Autonomous driving car, with Apples current quality control, no thank you.
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Apple's Car Project Shifts Towards Autonomous Driving System Under Mansfield's Direction
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Don't worry, if the car is still in one piece, and operational, and not smashed, Apple will issue a software update to fix that
GIVE ME A BREAK
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1. iphone still mess up ios / error / lag all kind of stuff = apple car is dream
2. applwatch piece of junk = cost 10k , most customer just look try on
3. apple busy focus on = iphone , ipad , ios , mac , apple tv, all these stuff ........
apple car .. yeah yeah ..... 2040 ,,, when people getting old ,,,,,
________________
1. iphone still mess up ios / error / lag all kind of stuff = apple car is dream
2. applwatch piece of junk = cost 10k , most customer just look try on
3. apple busy focus on = iphone , ipad , ios , mac , apple tv, all these stuff ........
apple car .. yeah yeah ..... 2040 ,,, when people getting old ,,,,,
If their autonomous driving software is as slow as iOS 9 and 10 there are going to be a lot of people pancakes littering our streets...
The same thing was said for the iPod, the iPhone, and to a certain extent, the iPad. Oh, and incidentally, the Mac.
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Angela's successes have been more behind-the-scenes at the moment. Moreover, she was a long-term hire. In the short term, by all accounts employee morale is up as is store revenue. In the long term, Apple is leaning into it's cult-like reputation and trying to be a fashion-forward company. Jobs long ago said that Apple was at a crossroads between Tech and Art. Apple until now has been more tech than art. Now they're focusing more on the art side, which to be honest has been lacking.
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The Watch ordering process was far less than ideal. Angela has already admitted this. However, she gave a reasonable explanation - they were having sourcing problems. Does that make it acceptable? No. But it does give reasonable perspective. She was insistent that this was the exception rather than the rule.
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Well, Tesla has actually been more successful at that goal in terms of the commercial market, so I dispute your statement. To be honest, a Google Car scares me immensely. Google has a bad track record in terms of successful products. They only have 4 successful products and 2 of those had nothing to do with Google. Those are: Search, Maps, YouTube, and Android. YouTube's popularity had little to do with Google and Android became popular because of the exceptionally low price of the phones using it, not because of the features. Every other product has been an epic failure. Cardboard may be popular in the future, but I'm not holding my breath.
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Software-wise you can. Car companies already do. But otherwise you bring up good points.
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You know what's clear? That these rumors prove that no one knows what Apple's really working on. For once, there's actual secrecy over the project - and that, I'm excited for.
Let's go over your examples:
- Apple TV - was released during the Jobs era. Initially moderately successful, but didn't solve a problem. The Apple TV 4 solves an existing problem half-way: the siloed TV experience. Apps were a bonus, just as apps were a bonus on iOS devices.
- Apple Watch - it does solve a problem: dependence on the iPhone. Oh, and Fitness. The Watch was the first product that actually incentivized me to exercise. It did the same for many people. So in that, it was successful.
- CarPlay - to my knowledge released during the Jobs era as well. CarPlay actually did solve a problem - distracted driving and poor user experience in the car. The issues are with manufacturers not wanting to implement that, which is changing nowadays.
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It'd be cool if they opened up CarPlay to developers so that this kind of thing doesn't become an issueRight. Besides, it will be Apple Maps data doing the guidance. So it will need to be a waterproof car for us here in Florida (several times, Apple has dropped the pin right into a waterway. If an autonomous car drove right to the pinned location, the car better have an oxygen supply. The good news is that if the car ships without a 3.5mm headphone jack, it will apparently be able to be waterproof
All
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Please, it's been well-shown how iOS devices have changed the world. To ignore that is to be extremely biased. Exactly how is Tesla changing anything? Stage 2 of their plan might change the industry and the world, but Stage 1 has not. Their current EV rollout doesn't solve anything. In fact, studies have shown that they are neutral or worse when compared to CBVs. You're also ignoring the numerous bugs in Tesla's hardware and software.
One thing to think about as well, we still have no idea what kind of data Apple is collecting with the vans they have driving all over the world. They finally came out to admit that the vans were theirs but they have not come forward with what they are doing. I'm sure we won't hear anything until the car project has been announced.
