Outgoing Apple CEO Tim Cook had only been in the role about a year when the company pushed out Apple Maps in iOS 6 – the homegrown alternative to Google Maps. To say it didn’t go well was an understatement. The app was widely mocked for being incomplete, with directions leading users onto airplane runway, while landmarks like the Statue of Liberty in New York were missing altogether.
The Apple Maps app essentially redirected users to download and install Google Maps with a quickness and the fallout cost the-then software head Scott Forstall his job. Now, during an address to employees at Apple this week, Cook admitted his own culpability for the launch of the app, which has got much, much better since and is actually preferred by some to Google’s pioneering navigation tool.
As reported by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman – whose sources were in attendance – Cook said it was his “first really big mistake” as CEO.
“The product wasn’t ready, and we thought it was because we were testing more of local kind of stuff,” Cook said. “We apologised for it, and we said, ‘Go use these other apps. They’re better than ours.’ And that was some humble pie. But it was the right thing for our users. And so it’s an example of keeping the user at the center of the decisions that we made.”
Cook added: “Now we’ve got the best map app on the planet. We learned about persistence, and we did exactly the right thing having made the mistake.”
It’s not the only mistake Cook is admitting. He said the list would be “extraordinary in length,” but it’s nice to see a person in such a lofty position accept some culpability, even in an internal setting.
