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Profile of Apple's Eddy Cue, Who Oversees Company's Internet Software and Services (theinformation.com)
The Information (paywalled) reports: In 2012, Mr. Cue took on even more responsibility when Mr. Cook fired Scott Forstall, then a senior vice president of the iOS software powering iPhones. Mr. Forstall had overseen the launch of Apple Maps, which was panned due to misplaced landmarks, distorted satellite images and other problems. With Mr. Forstall gone, Mr. Cue took over Apple Maps and Siri, the intelligent assistant that launched as a major feature of the iPhone 4S the prior year. 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.
[...] One obstacle for Mr. Cue, in his meetings with television executives, was that he didn't encounter the kind of desperation that made it possible for Apple to sign all the major record labels, then being ravaged by piracy, to iTunes. Cord-cutting -- people dumping their cable and satellite subscriptions -- had not yet emerged as a problem. "Apple kept wanting to use the same playbook, and it's not going to work in the video world," said a former Apple executive who worked on video. Around four years ago, Mr. Cue oversaw development of a version of Apple TV that could integrate with cable services, with the goal of replacing set-top boxes distributed by the likes of Comcast and Time Warner Cable, said a former Apple employee. The Apple TV box -- with a coaxial cable port for plugging into cable networks and software to handle the combination of live and on-demand video -- never launched due to disagreements with the potential cable partners. Apple engineers involved in the product were dispirited, said a former employee. A non-paywalled source.
[...] One obstacle for Mr. Cue, in his meetings with television executives, was that he didn't encounter the kind of desperation that made it possible for Apple to sign all the major record labels, then being ravaged by piracy, to iTunes. Cord-cutting -- people dumping their cable and satellite subscriptions -- had not yet emerged as a problem. "Apple kept wanting to use the same playbook, and it's not going to work in the video world," said a former Apple executive who worked on video. Around four years ago, Mr. Cue oversaw development of a version of Apple TV that could integrate with cable services, with the goal of replacing set-top boxes distributed by the likes of Comcast and Time Warner Cable, said a former Apple employee. The Apple TV box -- with a coaxial cable port for plugging into cable networks and software to handle the combination of live and on-demand video -- never launched due to disagreements with the potential cable partners. Apple engineers involved in the product were dispirited, said a former employee. A non-paywalled source.
And that's exactly how I feel about Siri. I live in a small town where there's basically no internet-connected businesses (i.e. no Uber, for example), the only useful thing on my iPhone is Google Maps for when I go to another town or city.
coaxial cable port with no cable card slot or usb port needed to link the SDV tunner for SDV cable systems.
You forgot those stupid "active-wear earbuds" they sell. Those are the domain of your basic white hipster asshole. They let them virtue-signal about how not-racist they are by wearing the "inner city earbuds" but also show off how they're willing to spend $250 on earbuds they only need because their $1000 phone doesn't have a fucking headphone jack.
Right on Cue.
AC comments get piped to
It was not the passing of Steve Jobs that ruined Apple. Scott Forstall had been developing the core OS since the days of NeXT. There are no high level Apple executives left that have full comprehension of the architecture. Granted, his personality was problematic, because he is not Steve Jobs, though it is obvious Jobs never had a problem with it, probably saw Mr. Forstall as a smarter, younger version or himself. In the new regime, there was no room for a personality like Forstall, always rocking the boat. Apple was about innovation and risk, right up until the loss of Steve Jobs. With Forstall gone, there will be no more trimming of the system, while the remaining developers will continue to add needless bloat to a system that has not had any major overhauls since the advent of iOS, and there will be no more. What changes will be surface-level only, except for the introduction of ridiculous new features at the expense of the introduction new bugs and security issue, leading to an ineffectie game a whack-a-mole, and one step forward, two steps back.
Cook is not a bad CEO, and someone with his skills is needed to captain a behemoth like Apple, but his only mistake I can see was he chose yes-men personalities over having a voice of dissent. Only through dissent, conflict and argument, can a product be made more perfect. Concurrence and blind support only serves to wreck products with feature creep.
Actually, "Mr. Cue" sounds like a new lame name for a voice assistant like Siri...
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Agree, last good IOS version was 8 (from 2014) when they still released when it was ready, not when the 1 year after the previous one mark came.
The last good OS X that didn't had major kernel memory leaks was 10.6.8
The last good iPhone was the iPhone 5s, so much so that Apple saw themselves forced to release iPhone SE, though they still bugged that with NFC.
Ever since Timmy Crook/Cock has been on the wheel at apple, the quality of the products has gone down. Scott Forestall may not have been a nice person, but he demanded quality work, just like Jobs in both regards. Never ship it until it is ready.
I beg to differ, 10.9.5 has been extremely reliable for me since its release day.
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coaxial cable port with no cable card slot or usb port needed to link the SDV tunner for SDV cable systems.
That's not a given. The article doesn't indicate anything about the technical aspects of the device; CableCARD tuners and set-top boxes still need a coax line.
I wouldn't be surprised if it had to do with other things. Cable providers know their end users would likely flock to an Apple STB, which they would own outright and cost them tens of millions of dollars in rental fees every year if even a fraction of subscribers moved over to them...and trying to charge the same money for the CableCARDs would draw regulatory attention. Boxes they didn't own would also either require Verizon and Comcast and Cox and Time Warner and Altice to either agree with Apple on a standard for on-demand and PPV programming, or both forego the revenue entirely (which includes UFC and boxing events that can easily cost $100) and make their customers angry at them for the inability to get PPV content. Apple probably would have required additional infrastructure investment in the same way they required it of AT&T for Visual Voicemail, and the nature of how cable TV is sold in America means that attempting an exclusivity agreement would not be beneficial to either company, since Apple would be locking out a market segment who can't switch to the exclusive carrier and conversely, people couldn't switch to them if they wanted.
So, all in all, *everybody* knows that an Apple TV with a regular cable tuner would absolutely be disruptive to the cable industry...and since the ISPs are not the sort of folk who take kindly to disruption, it's unsurprising that such a product wouldn't get off the ground.
and when the cable co said to apple that you must make each tv have an full box with cable card rent + outlet fee. Apple pushed back.
tivo has patents so they can get away with it (min boxes stacked off the main box).
event PPV can go to phone orders with added fess loadded with ad's says you know with our box you can order with your remote with no added fees & an cable card can in some system cost $1 less then a full box when you add outlet + card rent + SDV tuner rent
Oh don't get me wrong, I like a bit of skeuomorphism too, but he just went a little bit too far with it. But not much.
I also agree that the current "let's make everything flat" trend is complete bullshit that nullifies decades of progress. What's even worst is the new trend of even hiding flat controls and making them look like regular text, we can't even know if we can interact with the fucking things. That's the worst counter-intuitive bullshit I've ever seen and as you say the whole fucking industry followed them right off the cliff. Damn fool idiots, all of them.
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