Eddy Cue says Apple only makes things consumers care about, ahead of Reality Pro announcement

Apple services chief Eddy Cue has told CNBC’s Jim Cramer that the company only makes things consumers care about.

Cue recycled a couple of Steve Jobs phrases while speaking at the first CNBC CEO Council Summit in Santa Barbara, California …

The two things cited by CNBC are straight out of the How to Apple textbook.

Apple’s senior vice president of services Eddy Cue attributes a lot of the success the market’s biggest company has to saying “no” more often than “yes.”

“We say ‘no’ to almost everything,” Cue said in a conversation with CNBC’s Jim Cramer at the inaugural CNBC CEO Council Summit in Santa Barbara, California, on Tuesday. “When you get as large as we are, it’s easy to think you can do anything or everything, and it’s just not true.”

That’s essentially a recap of what Steve said back in 1997:

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.”

Ditto:

Eddy Cue referenced ice hockey player Wayne Gretzky’s famous ability to see ahead when discussing Apple’s foray into sports streaming.

“We wanted to go where the puck was going, not where the puck was,” Cue said. “That’s what [Gretzky] does. He skates to where the puck was going, not to where the puck is. And that’s the same thing we wanted to do with sports.”

Steve often cited that quote (which Gretzky himself actually attributed to his father).

“There’s an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love. I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it has been. And we’ve always tried to do that at Apple.”

The recycled quotes are especially interesting in the light of the anticipated announcement of the Reality Pro headset at next month’s WWDC. Apple is skating to where it believes the puck will be, but it’s as yet unclear whether or not the company is right in this case.

Even less certain is this:

According to Cue, an idea only makes it off the drawing board at Apple if it’s something the company knows it can execute well and if it’s something consumers really care about.

There’s little to no indication as yet that consumers care much about either AR or VR, far less paying $3,000 for it. Whether Apple can change that remains to be seen.