In an extended interview with the
London Evening Standard mostly about the
just-concluded Apple Music Festival, Apple's SVP of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue let slip that the company is investigating trying to "fix" the problem of international data roaming charges for iPhone users, and come up with a solution that would benefit consumers without alienating profit-oriented phone carriers. The focus of the conversation, the festival, also revealed that Apple is playing a long game with its Apple Music service.
"It's sad, it's another problem," Cue said about the issue of data-roaming charges after an offhand comment that wanted to avoid them himself while he was in London. "We're trying to fix it, and we're making a little bit of progress, but you've got to convince a lot of people," he said. The comment seems familiar to the man who spent years helping Apple persuade record labels that the future of music was digital: "I have a lot of gray hairs because of that," he said with a smile.
The conversation oscillated between talking about the future of the just-renamed music fest ("Will it be the same next year? I hope not. I hope we keep evolving and coming up with cool things") to tech demos and the style of friendly Apple evangelism that is a hallmark of the senior executives. When the reported noted that his son had just turned two, Cue responded with "Awesome. He's ready for an iPad," and queried the reported if he'd upgraded to iOS 9 yet.
On the topic of the Apple Music Festival, Cue said that the acts that perform "are really the best of the best ... and you're never going to see them in such a small, great venue like The Roundhouse." He showed off one of the performances from the festival, Andra Day, and vowed that "one of these years" he would coax his idol, Bruce Springsteen, to perform at the two-week event. "The festival has gotten to be a much bigger thing globally," Cue noted. "The London crowd is really good and I don't think if you did this in New York or LA it would be as much of a global thing."
This led into a discussion of Apple Music, the paid subscription service which just went off its three-month free trial for the millions who signed up on the first day it was offered (the free trial continues to be available for anyone new to the service). Regarding the probable but unknown percentage of users who may drop the service once it goes paid, Cue seemed unconcerned. "Ultimately, you never know until it happens, but we're pleased with the number of people who have tried. Everybody gets fixated on the short term, but we're in this for the long haul."
Cue was asked a few harder questions, such as one addressing some recent user complaints about Apple apps installed on iOS devices that are not deletable. Echoing his boss, CEO Tim Cook, he said that users can't delete some of the apps, as they are tied into the operating system, but unlike Cook did not say that the company would investigate the possibility of making other such apps deletable in the future.
Customer feedback on products, Cue said, can be a double-edged sword. "There are things people can tell us and there are things they can't ... you would never do [new iPhone features like] Live Photos or 3D Touch if you only listened to people. To innovate you have to look beyond." However, he also said that both what customers say they want and what they don't say "are really important" to the company, and that Apple doesn't want to "only do things people tell you to do ... we used to say that we get paid to look around corners."
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