“The flaws with Apple Maps and previously with Apple’s voice recognition software, Siri, reveal some deep flaws with Tim Cook’s work as CEO,” Peter Cohan writes for Forbes. “You might think that Tim Cook is doing a spectacular job. After all, since taking over as CEO on August 24, 2011, Apple stock has risen 74%, and its revenues and profits have soared 66% and 85% in the last year.”
“But since the Apple Maps fiasco, Apple has lost $30 billion in stock market value, reports The Guardian,” Cohan writes. “At the core of this loss in value may well be the gap between the technical reality of a new product and the way that product is sold to the public. Plenty of technologies are imperfect when they are first sold to the public. It appears as though Apple Maps had so many flaws — I pointed out its six most epic fails – that Apple could be rotting from the stem down.”
Cohan writes, “How so? Either Cook was not aware of the problems with Apple Maps — in which case he is showing that he does not care about the quality of the products that Apple makes. Or Cook knew about the flaws and decided to launch the iPhone 5 anyway. And if he did the latter, the messaging Cook used to describe the product set expectations that were far better than the reality. And one of the most basic principles of marketing anything is that it is far better to exceed diminished expectations than to fall short of exuberant ones.”
“The core of Apple’s problem may be an Apple executive by the name of Scott Forstall,” Cohan writes. “As former Apple executive Jean-Louis Gasse pointed out, Forstall was behind the flawless Apple Maps demo and those flowery adjectives. And Forstall’s demo of the buggy Siri ‘seemed not only to understand every question he put to it, but to have a snappy answer. It has not worked so well in the wild, at least not for me,’ according to Fortune’s Phillip Elmer-Dewitt.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
Related articles:
People are calling for this Apple executive’s head over half-baked Maps – September 30, 2012
Apple lost without Steve Jobs? This week spotlighted that Apple without Jobs is a different company – September 15, 2012
An Apple CEO-in-waiting, Scott Forstall, sells 95% of his company shares – May 2, 2012
Scott Forstall, the Sorcerer’s Apprentice at Apple – March 9, 2012
Every time I read an article like this I recall the old rubric about critics they are like eunuchs
They can talk about it but they can’t do it
not as 1) the map fiasco was more Steve Jobs fault than Cook or Forstall. Read the history. When iPhone was being developed maps wasn’t even an integral part of it, when it was decided to go maps they had a simple Apple version and then Jobs who absolutely trusted Schmidt decided to go into partnership full out with Google. If Jobs had started apple maps seriously (i.e if he could see Schmidt for the Mole) Apple’s map experiment would have started in 2007 (or even years earlier). By today they would have a pretty good maps app. Instead Cook and Forstall had to scramble (Apple finally had no choice: Google did not give turn by turn nav to iOS for years, did not have proper mapping for CHINA which is apple’s biggest growth area etc… ).
It was Jobs (genius that he was) blind spot that caused the map issue in the first place.
2) Cook and Forstall has helped make Apple billions and helped stock investors enjoy incredible stock growth. Under Cook Apple has won the industrial supply chain award year after year and knocked low cost competitors like Dell to the ground (remember the old days of expensive Macs vs Pcs?) , Forstall’s in charge of iOS which alone makes more money than Msft or Google. IPhone alone without iPad alonex
3) the Maps is not as bad as the hype make it out to be. The are lots posting around (like Fandroids) who pretend to use the Maps to blast apple (one researcher checking antennagate postings found by comparing registered user names to android fan sites, 50% of those he could verify posting as iPhone users were fandroids). I’m not saying there are no legitimate problems but it is overblown just like ANTENNAGATE.
the antennagage iP4 which the press lambasted which Consumer Reports say ‘do not recommend’ in REALITY had a 1.7 % return rate (much lower than many competitor phones), won the J.D powers award for customer satisfaction from a poll of thousands of phone users (beating all the Androids, Symbians, BBs etc), was the best selling smartphone and had the highest (from various polls ) retention rate (i.e consumers would buy another iPhone) of all smart phones.
The negative press of iP4 did not match the reality of numbers and I suspect iP5 would be the same.
4) 30 billion sounds like a lot but percentage wise it’s not such a big deal.
Apple has sold something like over 365 million iOS devices, mabye analysts should be more concerned for Google whose largest growth area is mobile and who makes TWICE as much money off IOS than Andriod, Symbian, Blackberry etc COMBINED has just lost big chunk of their mobile revenue and for the future.
sorry long post above, various typos including intro line, no edit feature. I won’t correct typos as the meanings I think is still clear.
