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Reminds me of doomers speak of the

- iMac
- iPod
- iPhone

But to be fair the failed Apple Car may be to the wrong people being put in charge of it. They needed people in the automotive industry working for them rather than Mac, iPhone or iPod people.
Those are totally different examples. Cars are NOT computers and require many different high-end technologies to create one but Apple has none.
 
1. Apple has no technology to build a car. I mean literally, the car technology is not simple but extremely complicated and requires different types of technology that Apple does not have.

2. Nobody wished to outsourcing for Apple. They all know how thinks work and they seriously hate how Apple treated them.

3. It's just a stupid move from the beginning and a lot of experts already expected their failure 10 years ago. Nothing new.
1. I’m pretty sure Apple has the technology to build a car. What they obviously don’t have at this point is the technology to build a really autonomous car - just like any other manufacturer.

2. -

3. I love how everyone clearly knows that this wouldn’t be possible from the beginning. But they know *now*, not *at the beginning*. Of course few experts bet from the beginning that this would be very difficult. But they’re probably the least pretentious, and don’t try to build the narrative of a “total company failure due to a R&D project that was 100% going to be useless”.
 
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Who's Tim firing? I mean they canned Mark Papermaster for committing a far less egregious act.
A less egregious act? He messed up with Apple’s most important product. Shipping a car that doesn’t meet customer expectations would have been a egregious act. Cancelling it is not.
 
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You need a vision for a product, and then to execute on it. There was a clearly defined goal for the Mac, iPhone, iPad, and the Apple Watch. Sounds like there wasn’t a real plan for what they wanted to do in the automotive space.

Hope Cook, Et al. learned their lesson.
 
1. I’m pretty sure Apple has the technology to build a car. What they obviously don’t have at this point is the technology to build a really autonomous car - just like any other manufacturer.

2. -

3. I love how everyone clearly knows that this wouldn’t be possible from the beginning. But they know *now*, not *at the beginning*. Of course few experts bet from the beginning that this would be very difficult. But they’re probably the least pretentious, and don’t try to build the narrative of a “total company failure due to a R&D project that was 100% going to be useless”.
1. You are very overestimating Apple's technology. I believe you know nothing about the car and Apple has literally no technology to create a car. This is why Tesla suffered heavily from the beginning and they are only 20 years old. I'm not gonna go over all technologies to make a car but you better check how it works. Apple cant make a car from the beginning and the only solution is to acquire a car company.

3. It's already predicted due to 1,2 issues. Nothing new.
 
1. You are very overestimating Apple's technology. I believe you know nothing about the car and Apple has literally no technology to create a car. This is why Tesla suffered heavily from the beginning and they are only 20 years old. I'm not gonna go over all technologies to make a car but you better check how it works. Apple cant make a car from the beginning and the only solution is to acquire a car company.

3. It's already predicted due to 1,2 issues. Nothing new.
What is it that they say about hindsight?
 
Just read the article and it doesn’t reflect well on Cook at all being incredibly indecisive and leading the project on lots of different tangents rather than having a clear goal.

A few quotes:

“There are a lot of roads you can take when you have a lot of really smart people and a very big budget,” says Reilly Brennan, a partner at the transportation technology venture fund Trucks VC. “But Apple never had the ability to make a bunch of specific decisions to lead them one way or the other.”

“For Field, Mansfield and others on the team, Cook’s indecision was frustrating. “If Bob or Doug ever had a reasonable set of objectives, they could have shipped a car,” says someone who was deeply involved in the project. “They’d ask to take the next step, and Tim would frequently say, ‘Get me more data, and let me think about it.’” In that setting, it was hard to retain talent: engineers Apple hired for the project would grow convinced things weren’t going anywhere and find jobs elsewhere”
 
This is the problem with Gurman. I do think he has access to valuable information, but he tries to mix it up with his own opinion and ends up with a subtitle that says: “The inside story is a case study in indecision.”
He’s referring to this:

For Field, Mansfield and others on the team, Cook’s indecision was frustrating. “If Bob or Doug ever had a reasonable set of objectives, they could have shipped a car,” says someone who was deeply involved in the project. “They’d ask to take the next step, and Tim would frequently say, ‘Get me more data, and let me think about it.’” In that setting, it was hard to retain talent: engineers Apple hired for the project would grow convinced things weren’t going anywhere and find jobs elsewhere
 
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This is the problem with Gurman. I do think he has access to valuable information, but he tries to mix it up with his own opinion and ends up with a subtitle that says: “The inside story is a case study in indecision.”

