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ikramerica

macrumors 68000
Apr 10, 2009
1,555
1,849
The employees are being reassigned oversee a new project using machine learning and AI to develop innovative new watch bands.
Maybe they can figure out an XL band for the 40mm. The watch is sized well to be unisex, but the bands not so much.
 

mcfrazieriv

macrumors 65816
Jan 30, 2012
1,106
2,843
Dearest Tim Cook:
Please resign.
Signed,
MacPro


-----

With this news, Tim Cook still has an amazing pipeline of earth changing gadgets like the HomePod and Apple Watch.

Last weekend I barely put my Apple Watch on... guess what I was missing the entire time? Nothing. Perhaps the clunk it makes when I accidentally swing it into a door jam. Yes - that.
 

radiologyman

macrumors 6502a
Jul 23, 2011
755
271
Apple will not be making a car, it's very complicated and should be left to companies with relative expertise. Like was said previously, Apple got IP to protect share in quickly expanding automotive software market. AI is the next frontier and autonomous cars are just one of the early battles. Given Siri issues, Apple still has catching up to do.
 
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niun

macrumors 6502a
Mar 31, 2015
686
1,012
I'm convinced this is the Cupertino effect. There is literally one thing to do in Cupertino and that is getting your photo taken on the steps at the back of the Juniper (ex Cypress) hotel.
Spend more than three weeks there and you become a gibbering wreck..
 
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dorsal

macrumors regular
Aug 20, 2002
161
131
There is no money in autonomous vehicles. Hope they bail completely.
Sure, a handful of companies with figure it out, but then it's just a matter of "who can get me to the airport the cheapest". A race to the bottom. Get out now.
 

Tech198

Cancelled
Mar 21, 2011
15,915
2,151
How can Apple keep saying they have a talented team when all they do is keep laying people off?

Admittedly, they also keep hiring as well, so i guess it does balance it out.
 

britboyj

macrumors 6502a
Apr 8, 2009
814
1,086
I'm actually curious if Field left Apple for Tesla with the agreement he would return to Apple to lead their car project. It's amazingly suspicious to me.
 
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alexhardaker

macrumors 6502a
Sep 12, 2014
643
580
I’m still not certain why Apple keeps resetting this project. Is it really going to bring in that much revenue? Maybe they should focus on AI instead and work on this on a smaller scale.
[doublepost=1551304731][/doublepost]

The Apple Watch has the ability to be one of their most transformative products and if the rumors are true about what their new services are going to offer, it’s going to rattle the industry.

The days of shiny new objects are gone for the foreseeable future. AR and VR tech isn’t anywhere near good enough yet for Apple to get involved with.
Services rumours?
 

coolfactor

macrumors 604
Jul 29, 2002
7,113
9,851
Vancouver, BC
This company has more money than anyone else - and they have invented pretty much nothing interesting since Steve-o left us. Cooke is good at operations - but their product development sucks now. I literally had to ask Siri how to turn off the new iphone. Get rid of the new Balmer and put in a true visionary to lead this thing.

I take it that you don't own an Apple Watch. They may not have been first to market, but they do have the best watch experience and fitness companion on the market. It's truly transformative.

The magic of Apple continues to be how gracefully the devices work together, and that's never been truer.
 
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LordVic

Cancelled
Sep 7, 2011
5,938
12,458
I wonder if they finally realized the writing is on the wall for this one.

I'm not apposed to Apple trying to use their wealth to advance the tech of self driving cars or even enterin the car business

However, it's a massive uphill battle for them to enter a very thoroughly entrenched. Extremely expensive startup cost an highly competitive low margin industry that has never played nice to newcomers. Just look at the opposition Tesla has received by the existing players. Liklihood that Apple was working on a car itself are fairly low.

so, are they working on the software stack for other self driving cars? Who would buy and implenent it? first, Apple doesn't currently have an OS that is capable of real time processing that automotive requires. This is why most current car systems are built on the QNX platform and not your run of the mill linux.

