William Gallagher
Duke University alumni and Apple executive Eddy Cue, and partner Paula Cue, have given gifts totalling $10 million to establish a Cue Faculty Fellows program.
Having both graduated from Duke University in 1986, Apple's Eddy Cue and his wife Paula Cue, have previously both championed the role of women in technology. Now $8 million of their gift will go to recruiting what are described as "four early-career, diverse faculty hires".
"Duke provided me with many of the experiences and skills that have been so valuable throughout my career at Apple," Eddy Cue said in a statement. "I'm honored to be working with Duke to support the future of the tech industry — these will be the next people who change the world."
"Every workplace benefits from more perspectives," Paula Cue said. "I am so proud to support Duke's efforts to narrow the gender and racial gap by including more diverse representation at the undergraduate and faculty levels to help elevate tomorrow's leaders."
Two of the new Cue Faculty Fellows will be in the university's computer science department, and two in the computer engineering one. The intention is that the funding will mean Duke University can "not only recruit extraordinary faculty, but... retain them."
The remaining $2 million of the Cues' gift will be split between the Duke Discovery Fund, and the Center for Computational Thinking (CCT). The Discovery Fund is a "flexible funding option for science and technology efforts," while CCT teaches computational skills.
The gift from the Cues follows Eddy Cue joining the Duke University board of trustees in July 2021.
Tim Cook also attended Duke University, and gave a commencement speech there in 2018.
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3 Comments
That's nice, now can he catch Apple services up on over a decade of languishing behind Apple's innovations in hardware and OS, and every service competitor Apple has?
Podcasts - soon to be referred to as Spotifycasts
voice AI: still just barely useful for scheduling rote tasks, and can't even do more than one at a time ffs (can't even do: "turn the kitchen lights blue at %40")
maps - this one is probably the most caught up, I actually love the current version
mail - searching mail still sucks
smart home - how did spotify and Phillips Hue lights get music integration before Apple?? why are there so few options for many important categories
music - getting owned by spotify. Virtually no social or customization capability in apples most social app. Where's karaoke? The Apple Voice plan?? lol, it's just a simplified, more limited, and less customizable version of the product that Beats had developed *before* Apple even acquired them 7 years ago ffs
apple TV - love the product, but so much squandered potential, completely bumbled apple tv gaming for example
On and on..
Overall I think Tim Cook has done a great job for Apple, but this blind spot on services is incredibly frustrating, and just absurd at this point. How does Cue still have his job? How is Apple satisfied with this nonsense?
So why do we get a picture of Tim Cook?
Apple is so big. They are unable to be quick movers especially compared with companies like Spotify which is highly focused on a single product. Apple is still primarily a hardware/firmware company, then an operating systems company and lastly an application software company. It will take them a long time to catch up on software/services.