Not really. Windows came out before the Mac did and quickly took the market. The Walkman was extremely popular for its time. As was the BlackBerry. The tablet is the only market that had a 'first successful product' with the iPad. Tesla is not successful yet. They aren't extremely popular compared to other manufacturers. Being "awesome" is debatable - I certainly don't think they are, and not because I'm an Apple fan.
As for EVs, it'll be awhile before they'll be commonly affordable since the tax credits for buying them are expiring this year. Also, EVs do not help the environment. This has already been shown, since the source for that electricity is still overwhelmingly coal - and no, that won't change quickly. What is really revolutionary is an EV that actually benefits the environment. Apple may be the first to do that. But here's the thing that I've picked up from all these rumors - no one knows WTH Apple is doing, and that is exciting. It's been awhile since we've had secrecy at Apple.
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Autonomous trains already exist, as do autonomous trams. I'm not sure why you include buses and trucks on the list as they actually have to deal with the same problems as cars.
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You are part of an important market, but certainly not a large one. In my experience, the majority consider driving a chore.
Not to be pedantic, but surely that is an error?
Macintosh — January 1984
MS Windows — November 1985
- According to their internal statistics, quality control has been getting better.
- The gold costs $10k. You can buy the Sport, which has the same functionality for $249 or less. I find it useful and almost everyone who owns one does as well.
- That argument has been made everytime Apple has entered a new market.
You're correct, my bad. Windows still won the popularity war though. But thanks for correcting me
If Apple ever made a car themselves, it would be nothing like an actual car we are used to. It would be something akin to an electric powered 4 wheel toy that is legal to drive on streets. Like those tiny smart car abominations.
Too many cooks in the kitchen, no pun intended.
This article makes no sense. Apple cannot just buy an existing car manufacturer, it must buy an electric car manufacturer. There are no viable electric manufacturers other than Tesla. If Apple makes a car, and it's a combustion vehicle, it will meet with instant failure. Any vehicle that Apple is going to make will need to have at least 200-300 miles of range and must be reasonably affordable, i.e., under $50,000.
If this article is to be believed, it's clear that Apple doesn't know what it's doing here. It also looks like whatever Apple is tinkering with is being designed by committee and led by managers, not visionaries. If Apple does really make a car, it will be an epic fail and the end of Apple as a company and respected brand.
They have been working on software all along. Apple's experience is with operating systems, not with vehicles. I have it on good authority (a friend at Apple who shall remain nameless) that Apple is working on carOS. That's why they are experimenting with motors and various other systems. It's not for building a car, it's for testing their software on actual vehicle components.
That's a strategy much more akin to Apple's method. Create a vehicle operating system, or an extension of the Mac/iOS ecosystem, and partner with at least one vehicle manufacturer to implement the systems in their fleet. What better way to capture more market share than to install software on vehicles that work best with other Apple products?
This article makes no sense. Apple cannot just buy an existing car manufacturer, it must buy an electric car manufacturer. There are no viable electric manufacturers other than Tesla. If Apple makes a car, and it's a combustion vehicle, it will meet with instant failure. Any vehicle that Apple is going to make will need to have at least 200-300 miles of range and must be reasonably affordable, i.e., under $50,000.
If this article is to be believed, it's clear that Apple doesn't know what it's doing here. It also looks like whatever Apple is tinkering with is being designed by committee and led by managers, not visionaries. If Apple does really make a car, it will be an epic fail and the end of Apple as a company and respected brand.
They have been working on software all along. Apple's experience is with operating systems, not with vehicles. I have it on good authority (a friend at Apple who shall remain nameless) that Apple is working on carOS. That's why they are experimenting with motors and various other systems. It's not for building a car, it's for testing their software on actual vehicle components.
That's a strategy much more akin to Apple's method. Create a vehicle operating system, or an extension of the Mac/iOS ecosystem, and partner with at least one vehicle manufacturer to implement the systems in their fleet. What better way to capture more market share than to install software on vehicles that work best with other Apple products?
