Tim Cook Says Apple is 'Very Focused on Autonomous Systems'

[AgentAnonymous]

Apple is taking on an autonomous car project entirely in the background, something completely out of their realm, and bigots who hate his social views still have the gall to constantly slander him and pretend he doesn't try to innovate.

Tim Cook is doing great as far as I'm concerned. None of the problems with Apple are problems that weren't also around back when Steve Jobs was CEO.

 

[Michaelgtrusa]

Long term effort.

 

[FightTheFuture]

I don't know how much of a market there would be for an Apple car.

Apple is taking on an autonomous car project entirely in the background, something completely out of their realm

Apple thought to be aiming to "give Tesla a run for their money" with their car,

After dissolving Project Titan, it's pretty clear that Apple is not putting any resources into a car, but only autonomous driving technology.

I really have no idea why either, but considering how much revenue is coming from services, maybe they're trying to enter a market that hasn't truly been tapped yet - licensing car dashboard software with autonomous driving and bundling Apple services such as Apple Music, Maps, etc. to continue feeding into the ecosystem. Not sure how far along car manufacturers outside of Tesla are with autonomous driving, but if Apple and Google are the only ones poised to enter this space, it might be worthwhile even though Apple normally doesn't license software.

 

[Good User Name]

"You'll ride in robot cars within 5 years"
Actual quote from Alphabet's Sergey Brin, 5 years ago.

Certainly not google robot cars, then. Don’t think Tesla’s are yet “robot cars”.

Teslas are pretty much robot cars. Autopilot allows you to be driven by the car with no interaction by you and that came before late 2017. They should do the driveway to driveway SF to NYC thing this year too iirc.

 

[Bacillus]

Apple is taking on an autonomous car project entirely in the background, something completely out of their realm, and bigots who hate his social views still have the gall to constantly slander him and pretend he doesn't try to innovate.

Tim Cook is doing great as far as I'm concerned. None of the problems with Apple are problems that weren't also around back when Steve Jobs was CEO.

Such as...
Lots of refurbs or outdated stuff (MR buyers index), extremely few new designs every year, declaring computer era as over instead of revitalising and driving it, lack of elementary ergonomics with charging mouses and storing pencils, removing essential connectivity adding 4 identical ports (that could have been daisychained), more attention to ApplePark (trees in gardens) than product design, ludicrous development strategy around screens making the company submissively dependent on Samsung, very low percentages of patents being realised into true innovations, effectively rising patent walls to disallow others to innovate while own innovation stalls because of immense volume requirements, all in favor of becoming a massive corp to fill the streets with similar stuff instead of breaking paradigm shifts.
Becoming a Microsoft-like incumbant of every kind of activity, a marketshare defender, rather than the agile, core-focused, angry, young, foolish, rebel company it was destined to be.
Even the greatest innovations now are also-rans in existing categories (Airpod, Homepod...)
Capturing customers in their ecosystem exactly like the bad IBM company that they ridiculised and combatted in 1984.
All because of that ludicrous "The Shareholder wants this" argument.
Well the shareholder hardly profits, it's only the company truckloading money for themselves.
The blind fixture on economic dominance isolates them from the street - just like Google, FaceBook, Amazon - companies once loved, now internet monsters people have come to hate.
Antipathy against their overcapitalist tenure that defines its own borders, norms, laws and fiscal rules is growing.
Steve would have been proud.
NOT

PS. Sorry for the bad timing - with everybody hosanna-ing quarterly results today (and ehhh, stressing the point...)

 

[orbital~debris]

Personal / domestic droids.

 

[Bacillus]

Personal / domestic droids.

Thx, I will consider the main points of your contribution
[doublepost=1501661607][/doublepost]

After dissolving Project Titan, it's pretty clear that Apple is not putting any resources into a car, but only autonomous driving technology.

I really have no idea why either, but considering how much revenue is coming from services, maybe they're trying to enter a market that hasn't truly been tapped yet - licensing car dashboard software with autonomous driving and bundling Apple services such as Apple Music, Maps, etc. to continue feeding into the ecosystem. Not sure how far along car manufacturers outside of Tesla are with autonomous driving, but if Apple and Google are the only ones poised to enter this space, it might be worthwhile even though Apple normally doesn't license software.

Indeed hughe aspirations, however not a clue how to make the first steps (ref. CarPlay, Titan, failed car partnerships...)
Might as well remain a huge potential - never to be fullfilled (just like AppleTV, movie content) as the corp. attitude has become defensive rather than paradigm breaking.
Under Cook, every disruptive power of the company has evaporated. Every partnership is overshadowed by their financial supremacy - that startups defy.
I foresee a mid-term "solution" where Tesla and Apple become convicted to each other - by lack of alternatives (but that might be fed by my secret hope for Musk replacing Cook...)

 

[Baumi]

Their augmented reality technology should be useful with autonomous driving, too, as it could help a car to build an internal 3D-representation of its environment in real time. Being able to properly recognize and parse the outside world and all its features (road signs, pedestrians, obstacles, etc.) is probably the biggest challenge for these systems. I don't think the current state of iOS AR is good enough for that, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is a step along the way: Once the system is able to reliably recognize and separate objects, the next task will be to properly categorize them.

