Apple's Cue and Federighi on recent quality concerns


Fast Company continues to release content from its Apple feature. Latest has an interview with Apple execs Eddie Cue and Craig Federighi. There are a lot of topics and some were covered in the feature posted on Monday. One thing that caught my eye is Apple approach to quality and its quality perception, which some feel has been lacking.

Cue: Well, there's more people, there's more devices, and there's more communications available. I actually think our products have fewer mistakes than they did in the past, and our data shows that. But, look, I tell this to my team all the time. When we were the Mac company, if we impacted 1% of our customers, it was measured in thousands. Now if we impact 1% of our customers, it's measured in tens of millions. That's a problem, right--things are going to be perceived differently. Our products are way better than they used to be, but there's a higher bar, and I'm okay with that. I think that is why we're here.

And

Federighi: A world where people do not care about the quality of their experience is not a good world for Apple. A world where people care about those details and want to complain about them is the world where our values shine. That is our obsession. If people were like, "That's good enough for me" . . . well, there are a lot of people who can provide that kind of experience.

Apple's stuff has always had issues, so I'm not sure if I'd agree it's been getting worse or not in recent years. It's easy narrative though considering how many balls Apple is juggling, it makes sense things might be slipping, and with so many users out there, complaints of issues easily resonate with a lot of people. It could also be that the competition has just gotten better and the quality/ease of use gap has closed from the years ago.

Federighi makes a really good point that it's good people care about this stuff.