The Information Profiles Eddy Cue

Aaron Tilley, writing for The Information (paywalled, alas; here’s MacRumors’s summary)

During meetings, Mr. Cue is sometimes known to fall silent, shut his eyes and tilt his head back, leaving other participants to wonder whether he is staring at the ceiling or sleeping, said several former Apple employees and one outside partner present on multiple occasions when it happened over the past few years. In at least two of these situations, Mr. Cue began snoring, one source said. […]

From the moment he gained responsibility for Siri, Mr. Cue seemed to lack much interest in it, according to people who worked on the project. When Siri team members presented Mr. Cue with technical data around the performance of the assistant — an area of frequent criticism of the technology — Mr. Cue appeared bored and seemed to fall asleep in at least two meetings, said a former Apple employee who was present.

I’ve heard some really good Eddy Cue stories over the years, but this falling asleep thing is a new one.

Also, I thought this was interesting:

Apple has improved Apple Maps since its troubled launch, boasting that the service is more popular on iPhones and iPads, on which it comes pre-installed, than Google Maps. But Google Maps still reaches more users because of the larger global audience of Android devices, and the quality of Google Maps often comes out ahead in independent evaluations.

One such evaluation was a blog post last year by the cartographer Justin O’Beirne, which chronicled in exhaustive detail the richer detail available on Google Maps. The post appeared to rattle Mr. Cue, who ordered changes to Apple Maps to satisfy internal concerns related to the blog post, said a former Apple employee. In June, Mr. Cue publicly promised further improvements to the service. Some observers believe Apple Maps faces a disadvantage as long as the company restricts it to Apple devices.

Bizarre to me that The Information didn’t even link to O’Beirne’s work. It’s good to know it caught Cue’s attention.

★ Friday, 7 September 2018