The whining is perfectly justified. Name me a company that has left its root and veered into manufacturing a completely radical product. Apple's original name was Apple Computer.
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Apple Abandons Car Plans 'For Now,' Sets Late 2017 Deadline to Decide Fate of Self-Driving System
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Without Jobs Apple is no longer innovating but merely releasing news to prop up their stock but not following through.
Yea, you probably shouldn't have fed the troll, but I guess we need to remember that a lot of Apple's new customers don't even realize their history. If you came on-board to get the latest dancing emojis, you probably don't give a rip about computers, UX/UI, productivity, or anything else that made Apple what it is today.
I don't think you do anything more than scratch the surface when it comes to the problems of self-driving cars.
For instance, in cities, I think it would simply be impossible to ever have self-driving cars. Here is the conundrum: in order to keep them moving, you would have to segregate pedestrians from them, or they would constantly walk out in front of them knowing that the car would stop. Traffic would be at a standstill, and chaos would ensue. Therefore, a barrier would have to be put up at ruinous expense. Even if this happened, it would not suffice, because it would end up being dangerous. What if road rage occurred between cars? A fight ensued. People on the pavement would not be able to intervene due to the barrier. Or someone had a heart attack in a car and needed assistance. The possibilities are endless.
So in cities or anywhere that pedestrians can go, self-driving cars are not practical. That limits them to the motorways (highways). There, it is conceivable that a form of self-driving could be used, but we have that already. If you have lane assist and intelligent cruise control, you don't need to steer, brake or accelerate in good conditions. You still need to keep alert and be prepared to intervene, though.
My conclusion is that cars will gradually become more helpful for long drives on the highway, but this will be a feature of normal cars. As all other kinds of roads will require manual driving, it will not be feasible for pure self-driving cars to ever happen, and this is why all the hype of self-driving has as much likelihood as the hype of flying cars back in the 70s.
The moral dilemma is but one problem, and not the biggest. It is the mundane problem of accommodating pedestrians, cyclists and cars that condemns self-driving cars to the imagination.
Could be the worst idea I've heard on this site.
Heard about the concept of a scaffold? It's purpose is to prop up a building while it is under construction. Once the building is complete and capable of standing on its own, the scaffold is then torn down and discarded, never to be used on that building again.
Whatever stops the whining that is invading every corner of this forum, even when the thread topic bears no relevance.
For sure. In fact it's worse, as flying cars are at least possible in theory. Self-driving cars (that are good) aren't really even possible. There's no self to drive. It's sensors and a computer program, and highly unlikely either will be good enough to suffice (even if we're willing to make the trade-off).
As if no one complained about Apple and innovation while Jobs was alive.
Maybe you weren't around back then, but yes, while we had many complaints when Jobs was alive, Apple is fundamentally a different company now.
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Not only a troll... but a complete inability to form analogy.
Not to be a jerk, but scaffolding goes around a building so plasterers, painters, etc. can work on it. It does not "prop" it up.
Disclaimer: General Contractor.
I don't want an Apple or any self driving car. Bring back the V8 that gets 2 miles to the gallon and sounds like the world is coming to an end !!!!! lol
Flying cars are not really possible, even in theory. Roadable airplanes are possible in theory, but the demands of the two are so different that they are virtually mutually exclusive problems. People have been messing around with this idea since the 1930s at least. Nobody has yet to figure out how make an airplane that isn't a very poor car or a car that isn't an exceptionally dangerous airplane. Driverless cars are actually a much more solvable problem.
Fair enough.
My point was that the Mac served a key purpose back in its days and maybe Apple simply feels that Macs don't have a part to play in Apple's long term roadmap.
I am guessing that we might see a Mac update (together with a long overdue revamp to Final Cut Pro) before the end of the year, but moving forward, Mac updates will likely get spaced further and further apart. PC hardware simply isn't improving fast enough to merit an annual refresh any more.
Take your own advise. You're relating simple sales to profit without looking at the big picture. Guess you'll just have to see in 2 weeks.
Heh... but even assuming what I think was trying to be said, I don't see any kind of analogy.
The argument seems to be, that the Mac was something temporary to get Apple to some point that is, what? iOS? LOL. And, if they meant 'foundation' you can't really remove the foundation without the building falling.
It's possible they meant, kind of like Tim's silly statements, that *most* people could make do with phones/tablets, such that the *average* person no longer needs a 'desktop' type computer.
