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iTunes boss Cue: Apple has 'best product pipeline in 25 years' - but won't tell what's coming next

Apple has some big product promises to live up if iTunes head Eddy Cue is telling the truth.
Written by Liam Tung, Contributing Writer
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The iMac, iPod, iPhone, and MacBook Air were all great products for their time, but they're no match for what Apple's got under wraps this year, according to iTunes boss Eddy Cue.

Apple's $3bn acquisition of Beats might have leaked ahead of yesterday's official announcement of the deal, but advance warning of Apple hardware roadmaps are a little harder to come by, especially from those who can speak about them credibly.

Instead, as Apple chief Tim Cook did earlier this year, Apple's descriptions of upcoming products are boiled down to generic discussions of having "great stuff" in the pipeline.

Cue appears to have taken his lead from Cook, telling Re/Code's Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher that Apple had its best line-up in a quarter of a century.

"Later this year, we've got the best product pipeline that I’ve seen at Apple in my 25 years at Apple," Cue said at the publication's Code conference this week.

Of course, that was all he gave away and when reminded by Mossberg that Apple had released the iMac, iPod, iPhone and MacBook Air during the last quarter of a century, the Apple exec insisted the forthcoming nameless products were "great".

With suggestions dogging Apple that the company may have hit a creative wall after recent iterations of the iPhone and iPad failed to wow, Cook earlier this year said Apple would be launching into "new categories".

Such a move would address the problem that most of the growth in the smartphone and tablet categories is expected at the low end where Apple doesn't play.

The company has made some efforts recently to diversify its product portfolio: Apple recently launched CarPlay and is rumoured to be pursuing the home automation market with a new software platform for iOS and a new version of Apple TV. There's also long rumoured iWatch, and a larger iPhone. 

The public may get a chance to judge Cue's claim next Monday at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference 2014, but if it's anything like previous years, it will be short on new devices.

According to CNET, Apple sources say there's no hardware being released at the event, which fits with Apple's practice of using WWDC to unveil new versions of iOS and OS X.

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