Black_Mage
macrumors 6502a
Steve Jobs was able to work with him. 🤷 Maybe Scott was difficult to work with, but the reason for his dismissal was his refusal to sign the letter.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Tim Cook Calls Apple Maps Launch His 'First Really Big Mistake' as CEO
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
th0masp
macrumors 6502a
I'm pretty sure it must have been brought up before in this thread somewhere but just in case: first thing I thought of when reading this was the Mac Pro 2013 which had a tendency to cook itself. Famously most of the units used for the editing of some 2015-era movie (was it Deadpool?) had to be swapped out.
I was in the market for the Cylinder MP and vaguely recall the whole affair was making waves at the time.
And of course the butterfly keyboard. Years of 'You're holding it wrong' until they finally gave up denying the issue. Probably a bigger issue all in all than GPU failures in various models during Jobs' time .
Black_Mage
macrumors 6502a
I wonder why they didn't try to recoup some of the money they spent on Apple Car by offering to sell what they learned, along with the patents, to Tesla. Did that even occur to Tim?I would have thought Tim Cook wasting $10 billion+ on a vapour car was his biggest mistake.
Apple Spent More Than $10 Billion on Apple Car Before Canceling Project
Apple spent more than $10 billion working on the Apple Car over the last decade, according to a report from The New York Times that details the issues the project faced during development. Apple first launched the project in 2014 and let it flounder for more than a decade before calling it off...www.macrumors.com
Black_Mage
macrumors 6502a
The same Ive that gave us the stuttery mess that was iOS 7? The same Ive that made iOS look more like the Windows Metro UI with the flat design look? The same Ive who eventually started removing more I/O from the MacBook Pros because he wanted to prioritize form over function? He did great things for Apple in the late 90s and early 2000s, but he made some very poor decisions too. I think Scott would have preserved the loved Aqua look and understood how important fluid animations are for an OS.
I don’t advocate for any company.
Working in a cross platform environment for years, carrying both an Android and iPhone daily as part of the job, I embrace change and difference.
While Google has a certain reputation regarding privacy, Apple claims to protect it. But what if at some future point we learn they’ve not been so virtuous after all.
As is often the case, many years after the fact the truth is revealed. Blind trust is violated and suddenly it’s a whole different ballgame.
Apple Maps is the first thing I delete every time I buy a new iPhone. I do applaud Tim for admitting he messed up. Now I like him a little bit😂
Outgoing Apple CEO Tim Cook has named the botched 2012 launch of Apple Maps as his "first really big mistake" in the role, according to a Bloomberg report covering the town hall meeting that was held Tuesday with his recently announced successor, John Ternus.
The Maps app launched with mislabeled landmarks, faulty directions, and a user experience that fell well short of Google Maps at the time. "The product wasn't ready, and we thought it was because we were testing more of local kind of stuff," Cook told staff.
Reflecting on the debacle, Cook said it was "valuable," noting that he expressed regret to users at the time and suggested they use competing navigation apps instead.
From the report:
The fallout led to the first major management shake-up of Cook's tenure, with software chief Scott Forstall – a close Steve Jobs collaborator – pushed out in the aftermath. (Fun fact: Forstall was recently invited back to Apple Park to celebrate the company's 50th anniversary.)
On the bright side, Cook singled out the Apple Watch and its expanding health features as the work he's most proud of. He recalled receiving his first note from a user whose life had been saved by the device. "It caused me to just stop in my steps," he said.
Cook conceded that his list of mistakes would be "extraordinary in length" (the never-released AirPower charging mat and Apple's abandoned car project would surely be high up there) but the CEO has successfully avoided the kind of product recalls and cancellations that have plagued other consumer device companies over the last 15 years.
Cook became CEO in August 2011 and hands over the reins to Ternus, currently chief of hardware engineering, on September 1, 2026.
Article Link: Tim Cook Calls Apple Maps Launch His 'First Really Big Mistake' as CEO
So you are saying iOS 26 has been better than iOS 6 when it came out? 😳 iOS 26 has been the worst software experience ever and Tahoe as well. It has ruined everything. iOS 15 was pretty good but iOS 6 was the best of all and a googolplex times better than iOS 26.
Yes indeed. Apple Maps lag far behind the other offerings.
Just like another Apple product.
A word that comes to mind is Siri 😂
kalsta
macrumors 68000
Yes, I’m absolutely serious. Look, you (and everyone else here) are entitled to have whatever opinion you do about Tim Cook and the way he has managed Apple — but if someone confesses to having made a mistake, and all you do is use that as another opportunity to kick them in the guts… well honestly, I think that says more about you than it does the person who admitted the mistake. (Nothing to do with him being a billionaire.)
