Apple’s chief executive officer Tim Cook, who plans to step down in a few months, cited the launch of Apple Maps on the iPhone in 2012 as his “first really big mistake” as the company’s boss.
The maps app famously did not work properly in much of the world, providing users with wrong directions, mislabelled landmarks and a far inferior experience to what was then offered by Google on the iPhone.
“The product wasn’t ready, and we thought it was because we were testing more of local kind of stuff,” Mr Cook said during a town hall meeting on April 21 with his recently named successor, Mr John Ternus.
The launch ultimately led to the first big management shake-up of Mr Cook’s tenure, when he fired software chief Scott Forstall.
That executive was a close collaborator of Mr Cook’s predecessor, co-founder Steve Jobs.
Mr Cook also said there have been “so many moments” that he is proud of but the Apple Watch and its health features stand out.
When the watch was unveiled in 2014, the main health capability was a heart-rate monitor. Since then, the company has added a variety of features, like hypertension detection.
“I remember getting the very first Apple Watch note from a user who told me that the watch saved their life,” Mr Cook said.
“Now, of course, I get these on a daily basis, but that first one hit me particularly hard. It caused me to just stop in my steps.”
Mr Cook was named CEO in August 2011 following the resignation of Mr Jobs. He will remain in the role until Sept. 1.
The long-time CEO inherited Apple at a market capitalisation of US$350 billion (S$446 billion) and oversaw it hitting a US$4 trillion valuation.
He also pushed into new areas, like larger and smaller iPads, more types of iPhones, AirPods and online services.
Mr Cook said the list of mistakes he made would be “extraordinary in length”, but the company mostly avoided the kind of product recalls and cancellations that have plagued other consumer device companies over the last 15 years.
Besides the Apple Maps launch, the other missteps included the failed launch of an AirPower wireless charging mat and an unsuccessful decade-long quest to make a self-driving car. Neither turned into a crisis that set back the company.
Mr Cook also discussed the timing of the CEO transition and how long he plans to be executive chairman, in addition to saying that he is in good health, Bloomberg News reported on April 21.
Mr Ternus used the time to tease the company’s upcoming product road map, saying the iPhone maker is going to “change the world” again.
Mr Cook said the Apple Maps debacle ended up being a valuable experience.
The CEO expressed regret to users at the time and recommended competing maps software from the App Store.
“We apologised for it, and we said, ‘Go use these other apps. They’re better than ours.’ And that was some humble pie,” Mr Cook said.
“But it was the right thing for our users. And so it’s an example of keeping the user at the centre of the decisions that we made.”
Mr 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.” BLOOMBERG
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