Apple Sports Is Eddy Cue’s Baby
Jason Snell, writing at Six Colors:
It turns out that those scores, fed from Apple to the TV app and
the Apple TV and a few select other places, are from a data
source that Eddy Cue also cares about a lot. He’s been pushing it
to be as close to real time as is technologically possible, right
down to watching his phone and comparing it to the scoreboard at
a Warriors game. And now that data source is driving Apple’s
latest app, a free iPhone app called Apple Sports, which is
debuting today.
“I just want to get the damn score of the game,” Cue says. “And
it’s really hard to do, because it seems like it’s nobody’s core
[feature].” In a sports data world increasingly driven by
fantasy and betting, Apple’s not trying to build an adjunct to
some other app business model. […]
“We said, ‘We’re going to make the best scores app that you could
possibly make,’” Cue said.
I love the idea of Cue personally field-testing the app while in development courtside at Warriors games. “I just want to get the damn score of the game” and “We’re going to make the best scores app that you could possibly make” are downright Jobsian in their clarity, and in the fact that they’re driven simply by the notion of making a good, fun, simple, fast app that is highly focused in scope.
Remember the story about Jobs and iDVD? I feel like Apple Sports is a lot like that:
Likewise, when Jobs was shown a cluttered set of proposed
navigation screens for iDVD, which allowed users to burn video
onto a disk, he jumped up and drew a simple rectangle on a
whiteboard. “Here’s the new application,” he said. “It’s got
one window. You drag your video into the window. Then you click
the button that says ‘Burn.’ That’s it. That’s what we’re going
to make.”
★
Jason Snell, writing at Six Colors:
It turns out that those scores, fed from Apple to the TV app and
the Apple TV and a few select other places, are from a data
source that Eddy Cue also cares about a lot. He’s been pushing it
to be as close to real time as is technologically possible, right
down to watching his phone and comparing it to the scoreboard at
a Warriors game. And now that data source is driving Apple’s
latest app, a free iPhone app called Apple Sports, which is
debuting today.
“I just want to get the damn score of the game,” Cue says. “And
it’s really hard to do, because it seems like it’s nobody’s core
[feature].” In a sports data world increasingly driven by
fantasy and betting, Apple’s not trying to build an adjunct to
some other app business model. […]
“We said, ‘We’re going to make the best scores app that you could
possibly make,’” Cue said.
I love the idea of Cue personally field-testing the app while in development courtside at Warriors games. “I just want to get the damn score of the game” and “We’re going to make the best scores app that you could possibly make” are downright Jobsian in their clarity, and in the fact that they’re driven simply by the notion of making a good, fun, simple, fast app that is highly focused in scope.
Remember the story about Jobs and iDVD? I feel like Apple Sports is a lot like that:
Likewise, when Jobs was shown a cluttered set of proposed
navigation screens for iDVD, which allowed users to burn video
onto a disk, he jumped up and drew a simple rectangle on a
whiteboard. “Here’s the new application,” he said. “It’s got
one window. You drag your video into the window. Then you click
the button that says ‘Burn.’ That’s it. That’s what we’re going
to make.”