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Apple 'Reboots' Self-Driving Car Initiative Amid Project Layoffs and Closures
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Hm. Yearly Updates, matching tires and new soundeffects on brakes.
Please: Back to the Mac.
Please: Back to the Mac.
Really think it's a stupid idea, they have no clue what they are doing, so they are being rumoured to just buy someone? They are hiring and firing left and right, changing heads of the project... And the Apple board, who have no clue or experience about making cars, are setting unrealistic timelines, are they going to skip on safety then?
I think more fool you to anyone who buys this first gen and even second gen product. Perhaps they'll just go and buy BMW or Tesla or someone else eh... Although I think it'll only be able to buy Tesla.
It certainly seems to be a project that's in a mess which is really no surprise considering they, or anyone at the company before this project, had a thing to do with the car industry before.
Apple need to stop the arrogance here, Ford spends around 5 YEARS to develop a car, it did so for the Fiesta. When it's a totally new platform that's how long it takes and it costs billions. It's not something you can knock up in a couple of years and roll into the stage under 'one more thing', especially when you have zero experience in the market.
I think more fool you to anyone who buys this first gen and even second gen product. Perhaps they'll just go and buy BMW or Tesla or someone else eh... Although I think it'll only be able to buy Tesla.
It certainly seems to be a project that's in a mess which is really no surprise considering they, or anyone at the company before this project, had a thing to do with the car industry before.
Apple need to stop the arrogance here, Ford spends around 5 YEARS to develop a car, it did so for the Fiesta. When it's a totally new platform that's how long it takes and it costs billions. It's not something you can knock up in a couple of years and roll into the stage under 'one more thing', especially when you have zero experience in the market.
Elon's darling, Tesla, is going to run out of funding within 12 months. There will be nothing for them to go back to. Apple sees the economic writing on the wall and is getting ready for the epic collapse in dotcom V2.0.
Ive threw his ever-increasing weight around to get it cancelled because the engineers balked at making it thinner.
Not to digress, but the electric car's industry is going to have issues still going ahead. I worked in the fuel industry sector for many years and believe it or not, there is still quite a lot of oil left. The pricing of oil has always been dealing with the international communities and speculators. Oil will continue to ride at it's current level for some time. For me to buy an electric car that is well engineered is going to run about $40 - 50K. Not in my budget.
I read an article where the replacement battery pack for a 2005 Prius was about $4,000 and the car value at that point was only $7500. so regardless, yes, I will continue to drive my emission spewing vehicle.
With that said, Mansfield, hopefully, will right the ship, and possibly convince Tim that he is taking the wrong direction. I know there has been some discussion that Steve wanted to build a car, but Mansfield coming from the house of Jobs, I believe will see the folly in this endeavor.
I read an article where the replacement battery pack for a 2005 Prius was about $4,000 and the car value at that point was only $7500. so regardless, yes, I will continue to drive my emission spewing vehicle.
With that said, Mansfield, hopefully, will right the ship, and possibly convince Tim that he is taking the wrong direction. I know there has been some discussion that Steve wanted to build a car, but Mansfield coming from the house of Jobs, I believe will see the folly in this endeavor.
Sure because personal computers are really on an upward trajectory sales wise.
That's when you reinvent the wheel (sorry, couldn't resist).
Kidding aside, if one of your core products has been slipping that's when you refocus your efforts. I realize the consumer cross platform iOS market is Apple's bread and butter but Mac's have always been in demand. Not many are buying as the line is sorely in need of an update. Today's average consumer is slightly more knowledgable on tech and won't pay for dated specs at premium prices. Cook and Ive should step back, see the bigger picture, refocus, cut product fragmentation, simplify as Jobs did post-Sculley, hold back moving into new markets that have fallen short of conservative estimates (India), and make products worth the investment.
Warning: Rant in 3... [turn back now] 2... [you've been warned] 1...
Apple has made some bad decisions that are now effecting its bottom line. Dropping the professional market, consumer market saturation, and product fragmentation are hitting Apple hard for the first time in ~13-14 years. Cutting the professional markets has hurt more than most outside Cupertino realize. Studios and professionals annually invested massive amounts in new hardware and editing suites. Cook made that decision as he was calling shots well before Jobs "officially" retired. That market supported Apple through its rough years yet we produced [then] current and top quality hardware (dedicated 20"/23"/30" CCFL LCD line, reasonably priced PowerMac's $1599-1999, Mac Pro's $2499, notebooks, FCP7, etc). Many held out with high hopes, yet years of "Stayed tuned" responses and dropping professional support finally pushed them out and Cook pointedly stated it was the right move after the fact. One example of many bad decisions that lost Apple a dedicated market that'll never return after investing time and massive funds in new systems and editing suites.
Ditch the car, cut products that aren't selling well (watch bands are truly "niche"), work/invest with Intel to push their development (don't move into ARM based Mac's as many like cold booting into Windows, etc), update your core lines, produce a great display line that should have been done in 2008 (they sold well across markets with professionals and consumers; many Windows switchers bought a Power Mac/Mac Pro and the displays were an easy sell even with their price points as they were excellent), and make products Apple can be proud of today.
Get Cook and Phil off the stage. He's going through the motions trying to emulate Jobs during Keynotes and Phil just doesn't care anymore, they've cashed in their chips and are coasting. Angela is much more captivating and passionate in person and has the presense to reinvigorate major keynotes. She may not know tech and engineering well but neither did Jobs. Angela has great ideas that have been brought to life by engineers (one ex: mirrors in Burberry locations that show a client wearing garments when held up), streamlined back of house, and broke the wall between retail and corporate communications. She brought Burberry back to life from near bankruptcy. She's much more similar to Jobs yet is approachable while being direct. Angela is the first major addition that everyone likes, which on this side of the wall is extremely rare. Now that two years of behind the scenes work is done she needs to make appearances during keynotes.
