Internet technology has disappeared from the job of Eddie Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet technologies and services. Quietly, no comments or press releases. Eddie Cue’s job title and information have changed on Apple’s senior management page. This is all that is reliably known about the next rearrangement in the apple leadership. Most likely, this is another “soft resignation”, although even this is not a fact. Apple has been paying special attention to services since 2019. And the fact that the veteran of the company was instructed to concentrate on a problematic and difficult direction would not be surprising if something unusual had not happened at Apple since the same 2019.
In terms of the number of errors and unsuccessful decisions, Apple of 2015-2019 was second only to Apple Computer of 1991-1996. iPhone , iPad and Mac sales in “pieces” were falling. They were declining not only at Apple, it was a global trend. Apple has never chased the massiveness of its products; the company’s goal was to create the best devices in the world. And circulation and revenue were the natural result of achieving the main goal. In the mid-2000s, this approach ceased to work, and revenue was set as the company’s strategic goal. Mistakes followed one after another, but earnings beat record after record. Apple has never made so much in its history.
In August 2018, Apple became the first US company with a stock market cap to exceed a trillion dollars. Not for long, but the effect was deafening. Since then, Apple has been called the richest company in the world. In the same 2018, Apple refused to publish quantitative data on the sales of its products. These are only the most important moments of the fateful five-year plan. Then there was the virtual failure of the iPhone XS / XS Max, and the first drop in the company’s revenues in a decade in the holiday quarter. I think that what happened has exacerbated the contradictions in Apple’s management, and forced them to reconsider the company’s policy. Something like a slow, startlingly humane, palace coup began.
Former Apple Employees
Jonathan Ive left Apple in July 2019. There is no need to tell who it is. A man who has been defining the face of Apple devices for a decade and a half. He left himself, they could not keep him – he wanted to leave back in 2015. They say that the Apple Watch, a project in which I’ve put his soul, did not live up to expectations. Now I doubt it. I’ve left as soon as the company came to the conclusion that change was necessary. In August 2020, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller resigned.
According to him, he planned to leave Apple in August 2020, Tim Cook knew about this. Leave to relax and live for yourself. Instead, he stayed with the company, overseeing the Apple app store and several other services. In January 2021, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware, Dan Riccio, resigned softly. Dan Riccio is spearheading a very important project that should not be discussed yet. Eddie Cue hasn’t retired, but someone else will now lead Internet technology.
How Apple is changing
The first sign of a change in Apple’s policy was the 16-inch MacBook Pro, released in November 2019. The situation with Apple laptops was disastrous. They bought them less and less, professionals massively emigrated to Windows PC. Sales of laptops around the world were also not particularly successful, but Apple itself was to blame for its troubles. The butterfly keyboard, the most advanced and progressive in the world, literally killed her MacBooks. The authors of this keyboard include John Ternus and Jonathan Ive. Surely there was something in this design, but it was not “finalized”. Apple admitted its mistakes. The new MacBook Pro has reduced the thickness of the bezels around the screen. The most advanced keyboard has been replaced with a “magic” one.
In fact – the most common one used before Apple introduced butterfly keyboards. Technically, the November 16-inch MacBook Pro was almost an exact replica of the 15-inch MacBook Pro that came out in May 2019. This was not the main thing. Apple heard users. The MacBook Pro turns out to be pretty good. And sold well. The next sign of change was the 2020 iPhone SE. Apple has announced several times that it has no plans to release another SE. Since the end of 2019, Apple has behaved differently than it used to. More helpful and friendly than in 2019. He listens to users, on non-fundamental issues goes to meet them (us). Or is it just me?
Who is Eddie Cue
Eddie Cue has been with Apple since 1989. Before Jobs’s return, he was a mid-level manager. Eddie Cue caught the eye of Steve in some way, and he commissioned Eddie to design the Apple online store. In the late 90s, online shopping was no longer a big deal, and Eddie sketched his project in record time. Have you ever seen Steve Jobs furious? It looked terrible, even from the outside. Eddie Cue was fired, without severance pay, immediately. But, as happened most often, Eddie barely had time to pack his things, under the supervision of security, when he was summoned to Jobs. Steve explained to Eddie what was required of him, suggested who to turn to. This “to whom” was Craig Federighi. Then he headed the development of WebObjects and Enterprise Objects technologies, on the basis of which the best online stores in the industry have already been created.
Eddie did it. And he is a contradictory person. He is the only Apple top manager with whom subordinates can talk about anything. About sports, especially basketball. On his account there are many successful projects, but there are also holes. Until 2017, he was in charge of Siri, but quickly lost interest in her (Siri lagging behind competitors on his conscience). No doubt he is talented – but not a workaholic. At meetings, he usually sleeps. A couple of times he even snored, they say. But it is not known whether he really sleeps at the meetings, or the slander of those who were fired on his initiative. I know people who reported directly to Eddie, they have a high opinion of him. He is corrosive, meticulous – if the project is really interesting to him.