But, even then, Jobs' analogy of cars and trucks is much better. Not everyone needs a truck, but it isn't like trucks are going away. It could be that Apple is deciding to get out of the 'truck' business to focus on the 'car' business, but why? The analogy of scaffolding (foundation) doesn't apply there either.
Maybe they meant it more like Schiller's daft statements about the 3.5mm jack being ancient technology. THAT would be a better analogy, as in some think desktops are going to be replaced by mobile stuff, because desktops are 'old' tech. In that sense, it's an analogy, just a really stupid one.
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Ahh, OK, my last one then. So, Macs are now just 'old fashioned' and need to be replaced by the 'new'.
The problem with that is 1) mobile and 'desktop' UX is quite different 2) while yes, current mobile has reached the speed of older 'desktop' capability, it's not like tech doesn't stop advancing.
This isn't something old being replaced by something new... it's apples and oranges.
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That's 'feasible' not 'possible'. Flying cars aren't feasible. I guess to be fair, AI cars are possible too, just not feasible. But, I actually think the hurdle is just as high.
Too bad they don't have the "Courage" to admit it...
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True
Apple is adrift like a ship without a rudder.
He's actually right. Tesla is profitable on every car it sells with 20+% gross margins. This is higher than most other manufacturers. They're spending much more than to build out a sales infrastructure, charging infrastructure, and tooling to scale to 500k units. This is not unlike what Amazon did for 10 years.
Okay, if you think that's an important distinction. The very different physics of flying and driving are fundamental problems that can't be worked around, they are inherent to the problem. I see no similar inherency issues with cars not driven by human beings, if only because human beings basically suck at driving, so it isn't ridiculously difficult to improve on human abilities.
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That would be a case of accounting hocus-pocus. The cost of building the means to produce and sell the product counts.
AT&T (Name infers it still deals in Telegraphs) 3M (has moved from sandpaper products to hundreds of things, including Postit Notes), Microsoft (remember when DOS was its big product?), Dell (it used to be all custom, now it's a commodity box maker), IBM (started in cash registers, moved to giant servers, developed Plug Compatibles, now is a server and AI company), Xerox (original product: Photographic materials), Nokia (use to make paper), DuPont (started making Gunpowder, now makes practically every chemical out there), Nintendo (use to make playing cards until the late 70's, then a guy named Miyamoto came along...)
They are reasonably good cars, because they are very expensively made. And they don't make a profit at their current price points. For Tesla to become a profitable company prices must go higher. It's the Amazon story all over again.
No, the problem here isn't Apple. It's mostly Intel - the fact is Intel is not releasing chips fast enough, or with enough difference. The base fact is 4th gen chip is not that much slower or different from a 6th gen (Skylake) chip. It is only a tiny sliver faster, with insignificant IO differences.
Now, the 7th gen, the new ones, they've got some big differences - Thunderbolt 3, USB-C controller onboard, and now the speed differences between a 4th and a 7th are starting to be noticeable.
The fact is, without AMD nipping at their heels, Intel is bogging down. They're becoming slow. Minor increases with marketing to try and make it up. Well, Apple is brighter - don't re-engineer the world for a 5-10% increase in speed. Just wait until it becomes enough (I'd say 4th gen to 7th is about a 25% increase, that is actually worth it) and there are some features that make spending the money to integrate them in worth it. It's not like the current 4th and 5th gens were slow at all.
Most car companies sell a model for 4-6 years unlike smartphones which get refreshed every year. Even legacy manufacturers don't make a profit on their initial investment until the latter years.
The Model S has been on sale for almost four years now. If they weren't investing to build the Model 3 which will be five times the volume, then they would be profitable today.
No hocus pocus here.
I do agree that they may run out of cash before they get to a successful launch of the Model 3 but that's what makes a market.
This sums it up. It's not that Apple does not have talents. They can afford to have the best talent in the world as they have lots of cash in the bank. But ideas are just ideas and disparate. They don't have somebody who can take those ideas and make a product out of it. And that was pretty obvious when Tim Cook took the helm of it. You will never see a logistic guy running a product company. That is just setting up the company to fail on a long run. I am not saying Apple will collapse. But you will not see anything interesting or exciting coming out of it. The vision side of Apple is dead with Steve Jobs. I am sorry, but that's the truth.Too bad they don't have the "Courage" to admit it...
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True
Apple is adrift like a ship without a rudder.