Plus you'd have to convince manufacturers who already have self driving tech that appear to have been much further along (many have stage 1-2 self driving in production purchasable cars, stage 3 self driving is now entering real world testing as well). These car companies are going to opt to keep this sort of development in house and specific to their own cars. Unless Apple was tryin gto do something super amazing, few companies are going to willingly license Apple's car OS if that's what it was.

it just seems like this car project was a "if Tesla can do it why can't we!" mindset that just after years and probably millions of dollars hasn't been able to grow fruit.

oh well. we'll see what comes along next.
 

weup togo

macrumors 6502
May 6, 2016
357
1,257
Holy ****, more EPMs than any other useful role. Make no mistake, this was either the worst managed project ever, or they just airlocked a bunch of dead weight. Those ratios aren’t remotely close to actual team composition.

Apple spent $14.2 billion on R&D in 2018. That's insanely huge R&D expenditure. Apple's 10-K does not break out how much they spend on employee compensation, but they say $16.7 billion was spent on "Selling, general and administrative."

Compensation is not an R&D cost.
 

Baymowe335

Suspended
Oct 6, 2017
6,640
12,451
As an investor, I am slightly concerned Apple is considering or has already pulled the trigger on buying Tesla.

At minimum, perhaps some kind of joint venture.

Apple has unlimited cash and a lot of manufacturing oversight experience while Tesla needs cash and struggles with production/quality control.
 

roblin

macrumors regular
Apr 5, 2007
213
23
As an investor, I am slightly concerned Apple is considering or has already pulled the trigger on buying Tesla.

At minimum, perhaps some kind of joint venture.

Apple has unlimited cash and a lot of manufacturing oversight experience while Tesla needs cash and struggles with production/quality control.

Tesla’s long term mission is to accelerate transition to electric cars. However Tesla today is so far ahead, in terms of production numbers, range and costs, that it is very hard to competitors to compete with Tesla without losing money. Apple can’t really enter a market half assed, the risk for Apple is that they release a car and once they start to manufacture it at scale it is worse than what Tesla is currently offering in terms of range, acceleration and price.

So maybe Apple will just give up the idea of making their own car.

What Apple could do instead is to integrate Tesla’s cars into the iOS ecosystem, provide A13x processors, iPad displays(heck just put an actual iPad into the car), modems and bring valueable knowhow in computer security, camera design and mass production. And to bankroll a more aggressive rollout of gigafactories.

The value of the ride sharing market is pretty huge:
https://research.ark-invest.com/self-driving-cars-white-paper

If Tesla&Apple manages to capture 50% of the market, that would be a $2T market cap in five years.

So how would they do it? Tim cook could offer to buy 50% of Musks 40M shares, and in addition buy another 20M newly minted shares for $420 each to a cost of $16.8B. They would then have a 25% share of TSLA. They would get a share of Tesla’s profits and also get a lot of hardware sales, iOS users etc. Tesla can make some Maxwell batteries for Apple’s product line and help Apple move more production to America.

To me this seems like a pretty good investment for Apple and there are a lot of synergies between the companies.
 

Baymowe335

Suspended
Oct 6, 2017
6,640
12,451
Tesla’s long term mission is to accelerate transition to electric cars. However Tesla today is so far ahead, in terms of production numbers, range and costs, that it is very hard to competitors to compete with Tesla without losing money. Apple can’t really enter a market half assed, the risk for Apple is that they release a car and once they start to manufacture it at scale it is worse than what Tesla is currently offering in terms of range, acceleration and price.

So maybe Apple will just give up the idea of making their own car.

What Apple could do instead is to integrate Tesla’s cars into the iOS ecosystem, provide A13x processors, iPad displays(heck just put an actual iPad into the car), modems and bring valueable knowhow in computer security, camera design and mass production. And to bankroll a more aggressive rollout of gigafactories.

The value of the ride sharing market is pretty huge:
https://research.ark-invest.com/self-driving-cars-white-paper

If Tesla&Apple manages to capture 50% of the market, that would be a $2T market cap in five years.

