Apple 'Reboots' Self-Driving Car Initiative Amid Project Layoffs and Closures

[TallManNY]

As for the Watch - battery and display technology just isn't there yet. The one product that could have done with being thinner, they've made thicker. Again, the Samsung offerings look far more interesting (2 days battery life with the display always on & a far more sensible-sounding bezel-driven UI...?) but I have a suspicion that all the photos show them being worn by specially-selected models with giant wrists so I'll reserve judgement till I see one in real life - I hate huge chunky watches. Maybe they should have targetted the FitBit market (which seems to be where the demand is) and super-tight iPhone integration rather than going for all-singing, all-dancing self-contained Watch.

[doublepost=1473509439][/doublepost]

...unless you want to use it to tell the time and prefer a clock face, which is round, is a much better way of visualising time and looks nicer. Square mechanical watches were a form-over-function gimmick from the olden days where making a square case was expensive and showy. What I want from a watch is big, bold, at-a-glance notifications that help me decide whether to get out my large-screen phone: if you're filling every corner of the screen with info you're designing it wrong. Also, watch crowns are fiddly: the Samsung bezel control is a far better idea.

Plus, the Watch looks like a 1970s LED quartz watch.

Well the watch really isn't that focused on telling the time. It is a computer on your wrist. And with Apple dominating the category and about to release what is apparently a game changing OS improvement, it has to be considered a success right now. I think it will be a stunning success in a year if the OS is that improved. No one can touch apple for putting a powerful chip and having it run on a small battery. The android phones need nearly 75% more battery size to get comparable left. I assume everyone is going to struggle even more so in the watch category. But Samsungs stuff looks good. I suspect it will be bigger than the Apple Watch by a lot though. And Apple seems to just be getting started on the chip side for the watch.

 

[npmacuser5]

The car, not in Apples wheel house. Apple needs to stay in the home, education, and business markets. The home needs a better infrastructure for automation. Apple has not upgraded their wifi routers, appears little if any energies to making the home networks reliable enough to support all the devices needed to truly automate the home. Another example is the Apple TV. A half baked HomeKit could use some of the resources the car is taking to make home automation closer to reality. I agree with many, Apple needs to focus on their core business.

 

[techwhiz]

There was never a plan to develop a complete car.
I said the challenges were difficult even for Apple. A phone is not a car.
They never confirmed they were going to build a car.

 

[geenosr]

You've never heard of Ronald McDonald House?

Best Comeback post of the week!

 

[thermodynamic]

self-del
[doublepost=1473529378][/doublepost]

Sure because personal computers are really on an upward trajectory sales wise.

Not much is, anyone ever ask why?

 

[kyleh22]

I'm still hoping that Apple buys Tesla. My gut says Elon bought solar city to make a take over look less attractive to Google/Apple.

 

[snebes]

I'm still hoping that Apple buys Tesla. My gut says Elon bought solar city to make a take over look less attractive to Google/Apple.

You should it wouldn't make it more attractive to Apple? They have huge solar farms for their data centers, and that is one area of tech that needs to improve for the betterment of everyone.

Having solar polar be more ubiquitous would be awesome.

 

[TallManNY]

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.

Unproven demand? That is insane. Of course the demand will be there. What is unproven is if these cars can actually be made. But if you can get a self driving car, of course you want that. Taking a nap after work on your hour commute home will be fantastic. As will watching TV or just having a beer. No more drunk driving. No more dumb kids dying in car wrecks because they are terrible drivers. Heck, just no more deadly mistakes by normally careful drivers. Heck, it won't just be that there is demand, the features in driverless cars will probably be a requirement.

 

[Rocketman]

An Apple car would not have buttons on the steering wheel. It would be voice controlled. It might have physical buttons somewhere for those functions but the steering wheel is for the analog horn!

I want a loudspeaker so I can tell idiots their hub cap is loose or their tire is out of balance or their lights are out.

 

[StevieD100]

Come on, Elon is losing billions upon billions while Tim and Apple keep making billions and billions in profits. Can't you see the genius of Elon?

I equate Elon to be just like those 19th Century Railroad magnates. Lots of Promises (sure we'll bring the mainline through your (weedy and frankly stupid) town) yet many delivered very little. Add a big does of the South Sea Bubble and Travelling Snake Oil Salesman and you have Elon Musk in a nutshell.