Analog Kid
macrumors G3
Why is this site soooo hung up on AirPower? It is really a non-event, which is made crystal clear when it’s put in such close comparison to the car project.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Cook needed to be reminded what it even was— a charging mat that was teased and never released. -blip- For something so inconsequential— there was some potentially cool tech and magnetic field modeling involved but to the user it was really nothing more than a charge pad that would have been of minor interest if released and left no real gap by not being released— this site keeps going back to it like it was a global embarrassment.
User 6502
macrumors 65816
It
It started a trend of presenting things that didn’t exist if not in a rendering. It degenerated in the botched presentation of Apple ai
Analog Kid
macrumors G3
Whatever. People complain Apple is too secretive, people complain Apple shares before they should.
throAU
macrumors G4
If they were inevitable someone else would have done them just as well.
ThailandToo
macrumors 65816
You can feel how you want. I feel like Mr Crook stole from all the stakeholders who weren’t shareholders. He stole goodwill, he stole from employees, developers, and customers - outright by selling iPhone 16 series based on vaporware. He’s a misleading, lying, and manipulative crook, so the name Crook works for Cook! I don’t care that you think it sounds like Trump - I am not Trump, and I have no power. Just a person with a strong opinion and sad for how Crook stole from everyone like Forstall to the workforce he employed to ensure he got wealthy by making shareholders wealthier. Great at making money, but a crook and willing to cross anyone to ensure he turned Apple into being run like a financial institution only caring about shareholders instead of all stakeholders to take all the advantages for himself.
the8thark
macrumors 601
Mac Fly (film)
macrumors 68040
Tim is a good operations guy, no one argues this. To use an example: Tim would be able take a reasonable successful airline and make it more profitable which would please shareholders. Does that mean the world is a better place with this airline in it as opposed to another airline? Apple historically made money, but it wasn't the primary goal. The Apple tax was because the hardware and software were superior, the reputation followed and people bought their products for this.
Tim more and more made money the primary goal for Apple, and yet in recent times software quality became worse and up-sells and services are popping up everywhere. This can make more money, but it also also worsen the experience for the end user. Will ads make the Maps app more profitable? Likely. Will it make it a worse app for the user? Likely.
I believe this and some related reasons are where some of the criticism of him is coming from. It's born of frustrations like these. And not so much from people playing armchair CEO. People can remember ways Apple products and software were better. You can't blame them for that.
Last edited:
"The product wasn't ready, and we thought it was because we were testing more of local kind of stuff"
I worked for American tech companies for my entire career and, without exception, they have all suffered from this kind of myopia. The idea that Paris might be different to Sunnyvale is beyond the comprehension of many, so it comes as no great surprise that successfully navigating from 1 Infinite Loop to Evvia in Palo Alto was quite enough UAT for them to launch Maps globally. 😉
I do think that Apple's reaction and retraction was nothing short of amazing. To recommend that your customers use your competitors' offerings is something I can't remember seeing anywhere else (please correct me, I am genuinely interested!).
I worked for American tech companies for my entire career and, without exception, they have all suffered from this kind of myopia. The idea that Paris might be different to Sunnyvale is beyond the comprehension of many, so it comes as no great surprise that successfully navigating from 1 Infinite Loop to Evvia in Palo Alto was quite enough UAT for them to launch Maps globally. 😉
I do think that Apple's reaction and retraction was nothing short of amazing. To recommend that your customers use your competitors' offerings is something I can't remember seeing anywhere else (please correct me, I am genuinely interested!).
Wikipedia suggests that Jobs had done something similar in the past (presumably in reference to MobileMe) but I couldn't quickly spot anything the references to support Jobs literally saying "use the competitors product". Still, MobileMe is the obvious rebuttle to "Steve would have never...".
It all makes a bit more sense given that Apple's previous "Maps" app was basically a skin on Google Maps - and the development of Apple Maps was rushed because Google was offering turn-by-turn navigation on Android but refusing to support it on iOS.
I7guy
macrumors Westmere
Forstall as I understand it was a toxic senior manager and Cook did what he needed to do. Simple as that.
User 6502
macrumors 65816
And that clearly was his biggest mistake ever.
I7guy
macrumors Westmere
You are certainly welcome to your opinion, but outside of MR, Tim Cook is regarded as one of the best tech CEOs.