Cathy Edwards, who works as a Director of Evaluation and Quality on Apple Maps, is planning to leave Apple in April, reports TechCrunch. Edwards initially co-founded and served as chief technical officer at app discovery platform Chomp, joining Apple after her company was acquired in 2012.
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Apple purchased Chomp in early 2012 to bolster its App Store search and discovery algorithms and incorporated the company's technology into its App Store in August of 2012, adding a card-style search results format that is still used today.
Following the acquisition, Edwards served as Head of Search and Management, taking on the responsibility of search systems across multiple Apple products. Later, just after the disastrous launch of Apple Maps, Edwards took on the role of Director, Evaluation and Quality, Apple Maps.
She joined that role at a pretty thankless time, if you recall the chaos of Apple Maps-gate. Edwards' role at Apple Maps has focused on "Building out an organization focused on QA automation, statistical quality analysis and analytics within Maps," according to LinkedIn. Essentially, her work was about making sure that Apple Maps didn't suck, something that remains a goal for the company. "We're hiring, come join us!" ends the description. This remains her role up to today.
It is unclear why Edwards is leaving Apple or what she plans to do next, but TechCrunch suggests that the departure may be contractual as it has now been two years since Chomp was acquired. It is unknown if other former Chomp employees will be leaving the company as well.
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huh? if she were fired, shed be fired. a lowly QA director doesnt get the sort of treatment as a long-standing VP of Engineering (Scott Forstall) does.
if it's exactly two years since Apple acquired Chomp, you can bet that shes cashing out and going home now that the contract has been fulfilled. after all, thats the entire point of building a start-up that hopes to be acquired. she'll relax for a while, then do something new. see the founder of the Siri company or nearly any other anywhere -- they do their time, then quietly slip away.
id do the same. when you're rich it becomes real hard to work for somebody else.
It is good for seeing the first screenshot of apps you might be interested in, but otherwise it just made searching for what you actually wanted take more time.
It's far, far from being "fine" in the biggest metropolitan city in the world (Tokyo). Apple Maps aren't fine by any measure.
From most iOS App Developer's point-of-view, Chomp has been an absolute disaster. Almost no developers (except for the typical tiny percentage of overexposed apps) saw any benefit from Chomp. Many developers saw their app sales simply killed off.
Even lots of iOS App store customers complained about the difficulty in finding appropriate, interesting or new apps.
Hopefully, the exit of Chomp staff creates an opportunity for Apple fix a lot of problems with the iOS App store.