Tesla can't keep on bleeding $$$$ each and every day and on every vehicle they ship despite the pretty high cost per unit. Yes they are good but even if they were perfect, you can't keep making those losses forever. The Gigafactoy is a good idea but for EV's to become mainstream the price of a new battery pack needs to come down to around 20% of what it is now. None of the information about the GF indicates that this level of price reduction is on the cards.
There will be many companies eyeing up Tesla and waiting for their stock to tank(as it will when Wall St see through the hype) and will pounce and buy the company.
The move by Tesla to buy the solar company was IMHO a big mistake. It just increased the debt load on the company.
Perhaps (getting my crystal ball out) Apple know that time is running out for Tesla. Recent statements by Elon about needing to raise more capital are IMHO quite telling. Would Tim Cook dare to buy Tesla Debt and start moves to oust Elon? That would be a bold move indeed. Would be a lot cheaper than buying the company on the open market (AFAIK)
Just watch this space.

 

[Stella]

Apple dont use their own dog food - their servers don't run apple hardware neither their own operation system!

People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.
Alan Kay, Via Steve Jobs

 

[TerrellAmerica]

Apple has closed parts of its self-driving car project and laid off dozens of employees attached to it as it reboots its plan for self-driving vehicles, according to The New York Times. The move comes just over a month after the company reportedly began shifting its car project to autonomous driving systems rather than vehicles under Bob Mansfield.

Mansfield, a longtime Apple executive who was previously Vice President of Technologies, was appointed to oversee the car project in late July, adjusting the project to focus on the "underlying technology" for autonomous vehicles rather than actually building an automobile. The layoffs, according to The New York Times, are part of the strategic shift of the project.
Apple had made some progress in the development of Project Titan, the codename for its car project, having a number of self-driving vehicles in testing. The cars were tested with simple, limited operating routes in closed environments, but the technology was far from ready for primetime, reports The New York Times.

The Cupertino company had recruited hundreds of engineers from Tesla, Ford, GM, other car companies and employees in other divisions of Apple to work on its car project, growing the Apple Car team to nearly 1,000 members.

Earlier this year, Steve Zadesky, former Ford engineer and VP of Product Design, left the company for personal reasons. He had been in charge of the project and reported to Dan Riccio, Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering. Rumors have suggested that the departure of Zadesky resulted in delays of the project and internal strife due to challenges like unattainable timelines and organizational changes. The original launch target for the Apple Car was said to be in 2020, but changes and delays to the project had caused it to slip into 2021.

Article Link: Apple 'Reboots' Self-Driving Car Initiative Amid Project Layoffs and Closures

[doublepost=1473533521][/doublepost]It probably won't have wheels or windows... because... you know... who needs though's things

 

[Stella]

I'd hate to work for apple - sure they may be prestigious company - but employment means excessive hours with no work / life balance.

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.

 

[vvswarup]

I'm still hoping that Apple buys Tesla. My gut says Elon bought solar city to make a take over look less attractive to Google/Apple.

I can't even begin to describe how asinine it would be for Musk to have bought SolarCity for that reason. Tesla doesn't need SolarCity to make it unattractive to Apple/Google. When SJ was alive, everyone said Apple was overvalued because without Steve Jobs, Apple would be nothing. That may be true, but I ask them this: What is Tesla without Elon Musk?

And however critical Steve Jobs' brilliance was to Apple's success, Apple remains one of the most profitable companies out there without him. With Elon Musk at the helm, Tesla's ambitions are growing in the face of mounting costs and no clear path to profitability.

 

[mi7chy]

I'm still hoping that Apple buys Tesla. My gut says Elon bought solar city to make a take over look less attractive to Google/Apple.

Elon Musk has already hinted that he wants nothing to do with Apple. His vision and philosophy for SpaceX, Tesla and SolarCity are light years ahead of any company peddling Chinese made gadgets. Plus, Google Maps is at the heart of autonomous driving.

 

[thekeyring]

You guessed incorrectly. I bought an Apple Watch day one. And use it everyday. I was hoping after a year and a half of work they would make it less ugly and more powerful. That's always the goal. Side note, I really wish they would make a circular one. I read somewhere they decided not to because photos get cut off. Besides the occasional wallpaper background, I don't think I've ever opened the photos app on my watch and looked at photos.