That's exactly what I was thinking. A car OS makes a lot more sense as an evolution from CarPlay. No way could they have the infrastructure to build cars on demand. It would put a huge drain on their revenue and budget. Right now, the new Apple HQ is probably the most expensive undertaking they've done.
I would only trust a computer on something like a train that follows a preset track with preset stops. Computers are great at doing simple things really precisely and reliably, but the way driving works in the real world is too complex and variable for me to trust some ****** software. Because it WILL glitch and WILL get you killed.
I think the current set of driver aids is what cars should focus on and improve, not actually taking full control of the vehicle. That's a line that should never be crossed.
No offense to anyone hopefully but seriously? Autonomous driving?? You'd have to be the dumbest person alive to ride in anything that claims to be this. Apple is nuts with this whole "wants to build a car" thing. This is simply icing on the cake.
Even more amazing are the ones who think this is a good thing.
Sure, put your family in the car and let it autonomously do its thing. Won't happen in my lifetime.
Any MBA school will tell you to remember what you're in business for. Apple is veering here in desperation. This is not who they are. Heck, they've admitted they can't do ads (even admitted it), can't do cloud (outsources to amazon/google/MS), can't get amazon on its apple tv, can't put a simple tv package together, failed at ibooks, and the list goes on.
Apple is a computer hardware company who makes products to delight people at a considerable margin designed in conjunction with its own software. That's who they are.
The iphone elevated them to glory being such an amazing device along with the magic money machine of carrier financing/subsidies. The ipad followed...simply a bigger version of iphone. Apple tv, apple watch...all make sense if not perfect products.
Car play makes sense even if it kinda sucks as well. It extends the iphone into cars. That's all you want. Be happy with that. Improve it but get away from doing anything else car related.
I understand the pressure to have more than the just the iphone. It's risky to have one product basically define your company and be utterly dependent on it.
Apple used to have a solid foundation on which iphone was built. It was called itunes that is becoming more irrelevant each year. icloud? Not so solid. Services? Not much there. Essential software? Practically none. It's all about iOS and macOS.
My advice, fwiw, is to build foundations. Focus. If you think you can make cars, then saying things like "we're not good at x" is unacceptable. Apple should be second to none with cloud services but outsources instead. This lack of focus will bite them in the future instead of being distracted with silly car ideas. Maps? Apple Maps continues to be an outsourced mess with the likes of tomtom and others and they SUCK. Photos is another.
The power of iOS? Cameras. Printers. TV's. You name it if it makes sense with iOS. Make it, sell it at your margin. Foundations. Building upon iOS and hopefully macOS as well and integrating tvOS and watchOS where it can.
Leave the car alone...
Even more amazing are the ones who think this is a good thing.
Sure, put your family in the car and let it autonomously do its thing. Won't happen in my lifetime.
Any MBA school will tell you to remember what you're in business for. Apple is veering here in desperation. This is not who they are. Heck, they've admitted they can't do ads (even admitted it), can't do cloud (outsources to amazon/google/MS), can't get amazon on its apple tv, can't put a simple tv package together, failed at ibooks, and the list goes on.
Apple is a computer hardware company who makes products to delight people at a considerable margin designed in conjunction with its own software. That's who they are.
The iphone elevated them to glory being such an amazing device along with the magic money machine of carrier financing/subsidies. The ipad followed...simply a bigger version of iphone. Apple tv, apple watch...all make sense if not perfect products.
Car play makes sense even if it kinda sucks as well. It extends the iphone into cars. That's all you want. Be happy with that. Improve it but get away from doing anything else car related.
I understand the pressure to have more than the just the iphone. It's risky to have one product basically define your company and be utterly dependent on it.
Apple used to have a solid foundation on which iphone was built. It was called itunes that is becoming more irrelevant each year. icloud? Not so solid. Services? Not much there. Essential software? Practically none. It's all about iOS and macOS.
My advice, fwiw, is to build foundations. Focus. If you think you can make cars, then saying things like "we're not good at x" is unacceptable. Apple should be second to none with cloud services but outsources instead. This lack of focus will bite them in the future instead of being distracted with silly car ideas. Maps? Apple Maps continues to be an outsourced mess with the likes of tomtom and others and they SUCK. Photos is another.