Apple went from considering buying Tesla, to designing a Level 5 microbus, to developing software only, and back to designing a Level 2 car. If that's not indecision, I don't what you would call it.

The car project changed leadership more than a half dozen times. That reflects on Tim Cook.

  1. Steve Zadesky
  2. Dan Riccio
  3. Bob Mansfield
  4. Doug Field
  5. Jeff Williams
  6. Kevin Lynch
  7. John Giannandrea
 
3. I love how everyone clearly knows that this wouldn’t be possible from the beginning. But they know *now*, not *at the beginning*. Of course few experts bet from the beginning that this would be very difficult. But they’re probably the least pretentious, and don’t try to build the narrative of a “total company failure due to a R&D project that was 100% going to be useless”.
People said the same thing about Tesla, from the beginning. And they turned out to be right.
 
1. Apple has no technology to build a car. I mean literally, the car technology is not simple but extremely complicated and requires different types of technology that Apple does not have.

2. Nobody wished to outsourcing for Apple. They all know how thinks work and they seriously hate how Apple treated them.

3. It's just a stupid move from the beginning and a lot of experts already expected their failure 10 years ago. Nothing new.
Building electric car is not that hard as many Chinese companies already sell them. The hard part is how to build one that you can sell at a high margin.
 
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Looking forward to a similar report about Vision Pro and then how Apple are doing a reset with a new executive team

Building cars was never a good fit for Apple. Contributing technology TO the auto industry — yes! But not building the final product.

As for Vision Pro — the best is yet to come.

Neither the car project nor Vision Pro were a failure. Not by a long shot. The research and development done for both will live on in many ways.
 
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Lotta people talking about the "failed" Apple Car. What Apple Car? I never heard Apple announce they were making a car. No doubt they did research and development to see what an Apple car would look like and whether they could produce one and whether it was worth it for them to produce a car. And then maybe decided not to? Isn't that how businesses operate? Where is the failure?
 
He’s referring to this:

For Field, Mansfield and others on the team, Cook’s indecision was frustrating. “If Bob or Doug ever had a reasonable set of objectives, they could have shipped a car,” says someone who was deeply involved in the project. “They’d ask to take the next step, and Tim would frequently say, ‘Get me more data, and let me think about it.’” In that setting, it was hard to retain talent: engineers Apple hired for the project would grow convinced things weren’t going anywhere and find jobs elsewhere
So he’s quoting what an anonymous 3rd person thinks about Mansfield thinking, and that leads to “it’s a case study of indecision”.

I just think it’s arrogant to extract such solid conclusions when you know almost nothing.
 
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This article proves what I have been saying about Tim Cook since 2021

He doesn't have the tech acumen and organizational prowess to make Project Titan work. This is a classic case of the rot starting at the top.
 
Apple went from considering buying Tesla, to designing a Level 5 microbus, to developing software only, and back to designing a Level 2 car. If that's not indecision, I don't what you would call it.

The car project changed leadership more than a half dozen times. That reflects on Tim Cook.

  1. Steve Zadesky
  2. Dan Riccio
  3. Bob Mansfield
  4. Doug Field
  5. Jeff Williams
  6. Kevin Lynch
  7. John Giannandrea
1. That’s a list of mixed reported rumours, and we won’t know what is true and what is false. What seems more or less clear is that Apple was aiming for a fully autonomous car, and when that started to seem not possible, the project was downgraded.

2. Then, was the iPhone a story of indecision, or what? It started as an iPod with a dial in the clickwheel!
 
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