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Electric cars are not about saving money (or the environment). Electric cars are safer (no big engine to come into the cabin on a collision), quieter, don't emit stinky fumes, have better torque, require little maintenance, can run their A/C while parked, and have less moving parts. Once you've gotten used to an electric car a gas car feels as refined as a riding lawnmower.
As a resident of Mountain View, CA, where Google self-driving cars have been on our city streets for a couple years, I'll tell you it's no fantasy.
I addressed this in an earlier comment. Apple's native expertise in that field (consumer electronics) allowed them to blow the others out of the water. Not so with a self-driving car -- they're trying to develop the tech alongside all these other firms (by going after the same engineers, etc.). And many of the other firms seem to have native expertise in various aspects of the tech (AI, automotive engineering) that Apple lacks.
I'm not saying Apple shouldn't try. It just seems like a different and riskier "play" than what has propelled them to the heights of success in recent years -- revolutionizing product categories using their own "secret sauce."
...except they did enter the market and did so before there was any significant competition. With cars, Tesla are already doing pretty much everything you'd expect Apple to do with EVs (except making money), several of the major car makers have credible electric offerings, and Google are at least demonstrating self-driving tech.
Of course, its possible that Apple have something amazing in the works that simply hasn't occurred to anybody else...
Pocket supercomputers rarely kill bystanders or leave the owner with huge legal liabilities. To make a pocket supercomputer, you just invent loads of cool tech and make it really small. They do things that computers find really easy and humans do really badly, like moving data around and doing calculations on it. A self-driving car has to do things like identifying objects in context, judging speeds and distances, predicting the behaviour of other objects and dealing with the unexpected that us apes are actually really, really good at (as long as we're not drunk, asleep, texting or showing off to the opposite sex) - and computers find really hard. Self-driving cars are going to be held to very high safety standards - they're in with a chance because they don't get drunk or go to sleep, are good at multitasking and don't give a fig about sex - but the programming is still a massive challenge.
Even when the technical challenges are solved, there will need to be changes to the law and appropriate insurance policies created - possibly even changes to the road infrastructure - before they can hit the mass market.
So, although I certainly wouldn't bet against self-driving cars happening in the future, there's a long, long journey between the party tricks that Teslas offer (which have already backfired) and something that's robust enough for mass use. You may have heard the expression "The first 90% takes 90% of the time... and the last 10% takes 90% of the time, too" - that is going to go double for self-driving cars. If anybody jumps the gun (as Tesla is risking with Autopilot) then the first dead child is going to kick the idea into the long grass for years.
Why are they wasting time and money developing an autonomous driving system when the demand for such a car is not proven. I don't believe self driving cars will ever become mainstream.
I hate to say but Apple has lost the WOW factor.. They Can't come up with anything under Tim Cook.. Next project o get the boot will be??? BTW 7S Next year will be the very same phone we got last week with minor specs and software features available on other devices for years... LOL
Right, except they headed in the wrong direction. They should pay a bit more attention to the philosophers and a bit less to the AI futurists, and say 'no' to autonomous. If they'd have focused on building a car like the Tesla (aside from 'Autopilot'), they might have been able to do quite well.
Used to be. Given the state of OS X (macOS) and iOS, does anyone really want Apple writing the code for a vehicle???!!!
Apple is a prestigious company to work for and if i were an engineer or developer, i'd love to work with them.
However, leaving Tesla to simply work for a hobby project for Apple is a bad idea.
It'd be like leaving Google to work for a sidearm of Ford who is trying to develop a mattress.
However, leaving Tesla to simply work for a hobby project for Apple is a bad idea.
It'd be like leaving Google to work for a sidearm of Ford who is trying to develop a mattress.
How in the world can you know in what direction they were or are headed? This is just the most recent in a long thread of comments that argue Apple should be doing something different than what they are doing, based on a complete lack of actual knowledge of their plans.
iOS 10 has been stable since the first public beta. It will be the most stable release in years, if ever.
That's because you see cars in the traditional sense that they've existed in since their inception.
Cars are becoming gadgets and they're becoming more computer than rolling chassis. BMW is less equipped to deal with the move to gadget/computer while Apple (or Google) is having the pretty straightforward job of putting wheels with electric motors on a computer.
Steve was fascinated with Segway and commented that it, or something like it was the future of vehicles. Don't forget that Jobs made predictions about the future that took a couple of decades to pan out. I imagine an Apple Car looking nothing like a car. My best guest would be a self balancing sphere like the one in Jurassic World. You get in, you tell Siri where you want to go and it rolls you there autonomously.
The car model is also moving to a sharing economy where, again, traditional manufacturers weren't built to survive on. That's why you see these manufacturers investing in Uber and others like it.
Cars as gadgets and as a service is going to be a trillion dollar business in the coming decade. If Apple is going to continue to grow, they're not going to do it selling smartphones for much longer. The car market is a good fit for Apple and when it happens, it's going to be as obvious to us today that Apple's main business is a smartphone as it sounded ridiculous to people 10 years ago that Apple would be moving away from Macs to sell telephones.
When you have that much money in the bank you can afford to just start a load of projects and ******* the ones that don't work out, maybe at the end of it they'll have something good.
This news definitely create support for Tesla's stock price. Who knows Tesla hits $150 then Apple steps in and scoop it altogether....
Hopefully Apple doesn't buy Tesla.
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.
Alan Kay, Via Steve Jobs
They're probably looking to turn to new things and forget about the Mac.
Computers won't make them big profits. It's not a growing market.
Even smartphones will not bring big profits anymore, so they have to find new things to make and sell.