Apple's CEO Tim Cook surprised many on Friday by publicly apologizing for its new maps application, which has been widely panned by customers and reviewers alike as inferior to Google Maps ever since it was introduced with iOS 6 a week and a half ago. In a letter published on Apple's website, Cook wrote:
[More from Mashable: Apple CEO Apologizes for Maps App: It ‘Fell Short’]
At Apple, we strive to make world-class products that deliver the best experience possible to our customers. With the launch of our new Maps last week, we fell short on this commitment. We are extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers and we are doing everything we can to make Maps better.
At first blush, it may have seemed like an insanely rare admission of failure from a company that not only prides itself on being insanely great, but insanely reluctant to concede its missteps. Yet, in the post-Steve Jobs era, Apple's top executives appear to be making more mistakes and to be more willing to admit them. In fact, Apple has issued public apologies in each of the past three months of this year.
[More from Mashable: Apple Maps App Gets Lost on Twitter: Only 10% of Tweets Approve]
Apple's Other Public Apologies This Year
Back in July, the company made headlines for withdrawing from the EPEAT environmental rating system, which informs consumers whether electronics manufacturers are making eco-friendly products. Apple initially claimed that its own environmental standards were higher, but after receiving a huge amount of backlash from consumers and environmental groups, one of the company's top executives issued a public apology. Bob Mansfield, Apple's SVP of Mac Software Engineering and Hardware Engineering said:
We’ve recently heard from many loyal Apple customers who were disappointed to learn that we had removed our products from the EPEAT rating system. I recognize that this was a mistake. Starting today, all eligible Apple products are back on EPEAT.
Just those four words -- "This was a mistake" -- was enough to surprise many of those covering the company, but it would only be a few weeks before they'd see these words once more from Apple.
In August, Apple found itself apologizing yet again after multiple reports came out suggesting that the company had been cutting back its retail store staff as part of an effort from the new SVP of Retail John Browett to make the stores more profitable. The company denied that this was tied to profitability, but still admitted these changes were a mistake. Kristin Huguet, an Apple spokeswoman, said in a statement to Dow Jones afterwards:
Making these changes was a mistake and the changes are being reversed. Our employees are our most important asset and the ones who provide the world-class service our customers deserve.
Why Apple is Making More Mistakes Now
The recent string of mistakes and apologies may simply reflect the reality that Apple has gotten a little sloppier as it transitions from the Jobs Era to the Cook Era. According to Tim Bajarin, principal analyst with Creative Strategies, some things will inevitably "fall through the cracks" as Apple continues to transition to new management and figure out its path forward a little more than a year after Jobs resigned from the company.
"They have to fill some pretty big shoes and find their own way, in the sense that it's their company not Steve's anymore," Bajarin told Mashable. "That is why ultimately I think you see Tim Cook stepping up and admitting mistakes much earlier, rather than letting them get completely out of hand."
Apple has made several other blunders in the past year under Cook, and while it hasn't publicly apologized for these, it has still tacitly admitted its mistakes.
For starters, the company's Siri and Genius ad campaigns have been criticized by many for abandoning some of the key elements that made Apple commercials great. While Apple continues to air its celebrity-drenched Siri commercials, the company was quick to kill off its Genius ads just a few days after they first aired during the Olympics, which was seen as an admission of failure by some (though Apple's ad agency said it was the plan all along.)
In another blunder, Apple released its own standalone podcast app in July, which was quickly slammed by bloggers as poorly designed and generally slow to load. The app was so bad that it had a 2.5 star rating on iTunes for awhile after launching. After a month, Apple responded to all the complaints by issuing a big update to the app to make it work better.
Then, of course, there's Siri, which has been criticized for its limitations pretty much since it launched with the iPhone 4S in October of last year. In some ways, Siri's problems are the most comparable to the new maps fiasco, in that both products were arguably released as beta products (a word Apple hates to use) that improve the more people use it. The difference, however, is that Siri was a new feature whereas the maps application has been central to the iPhone since it launched.
While Apple has never apologized for Siri, some close to the company have slammed the product anonymously, with one ex-Apple insider quoted in Fortune as saying, "Steve [Jobs] would have lost his mind over Siri."
Apple Screwed Up Under Steve Jobs, Too
Indeed, it's become a popular refrain anytime Apple makes a mistake with a product that it would never have happened under in the Jobs' era. Yet, Siri was acquired and incorporated into the iPhone while Jobs was still in control of the company.
What's more, even Jobs apologized for the company's mistakes on occasion, albeit reluctantly. During the Antennagate controversy, Jobs initially blamed customers for holding the phone wrong, but after a few weeks of heavy criticism, Jobs finally conceded, "We screwed up."
For the most part though, Jobs chose to rely more on his so-called reality distortion field to persuade the media and the public that he and the company were right, no matter what. Cook appears to have a different leadership style, both because of differences between the two CEOs' personalities and by virtue of the fact that Apple is stumbling a bit more these days as part of the transition.
Bajarin says that he personally "cuts [Apple] a lot of slack" because he is aware of how difficult it is for a big company to make a transition in leadership. The real question, though, is whether Apple's customers will be quite as forgiving.
Image courtesy of Flickr, GDS-Productions
This story originally published on Mashable here.