The power of iOS? Cameras. Printers. TV's. You name it if it makes sense with iOS. Make it, sell it at your margin. Foundations. Building upon iOS and hopefully macOS as well and integrating tvOS and watchOS where it can.
Leave the car alone...
Agreed, pretty much all the way around. This article isn't to be entirely believed because it's predicated on the pretty flimsy rumors of an Apple-branded car, which was a far from certain thing from word go. So suggesting that they are now "shifting" their emphasis away from the long shot, towards something that was always far more likely, isn't news but is actually a retreat from an overcommitment to the "Apple Car" rumor.
The only point on which I might disagree is on whether Apple would need to buy a strictly EV maker to produce a vehicle. Actually they could partner with an automotive company that has developed an EV platform. I still doubt they would do this, but if they did, several automakers would qualify in that respect, and they are viable companies.
Apple's Car Project Shifts Towards Autonomous Driving System
No it doesn't. Self-driving cars on public roads will never meet basic safety requirements.
No it doesn't. Self-driving cars on public roads will never meet basic safety requirements.
Yes. It's called machine learning, and it's a critical aspect of autonomous cars: both in the car itself, and in terms of development and refinement. And while Tesla does send sensor data back, there's some conflicting information online about what exactly gets logged locally (more or less everything involving the car) and what gets shared with Tesla and when. A very interesting conference talk with Sterling Anderson, Tesla's Autopilot program director, mentions data from 780 million miles (plus data from another million miles collected every 10 hours) that they use for testing new software updates against. Another recap from the same talk notes that only 100 million miles have been driven with autopilot active, suggesting that they do in fact log data even when Autopilot is inactive, and it's just a case of nobody getting around to updating their privacy policy. Which make sense; speaking from experience with machine learning implementation (albeit nothing like this in terms of scale or complexity), additional relevant data is hugely beneficial. Especially for something like this.
That said, don't forget that Tesla's implementation is only semi-autonomous. Tesla's implementation uses more common sensors than Google's, for instance, and that's let them roll out semi-autonomous functionality much faster and at a lower cost. But the approach has its own advantages and disadvantages, and bad/non-common roadways are one of the system's most pronounced weaknesses. This article is an excellent overview of the MobilEye systems Tesla uses, and how they 'see' the world. While Tesla's vision-based system might have trouble with odd roads and surfaces, it's also able to tell when it's on them and alert the driver so they can take over well before there might be a problem. Additional data will help refine the car's ability to function in some of those edge cases I noted earlier, but it won't eliminate them entirely anytime soon. And that's to say nothing about rough and inclement weather, which has its own problems for vision-based systems (compared to the addition of LIDAR and other sensors) that are still being worked on.
My bigger point was that, even when we see the first fully autonomous vehicles, we're probably going to see the inclusion of manual controls. Google's focusing more on urban markets, where their system's better ability to localize the car combined with better quality mapping to compare to (based on data collected from other cars, Google Maps, and the maps the individual cars themselves build with onboard sensors - the term is a lot more expansive than people generally assume) will likely let them abandon manual controls altogether much earlier. And if they're looking towards automatic taxis/ride-hailing and similar functionality, that makes even more sense.
Plus, consumers are tricky. There's plenty of research to show that consumers tend to over-inflate the importance of odd uses/requirements when they're comparing different options. Even those who could probably get away without having to have manual controls (they live in areas without heavy snowfall, drive in well-developed urban and suburban areas, etc.) will likely be more open to a car with manual controls to start out with. Catering to those concerns is a much less risky proposition for consumer vehicles. And if Apple is in fact designing a consumer car (compared to some other alternative theories that have been argued elsewhere), then they're certainly the sort of company who can come with with a means of keeping manual controls out of the way in an aesthetically pleasing manner.
Anyhow, all of this isn't that big of a deal: if anything, it's a good thing. Rolling out automation in stages means getting the benefits earlier and collecting more data to improve performance. And since we're talking about lives saved from traffic accidents, drivers everywhere ought to be in favor of it.
