solid. Have been using Apple Maps exclusively for almost two years (except for when I need street view). I have a choice and use Maps because I like it better, not because its built-in or the default.

Apple Maps still hasn't been getting the love it needs in all Markets. USA seems to be getting the bulk of the attention. But internationally, there is still a lot of errors and missing items in the maps.
[doublepost=1470844017][/doublepost]

I was thinking the same thing. But what egos....indirectly still blaming him and saying that they made mistakes to sound like they take responsibility for the maps failure. Saying that the maps team was small and isolated, did Their own thing. And who are they saying did what they wanted with no accountability...Forstall. Please..stop blaming him and suck up to what mistakes they have done in the last four years...

I will not list any...it is most of what I see and read on macrumors for the last 4 years....before the new era for Apple, macrumors was a place to come and read and learn about Apple products from the users comments, but now it seems that this forum is the complaining forum or the issue forum for Apple products. It is not macrumors fault...

They shoved Forstall into a silo, for a massive project. Gave him little to no support, and when the product was less than stellar, they completely blamed the person they shoved into a silo and believe they did nothing wrong.

So many egos, with way too much power / money.