It's not photos, but all content. Lists, emails, messages, missed calls.

 

[PBRsg]

I doubt Apple has listened to experts when told cars are not a high margin business.

When people at the top of the project leave that is bad news for the project.
[doublepost=1473515542][/doublepost]
The plug in electronics business wouldn't be so bad. I'll take Apple or Google over the junk the car companies push.

I agree that a lot of the in-car electronics are pure junk compared to the standard of smartphones these days.

 

[Bluestrike2]

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.

Market research suggests otherwise, to say nothing of the already proven demand for semi-autonomous functionality that's already been deployed for years now (ranging from relatively simple adaptive cruise control functionality to Tesla's Autopilot). People drive because they have to. It's stressful, and it eats up otherwise productive time you could be using to work on something else. And it's dangerous; we might accept it implicitly and not really give it much thought (or assume that it'll be somebody else in a fatal accident), but the evidence is clear.

Self-driving cars effectively tackle almost every single downside people have listed about driving for decades. They have constant, 360 degree awareness of their surroundings. They track everything relative to them and compare their inputs to data derived from millions of miles across all other vehicles (and billions of simulated ones) while algorithms are constantly refined. As they become more and more common, the sheer amount of data and collective experience will be mind-boggling. What's learned from one car will be applied to all others. No single human will ever be able to come close to developing that sort of experience on their own. And on a commercial level, self-driving trucks will have a profound impact on logistics for, well, literally moved in a modern economy.

More advanced self-driving cars will allow drivers to focus on other tasks. Watch a movie, read a book, or take a nap? Giving drivers those options is the eventual end goal with fully autonomous vehicles.

Even if the initial rollout is slow because of human caution with something 'new', there are going to be a hell of a lot of factors putting intense pressure on consumers to purchase self-driving cars. Government regulators, car and life insurance companies, manufacturers, safety advocates, and more are all going to push to incentivize self-driving cars. If initial prices are higher, it's a pretty safe bet that there will be some significant tax incentives out there. Traffic accidents alone have a huge economic impact, to say nothing of the productive time lost to commutes. Compared to most tax incentives, self-driving car incentives have a pretty strong financial argument going for them. And if most models offer optional manual controls, there's very little reason why someone *wouldn't* want to consider one.

 

[1041958]

Elon Musk has already hinted that he wants nothing to do with Apple. His vision and philosophy for SpaceX, Tesla and SolarCity are light years ahead of any company peddling Chinese made gadgets. Plus, Google Maps is at the heart of autonomous driving.

Load of crap. Apple won't buy Tesla because Tesla has nothing of value. All the technology in a Tesla has already been done by others.

Truly autonomous driving won't need maps of any kind. They will be able to operate the same way a human does - by a pair of eyes (cameras). A person doesn't need radar, lidar, ultrasonics and multiple cameras along with high resolution GPS maps in order to operate a car under any conditions.

 

[Reds622]

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 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.

One of the biggest shifts that has occurred at Apple, IMO, is a shift in mindset. The average consumer used to purchase professional grade consumer electronic products. The average consumer was not being "marketed to," the products spoke for themselves. It was imperative that Apple continued to release high powered machines that appealed to everyone. They were not speaking to the "Kardashian" culture in America.

IMO., we have seen a shift. Marketing has never been so important to Apple than it is now. We now have significant fragmentation in most product lines in an attempt to "capitalize" on our so called "new culture." BEATS, gold phones, gold computers, very expensive watches, building an entirely new device and marketing that device as some sort of "fashion statement," the attempts to get products in the hands of so called "celebrities," a new experience in selling the device under glass casing in an attempt at exclusivity, significantly changing products to appeal to China, etc.. This is not the same company of 2008/2009. There has been a massive, massive shift. The shift has been good for short term profits. Profits have never been higher. But has it been good for the long term image of the brand? A lot of people have said, no, it's not. And the one person who I think is representative of this shift, more than anyone else, has to be Angela. The former leader of a "fashion house." A company that sold over priced clothing to the masses, trying to capitalize through targeting marketing in order to create a "mystique," that their slightly higher quality was worth the thousands of dollars they cost to have the opportunity to wear them.