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They already do, with millions of road miles having been driven in California, Nevada, Washington, and elsewhere. We're already at the point where autonomous vehicles have proven themselves fully capable of co-existing on public roadways and with fewer incidents to boot. The human mind is physically incapable of maintaining a complete, 360 degree awareness of everything around you at all times. That alone would ensure that autonomous vehicles are more capable of meeting, and exceeding, any basic safety requirements. At this point, it's a matter of refining and expanding capability.
Just look at Google's safety record: last year, Google noted that in 1.7 million miles driven, there were eleven accidents. All of which were caused by other drivers hitting the vehicle (rear-end, side-swiped, etc.). Overall, there's only been one incident where Google's AV was to blame and that was when the vehicle was side-swiped by a bus because the AV (and its operator) predicted that the bus would yield since the AV was in front of it, they were at a very slow rate of speed (under 2mph; bus at 15mph), and there was sufficient time and space to merge. Now, every single Google AV assumes that buses are less likely to allow the car to yield.
Most people eventually learn that city buses will do what they want come hell or high water; now, the cars know that as well.
SHOTS FIRED
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...rry-talent-as-car-project-takes-software-turn
Dan Dodge, creator of QNX Software - that's pretty much the under core BIOS like for ALL modern cars the past 15 yrs_ + is NOW an Apple employee!
He "retired" from BlackBerry back December 10th 2015!
http://crackberry.com/dan-dodge-resigns-blackberrys-qnx
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I'll bet you Apple now with Dan Dodge working for them will PROVE you wrong!
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...rry-talent-as-car-project-takes-software-turn
Dan Dodge, creator of QNX Software - that's pretty much the under core BIOS like for ALL modern cars the past 15 yrs_ + is NOW an Apple employee!
He "retired" from BlackBerry back December 10th 2015!
http://crackberry.com/dan-dodge-resigns-blackberrys-qnx
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I'll bet you Apple now with Dan Dodge working for them will PROVE you wrong!
Nope.
Great, blame others. Too bad on public roads you've got to deal with other drivers acting unpredictable.
This sounds like the fears people had when the first trains arrived: Going faster than speed x would make your brain go jelly. Or when the naked bikes got faster in the 60s: Opening your mouth while driving faster than speed x would make your lung burst.
Most accidents in traffic today result from human failure. Software could glitch under extreme conditions. Humans can (and do) already glitch under normal conditions.
Where do you want to draw the line? A brake assistant is ok, I guess? What about an improved version that also takes control over steering to avoid a collision? Or are you afraid of a false positive that brakes your car wrongly and causes a rear-end collision?
What about a line assistant to help you staying in your lane? Should it also control the steering wheel to avoid changing lanes when rear traffic is coming? Or should the driver be able to override the system? What force should be necessary to override?
Or should we start even deeper down: What about power steering, power braking, ABS or ESP? Afraid of any glitch there?
Seriously? Someone rear-ending you is, quite literally, 100% their fault. Blaming them is appropriate.
Human drivers cannot prevent other drivers from doing stupid things. Someone rear-ending you, unless you're doing something to make it more likely (think *******s who "brake check" other people on highways), isn't something you have any control over. Sometimes, you get lucky and you're able to do something to avoid an accident--like when someone cuts you off.
That's the standard that AVs have to beat, and they blow past it. An AV will always be able to analyze, interpret, and make an informed decision faster than a human driver. That means that even in situations where other drivers are being stupid, there's a significantly higher chance that it will be able to take some sort of action to avoid an accident than a human in the same situation. If someone is cutting you off, an AV will recognize that they're moving over while they're still just entering your peripheral vision.
Human drivers might be unpredictable, but in aggregate, that unpredictability falls into some pretty narrow confines (relatively speaking) that can be analyzed and assessed in parallel. Those random behaviors are also able to be broken down into smaller elements that can be easily measured and tracked.
By contrast, AVs don't do stupid human things. They don't fiddle with the gas, they don't tap the break pedal at random intervals for the hell of it, and they don't move about in their lanes. Not only are they better drivers, they're also more predictable drivers. That decreases the odds of another driver, perhaps an inattentive one, hitting you because they were "surprised."
Sorry, meat sacks.