Unauthoritative Pronouncements

That is a long title. Anyway, this is a surprise second appearance from Craig Federighi and a first for Eddy Cue. I recommend listening, since this sort of thing is still pretty rare, but I wouldn’t go into it expecting much in the way of answers, just some additional information. This seems like Apple responding to Walt Mossberg’s post on The Verge. Which … Well, it’s not like they lost Walt Mossberg’s number (if anything Contacts would have left them with several duplicates of Walt’s number).

Gruber can’t really press them to answer things or he would lose access to these VIPs. Eddy and Craig take this opportunity to explain away software quality concerns as mostly just the rumblings of a loud minority. Numbers of subscribers, transactions, and users are cited by Eddy to refute quality issues.

Quoting an install base, and number of users, isn’t really a good way to examine whether or not a product is good. Services, and software, are a subset of the total package that Apple provides. The total package might be the best, but not all of the component products. Especially in the case of the iPhone where Apple’s 1st party solutions can’t always be worked around, or are too much of a hassle to work around. Internet Explorer 6 had an enormous install base and tons of active users, but that did not mean Internet Explorer 6 was a good piece of software. It was part of that package.

Craig says that the metrics don’t show these problems. As the guys on Accidental Tech Podcast pointed out, metrics are no guarantee everything is working. The wrong things might be measured, or omitted, and then it looks like things are fine when they are not.

A minor example that doesn’t even seem worth sharing: The audio stopped working on my 4th generation Apple TV. No clue why. No audio on the videos or in the interface. I restarted the box and it worked. That was not a crash, and the system showed no awareness that it had lost it’s audio abilities. So is that logged as a metric, or does that not even register? It isn’t reproducible, and I have no reporting capability for it. That’s an example where it is possible to have a problem fly under the Radar.

Frankly, I’m a little confused they chose to do this. It draws more attention to the issues that people have been complaining about, particularly amongst tech journalists and Apple enthusiasts, and denies the problems exist. It might have been better if they stayed silent and worked to address concerns without having to deny them.