Using the Maps App in most of the south part of Western Canada.
The roads are laid out in a grid of one mile by one mile. In plan, there should be a cross road every mile as you drive east-west and a cross road every mile as you drive north-south. The roads are all named by using the grid numbers.
In reality, some roads are paved, some are graveled, some are one lane dirt tracks, some mysteriously and abruptly end and some don’t exist at all.
Apple’s Maps App shows all of the highways, most of the paved grid roads, about 1/3 of the gravel roads and none of the dirt tracks.
Google Maps had all the roads including the dirt tracks.
If you aren’t a city dweller, in Western Canada, you’re probably not on the map.
Forstall is also the one who was the leader of the team which designed iOS and convinced Steve Jobs that iOS was better than the iPod OS being changed into a phone OS. So I think he knows a thing or two about software design and use.
Apple’s problems with Maps lies more in the data provided to Apple than fundamental flaws in the app. The 3D code seems to have a bug which melts bridges around the Hoover Dam, but that ‘s easily fixable and is actually kinda cool. Maybe they should just call it the Salvador Dali effect (If they had done that prior to release, people would be talking about how cool it was!).
Maps will be fine given some time to fix the issues. I like that the maps and turn-by-turn load much faster than Google Maps.
please, i checked and google maps has the same road melting bug on that same road
its like i tell my wife, don’t read the internet. most of the hysteria is by paid bloggers who get paid what to write or just need a hysteria for page hits. just like antennagate.
Okay, so now Apple SAVES itself $30 Billion by having the stock valuation reduced so it can buy back stock for less, correct?
It’s the right-hand knowing what the left-hand is doing thing.
“…in which case he is showing that he does not care about the quality of the products that Apple makes.” obvious troll. ignore.
Considering the flaws, inaccuracies, and stretching of the truth to the breaking point, Cohan is either
1. Dose not care about his work and should be fired.
2. Is incompetent, unable to do basic unbiased reporting and should be fired.
3. Is on the take, has no journalistic values and should be fired.
4. Is a hit whore looking for clicks and should get a raise.
5. Or is on drugs, in which case I want to know what he is on.
Oh, I get it! -> For-BS (Forbes)
Talk about an overblown bunch of BS!!!! Who used google maps to navigate anyhow?!! I used TomTom! Full maps on flash memory chips and voice turn by turn! WTF is the problem?!! I like the bold move and love the new maps!!! Unlike the compulsive pissers and moaners, I see the good in a flawed product toward what will ultimately be awesome like everything else Apple does! It’s a FREE APP!!! iOS6 is FREE!!!! The entitlement society is taking over! Gimmee Gimmee Gimmee!!!! Sad!
Based on this article’s flawed reasoning, two other things should have happened:
1. Steve Jobs should have been fired the day after antenna gate broke…
And
2. Microsoft should have gone bankrupt the day after Vista was released….
Cohan is an ass. This “$30 billion” stuff is silly. Eric Savitz covers it here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2012/10/01/bad-math-apples-map-issue-is-not-a-30b-fiasco/
Peter Cohan is an idiot. And a trickster. Comparing percentages to hard dollars is like comparing apples to tractors. And he Evan misquotes then.
anyone who moves a red cent on this dumber than a bag of dicks article is dumb as a box of hair.
Had a few minutes to use an iPhone 4s with Maps.
Living north of Bangkok, Thailand, I was surprised at the accuracy of maps for my local neighborhood.
ATM’s, Shops, Car-dealers, all correctly done.
Maps look very good, though indeed the satellite pictures are lesser quality, more sepia color than google-maps.
But the speed is amazing. It builds up maps (even on the dreadfully slow networks here) very very fast and fluently.
I’m sure there’s mistakes, but the first impression…very good, nothing like the big FUD campaign that’s raging around the web.
The problem with SIRI is that it can at times be brilliant and then the next day it can’t understand the same phrases or words.
It will mangle simple words, so much so, that you’d like to fling your phone.
Add any noise to the equation and SIRI performs even worse.
Plus to me, there seems to be a 1 to 1 correlation between needing SIRI to work and its propensity to fail.
The stock decline has nothing to do with Maps! The whole market is in decline and it is disingenuous to suggest otherwise