My overall point is Apple needs less of that. The direction they are going with the company will only further damage the brand. Soon enough every device will be under a glass case, and we will all have to speak with an Apple Store "specialist" in order to test out the devices. Obviously an exaggeration, but the company, IMO., is becoming more "exclusive," more "overpriced," more "hyped." They need less marketing, more powerful products, less salesmanship.

 

[Felix01]

In Mansfield we trust.

Mansfield was given oversight to do a nuts-to-bolts review and he did just that...and didn't take him long to determine that building a self-driving car was a bottomless money pit without knowing how much top-cover Congress was going to provide on the liability issues.

When he laid out the true costs involved, Cook moved quickly to scale things back...more in line with the company's core competencies.

 

[mtcowdog]

Making a car is an epic undertaking. It is a Bayesian modeling nightmare of complexity. But becoming adept at helping a multitude of vehicles operate autonomously and efficiently seems like a smart idea. This may be a case where Apple the control-freak-over-ever-aspect product company needs to be Apple a software and AI service company. That can't be an easy shift. They will also have to find their niche there.

 

[ssgbryan]

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.

What happened to the Segway? Other than killing the inventor.

 

[32828870]

One of the biggest shifts that has occurred at Apple, IMO, is a shift in mindset. The average consumer used to purchase professional grade consumer electronic products. The average consumer was not being "marketed to," the products spoke for themselves. It was imperative that Apple continued to release high powered machines that appealed to everyone. They were not speaking to the "Kardashian" culture in America.

IMO., we have seen a shift. Marketing has never been so important to Apple than it is now. We now have significant fragmentation in most product lines in an attempt to "capitalize" on our so called "new culture." BEATS, gold phones, gold computers, very expensive watches, building an entirely new device and marketing that device as some sort of "fashion statement," the attempts to get products in the hands of so called "celebrities," a new experience in selling the device under glass casing in an attempt at exclusivity, significantly changing products to appeal to China, etc.. This is not the same company of 2008/2009. There has been a massive, massive shift. The shift has been good for short term profits. Profits have never been higher. But has it been good for the long term image of the brand? A lot of people have said, no, it's not. And the one person who I think is representative of this shift, more than anyone else, has to be Angela. The former leader of a "fashion house." A company that sold over priced clothing to the masses, trying to capitalize through targeting marketing in order to create a "mystique," that their slightly higher quality was worth the thousands of dollars they cost to have the opportunity to wear them.

My overall point is Apple needs less of that. The direction they are going with the company will only further damage the brand. Soon enough every device will be under a glass case, and we will all have to speak with an Apple Store "specialist" in order to test out the devices. Obviously an exaggeration, but the company, IMO., is becoming more "exclusive," more "overpriced," more "hyped." They need less marketing, more powerful products, less salesmanship.

Spot on. Must also add there were cultural factors in technology when Jobs was at the helm yet he seemed less concerned with appealing to all demographics and establishing a fashion brand. He believed if you design a great product it will sell itself as opposed to developing products for profits sake. CEO's think solely in terms of profit and market growth, which has almost always proved short-sighted, leading to failure as a strong company that grows too fast without a truly solid product and market base will falter in the end. It's very similar to the startup mindset in Silicon Valley; most aren't concerned with developing a passionate product or service for the long-term. It's a "shake-n-bake" system based on short-term thinking - create something in a few months and pitch it to the highest bidder, rinse and repeat.

Cook is operating Apple in this similar mindset that many CEO's before have done with the false sense of security based on their current status and success. Yet such short sightedness and focus on growth lacks the vision outside their singular strengths and almost always backfires. The time frame may differ between corporations (differing factors such as market strength, stock value, market saturation, etc), but it always leads to the same road.

Jobs was less concerned about profit and more about making something unique, whether it was perfecting already existing technologies or developing new systems. He was headstrong, difficult, a perfectionist, narcissistic, and I'm certain more but it was never personal, it was his passion. When he passed many questioned Apple's future, alarmists especially yet many cautioned for more reason. It's becoming clearer that Jobs was the heart of Apple. Technology is a rapidly growing and morphing industry that requires someone who can look at the bigger picture as it evolves, see what others don't, and react quickly and appropriately. A road-plan won't last beyond a few months and Cook knows it. He's throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks instead of focusing on a specific target.

 

[donpaluh]

So Apple abandoned it's pro-level computers and software to work on this car? Luckily for them, Microsoft still blows. So if they want to re-boot something they actually know about...