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Apple execs Eddy Cue & Craig Federighi talk Apple Music, App Store & more in new interview

Eddy Cue Craig Federighi

John Gruber surprised podcast listeners today by getting Apple’s own Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi on The Talk Show to discuss a variety of topics behind Apple. Since Tim Cook took leadership at Apple, it hasn’t been unheard of for Apple execs to appear on Gruber’s show. The first occurrence was last June when Phil Schiller met John Gruber on stage during WWDC to discuss Apple’s recent announcements and decisions over the past few years. This marks the second time that Federighi has been on the The Talk Show, and Cue’s first.

Very special guests Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi join the show. Topics include: the new features in Apple’s upcoming OS releases (iOS 9.3 and tvOS 9.2); why Apple is expanding its public beta program for OS releases; iTunes’s monolithic design; how personally involved Eddy and Craig are in using, testing, and installing beta software; the sad decline of Duke’s men’s basketball team; and more.

Some scoops too, including: the weekly number of iTunes and App Store transactions, an updated Apple Music subscriber count, peak iMessage traffic per second, and the number of iCloud account holders.

Cue and Federighi open up about their personal experiences with using the Apple ecosystem and how even they find bugs and usability issues to discuss with their teams. From awkward purchasing situations on the Apple TV, to the difficulties with Siri in handling multilingual requests for non-English speakers. Federighi also re-confirms the incoming update to the Apple Remote app on iOS including Siri Remote features. This brought up a great question from Gruber in regards to allowing multiple users on the Apple TV at the same time. Federighi stated that it would be possible for one to use the Remote app, and another user to use the Siri Remote at the same on the Apple TV. This makes it more accessible for those multiplayer gaming situations where buying a dedicated gaming controller at that time just isn’t feasible.

They also delve into some previously unreported numbers in today’s show to discuss the scale of Apple’s services. At peak times, Messages sees 200,000 messages being sent per second. The App Store and iTunes stores process over 750 million transactions every week, and “billions of dollars” through Apple Pay. Cue explains with over a billion active devices, there are currently 782 million iCloud users (with some having multiple devices). In Apple Maps alone, they’ve corrected and notified over 2.5 million different customer feedback issues.

Cue also belabors the discussions around the iTunes applications and the environment it brings to customers. Starting with discussions internally two years ago, Cue re-iterates that iTunes was designed at a time when everything was synced with cables. He quickly touches on the idea that when Apple was introducing Apple Music, they played with building it “all in the cloud” because “Apple Music’s all in the cloud”, but by doing so it might have limited users from uploading their music into the cloud without a tool like iTunes. Cue finalizes his statements explaining, “we’ve got a new refresh, with the new version of OS X coming out next month, that makes it even easier to use in the music space.”

Maybe we fix it in iOS 10, maybe we fix it in…9.3″, says Federighi, “we don’t necessarily…have a great way to decide when we want to communicate to you that there is a release it’s going to be fixed in.

Craig Federighi

Gruber reintroduces the previously discussed Apple Maps resolutions as a way to segue into the seemingly ignored bug-tracking system, Radar. Gruber wonders how can Radar get to the manner of communication and resolutions that Apple Maps issue reporting provides. Federighi explains that they need to sort out how to communicate the issues that they fix. “Maybe we fix it in iOS 10, maybe we fix it in…9.3”, says Federighi, “we don’t necessarily…have a great way to decide when we want to communicate to you that there is a release it’s going to be fixed in.” He goes on to say that although they don’t reply to them, they are reading them, they just “don’t tell you what’s happening with them.”

Be sure to listen to the interview on Gruber’s site, or within iTunes‘ podcast section.

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Comments

  1. rogifan - 8 years ago

    Gruber didn’t get anything out of Eddy Cue regarding the mess that is iTunes. Eddy says he uses/tests stuff all the time. Clearly he doesn’t do enoug of it with iTunes and Apple Music.

    • Greg Barbosa - 8 years ago

      Cue spent a good chunk of time discussing how they have considered the mess that is iTunes, and how they will and are improving iTunes in the next version of OS X coming out next month.

    • macxpress - 8 years ago

      Yes, we know you don’t like Eddy Cue! Get over it already! You don’t need to bitch up a storm in every Mac forum about how Eddy Cue sucks in your opinion.

  2. taoprophet420 - 8 years ago

    The biggest news is the new Remote app with Siri support from your iPhone and can swipe through the menus with the phone screen.

    • Greg Barbosa - 8 years ago

      Well that was reported and confirmed before, but hearing it from their mouths was exciting. Also the idea that iTunes was almost an “in the cloud” app was really cool too.

      • taoprophet420 - 8 years ago

        Would been disappointing not to upload music into iTunes that isn’t available from Apple Music. I have plenty of of imported CD’s with bonus tracks that are not available via Apple Music so having everything in the cloud would been a little frustrating.

      • Greg Barbosa - 8 years ago

        Agreed. It’s really nice to hear that they considered, acknowledged and moved away from that. I didn’t really realize how much of a pain it would have been until this interview.

  3. Well, this was Gruber’s chance to grill those guys about fixing the awfulness of iTunes and Apple Music.

    “Right now, we think we’ve designed iTunes…”

    That’s the core of the problem, Mr. Cue. ;-(

    • Greg Barbosa - 8 years ago

      Cue did make a comment about the iTunes refresh coming with the next version of OS X.

      • taoprophet420 - 8 years ago

        Sounded like would get refresh for 10.11.4 and 10.12 this summer at WWDC. I really hate OS X’s numbering scheme.
        I hope OS X gets a Music app that is something close to the one for the iPad.tunes needs to be split up into a least 3 apps.

    • Robert - 8 years ago

      They pointed out that iTunes was originally designed for a world where everyone connecting to their computer with a wire. Everything is evolving. Be patient.

      Guber is not going to “grill” these guys. He gets these interviews because he is respectful and non-hostile. He did raise the topic and pressed it a bit but he was careful to keep the discussion high level. Those executives and Apple PR are comfortable with Guber. He will not ask them questions he knows they cannot answer.

      • Greg Barbosa - 8 years ago

        Perfectly said.

  4. b9bot - 8 years ago

    I thought they both were informative without giving away to much. They both know of what’s going on but also know that if you do extreme things other people get upset. So they are trying to balance things out. They were execs that were in touch with what was going on and for me that was great news.

  5. Bryan - 8 years ago

    The iTunes moniker just doesn’t make any sense anymore – and hasn’t since iOS came out, and really since they started selling anything other than music.

    On iOS, iTunes is just a store to buy/download music and oddly enough movies and tv shows, that are not “tunes”. They at least took a couple steps in the right direction in moving audiobooks over to iBooks, and breaking out Podcasts.

    On Mac, it is full-fledged media player that also houses stores for all of Apple’s products and content.

    It is time to silo this stuff out into logical apps that are consistent on both OSX and iOS, and fully-integrated around the media type. The Music app should house everything you need to play, stream, or buy anything related to music. Videos, should house everything for playing and buying video content. iBooks everything related to reading or listening to books, etc.