So how would they do it? Tim cook could offer to buy 50% of Musks 40M shares, and in addition buy another 20M newly minted shares for $420 each to a cost of $16.8B. They would then have a 25% share of TSLA. They would get a share of Tesla’s profits and also get a lot of hardware sales, iOS users etc. Tesla can make some Maxwell batteries for Apple’s product line and help Apple move more production to America.

To me this seems like a pretty good investment for Apple and there are a lot of synergies between the companies.
Tesla is not as far ahead as you think, in my opinion.

Tesla is a poor car manufacturer with an old Toyota facility and a limited market, for a car relying a lot on expiring subsidies. They struggle to make cars with consistent quality and fit and finish.

The company is burning cash and loses more as they produce more cars. I realize they have made a small profit the last 2 quarters, but they have vaporized billions overall and still lost over $1B in 2018.

Once competition cares enough about EVs to make them, you’ll see the lead evaporate quickly because there are highly competent competitors with much stronger brands and far better production ability. Watch a BMW being assembled.

BMW shipped over 100,000 cars with some electric component and something like 50,000 all electric vehicles. You think they are just going to die when the electric car gets big? And BMW is a stronger brand.

Electric vehicles are still a ways off and have many drawbacks to gas powered cars as of today, mainly cost, range, electric stations, needs for special home equipment, and ease of fill up.
 

cmichaelb

macrumors 68020
Aug 6, 2008
2,280
740
Italy
This company has more money than anyone else - and they have invented pretty much nothing interesting since Steve-o left us. Cooke is good at operations - but their product development sucks now. I literally had to ask Siri how to turn off the new iphone. Get rid of the new Balmer and put in a true visionary to lead this thing.
How to turn off the phone? Did they get rid of the power button?
 
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roblin

macrumors regular
Apr 5, 2007
213
23
Mhhhhh ... ... Audi e-tron, Porsche, BMW?
Any delivery figures for e-tron and taycan? How many i3s and i8s were delivered in 2018? So far they produce a magnitude less vehicles than Tesla. Future promises often turns into new promises rather than deliveries, the E-tron was introduced 2009 and has been promised so many times in between but it is first now we start to see small scale. And range and effiency is much worse for the E-tron than for the larger Model X:
upload_2019-2-28_13-24-56.jpeg

[doublepost=1551335498][/doublepost]
Tesla is not as far ahead as you think, in my opinion.

Tesla is a poor car manufacturer with an old Toyota facility and a limited market, for a car relying a lot on expiring subsidies. They struggle to make cars with consistent quality and fit and finish.

The company is burning cash and loses more as they produce more cars. I realize they have made a small profit the last 2 quarters, but they have vaporized billions overall and still lost over $1B in 2018.

Once competition cares enough about EVs to make them, you’ll see the lead evaporate quickly because there are highly competent competitors with much stronger brands and far better production ability. Watch a BMW being assembled.

BMW shipped over 100,000 cars with some electric component and something like 50,000 all electric vehicles. You think they are just going to die when the electric car gets big? And BMW is a stronger brand.

Electric vehicles are still a ways off and have many drawbacks to gas powered cars as of today, mainly cost, range, electric stations, needs for special home equipment, and ease of fill up.

Tesla made like $3B i FCF in the last two quarters. This is not small by any means. The reason their profit is not higher is because they pay back loans and invest new production capability.

Once competitors... If competitors wanted they could. At some point companies like Jaguar, Volvo, BMW who are seeing their market cap and profits becoming much smaller than Tesla might want to actually do it. But why not do it already if they can?

EVs are rapidly getting close to having a lower TCO in many places around the world. That is why we are seeing figures for sales explode in China, Norway, Californa etc and we will soon see figures explode in many more places.
 
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Mikkis

macrumors member
Jan 30, 2010
62
68
Polestar would be ideal company to buy and build Apple car on. Not too big (yet) and enough experience on electric car building.
 
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