Apple's software king Eddy Cue on streaming battles, the iPhone 6s and getting rid of roaming charges

Jimi Famurewa meets the senior vice-president of Apple to talk about the company's shiny new launches 
Music man: Eddy Cue
Jimi Famurewa @jimfam1 October 2015

Look, my mom is from Cuba, my dad is from Spain and I grew up in Miami,” says Eddy Cue with a playful smile. “So there’s maybe a little more flair in me than typical Silicon Valley types.”

Specifically, the senior vice-president of Apple, 51, is talking about his penchant for the extravagantly lined and patterned shirts that have made him the chief exponent of a dressing style internet wags are calling “Apple dad”. But you could apply that statement more generally to this 27-year-veteran of the Cupertino tech colossus. Cue, whether he’s discussing his Springsteen obsession or taking a few mid-interview selfies, is perhaps not what you’d expect from the dour tech executive. And he’s clearly not big on Zuckerbergian hoodies.

Cue’s flair and genial manner is in high demand at the moment. The day we meet in a penthouse-style room in Apple’s Hanover Street HQ (Boogie Nights shag-pile, tastefully adorned bookshelves), coincides with a frantically busy time for the company. The new iPhone 6s and 6s Plus handsets land in shops the next day (and will go on to sell in record global numbers — about 3,000 a minute), the iOS 9 system update has just launched (coinciding with an unfortunate malware attack on the App Store) and the revamped Apple Music Festival is well under way.

That final bit of activity, Apple’s autumn gig series in Camden featuring acts including Pharrell and Florence + The Machine, is the main reason for our chat today. The absence of The Boss on the line-up notwithstanding — “One of these years we’re gonna get him” — it’s fair to say Cue is pretty excited about the event. And its host city.

“The acts we get are really the best of the best,” he says, nodding to a nearby flatscreen that’s showing Ellie Goulding’s 2015 performance. “And you’re never going to see them in such a small, great venue like The Roundhouse. Also, the festival has gotten to be a much bigger thing globally. 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.”

Crowd pleaser: Florence Welch performing at this year's Apple Music Festival

International reach aside, the festival, which used to run under the iTunes banner, has clearly been engineered to provide a boost to Apple’s long-brewing music streaming service. Cue, who was the man Steve Jobs tasked with securing media partnerships for iTunes, has taken a lead role on Apple CEO Tim Cook’s Spotify-killer and spearheaded its march to more than 11 million users.

However, with the first batch of free three-month trials expiring this week, is he worried about subscribers drastically falling? “Ultimately, you never know until it happens,” he reasons. “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.”

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This attitude seems to have been crystallised by those early years trying to convince the grand old superpowers of the record industry that the future of music was digital — “I have a lot of grey hairs because of that.”

Cue is, of course, a consummate salesman and conversation with him can occasionally feel like an extended appointment at the Genius Bar. He demos devices, wants to know if I’ve updated to iOS 9 and when I tell him in passing that my son is two years old, his mischievous response is, “Awesome. He’s ready for an iPad.”

There’s steel (or maybe brushed aluminium) behind the joking though. When I risk a ticking off/tranquilliser dart from the nearby publicist and stray off topic to ask about user complaints surrounding the iPhone’s undeletable apps, he’s friendly but firm. “A lot of our apps you can’t just delete because they’re embedded into the operating system,” he says.

Hot show: Pharrell Willams at the Apple Music festival

Can customer feedback be something of a minefield? “There are things people can tell us and there are things they can’t,” he continues. “Both are really important but one of the dangers is to only do things people tell you to do. You would never do [new iPhone features] Live Photos or 3D Touch if you only listened to people. To innovate you have to look beyond. We used to say that we get paid to look around corners.”

In terms of Apple Music and its showpiece festival, Cue wants the view around the corner to remain obscured. “Will it be the same next year? I hope not. I hope we keep evolving and coming up with cool things.”

Our time comes to an end but Cue isn’t about to let me leave. He wants to show me footage of soulful warm-up act, Andra Day’s Apple Music Festival set and, in defiance of that publicist, walk me through how they’ve retooled Siri on the new iPhone (“I know I’m not allowed to talk about the phone but what the hell — he can’t fire me”).

He taps his phone and makes an offhand comment about “trying not to get roaming charges” while in London which, I note, proves how insanely expensive phone calls and data can be abroad. “It’s sad, it’s another problem,” says Cue. “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.” It sounds like an impossible task. But that, you would imagine, is where the famous flair will come in.

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