Now that I think about it, maybe they can leverage some of their image recognition tech for that. Photos.app is already getting good at object recognition. Again, not good enough for autonomous systems yet and nowhere near real time, but like I said: Steps along the way…

 

[dilbert99]

Reading ignorant comments regarding this is rather frustrating honestly...

This is Apple guys, working on autonomous driving. Let that sink in. Sure, many car companies like Tesla are having their crack at it. But with confidence Apple stepping into the field will drive forward (ayyy) this field in a big way.

Just to think within 20 years that all driving on the road could potentially be automated.

What are Apple doing to drive the field forward over Tesla?

 

[X--X]

Cook went on to call autonomy "the mother of all AI projects...

It certainly sounds dramatic, or maybe NOT

Apple's new headquarters:
Cook told Fortune that Apple Park, the company's long-awaited space-ship like headquarters, was the "mother of all products."

Enterprise technology:
"Enterprise is like the mother of all opportunities," Cook told Bloomberg Businessweek this month.

iOS 10:
At WWDC 2016, Cook called iOS 10 the "mother of all releases."

2012:
Cook told investors in 2013 that 2012 was the "mother of all years," The Los Angeles Times reports.

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/25/apple-self-driving-cars-ceo-tim-cooks-mother-of-all.html

 

[Zirel]

Teslas are pretty much robot cars. Autopilot allows you to be driven by the car with no interaction by you and that came before late 2017. They should do the driveway to driveway SF to NYC thing this year too iirc.

No really, and not on all roads.

 

[CJM]

[doublepost=1501629720][/doublepost]So, an autonomous Segway then?

Or more seriously, autonomous wheelchair?

I don't know if you've seen or heard of electric unicycles, but if Apple made one that didn't take a few hours to learn to ride they'd be onto a sure winner.

 

[mi7chy]

It's just a statement to appease shareholders but Cook has zero competence to make Apple a major player in autonomous driving or AI.

 

[Middiebear]

Autonomous driving technology is already very much here in the present, and will only become more and more improved and standard in the future.

'Driving' a car with Adaptive Cruise control, Lane Depature/Lane Keep assist, and Front Crash Mitigation technology really makes the 'driver' more of a passenger with really the car doing all the work.

There's also numerous park-assist features available today all the way up to the car simply parking itself.

If all this incredible technology already exists and is readily available, it's really exciting to see what new innovations can be introduced when Apple joins the arena!

 

[kdarling]

Do you guys not realise that Apple have a different department working on autonomy from the iPhone, it's not like resources are shifted away from the iPhone or the Mac

Actually Apple brags about still being like a startup, with engineers shifted from project to project.

As goobot noted, Apple's already had to admit being behind on at least one MacOS update because they shifted everyone to iOS for a half year.

And how many times have we read about internal projects swooping in and stealing the best people inside Apple to work in secret on something new, instead of their normal job? And it's not unusual for such projects to be dropped later on, according to insiders.

This is Apple guys, working on autonomous driving. Let that sink in. Sure, many car companies like Tesla are having their crack at it. But with confidence Apple stepping into the field will drive forward (ayyy) this field in a big way.

Unlike other companies, Apple has zero history of creating a robust realtime OS. On the contrary, they bend over backwards to legally point out that their software should never be used in critical applications such as nuclear plants or airplanes etc.

Not that they can't hire some talent to do that, of course.

Autonomous API! Lets developers create automation systems for ships, drones, grass cutters, floor cleaners, factory assembly robots with improved self reliance and other things that move in the real world.

I keep saying that Apple needs to create helper robots for the rapidly aging Baby Boomer generation. It's a rich market ripe for the taking!

 

[cmwade77]

So, here is a question for those that like self driving vehicles: How much is your privacy worth?

Seriously, there is a reason we see so many companies working on self driving cars and it isn't to make the roads safer, it is for the following purposes:

• The car manufacturers can track your every move and sell that data to the highest bidder.
• The government will track your every move and take action as appropriate.
• If the government thinks you have driven too much, they will send a kill command to your car telling it to take you home and stop running until they think you are ready to drive again.
• If you are on government assistance, the government will monitor where you go and take away assistance if they feel you are doing things you shouldn't be doing.
• If the government thinks you are against them, they could send a signal to the car to lock the doors and drive into a body of water at a high rate of speed or numerous other similar ideas.
• The government will insist that signals can't be encrypted in any shape or form so that they can do this.

And when I say the government, I mean ANY government and don't think this can't happen, it WILL happen unless we all stop being sheep and stand up against this technology now. Really, if you don't think it can happen, look at self driving cars in just about every science fiction show. In particular, look at the Doctor Who multi-part episode called The Sontaran Stratagem, just take out the emissions part of ATMOS and you have what can happen with self driving cars. Yes, it is science fiction, but it does give us a real world warning of what CAN and WILL happen if we aren't careful and the reality is there is no possible way to make this technology completely hack proof and this is very dangerous.

Things like Lane Assist, adaptive cruise control and such that don't rely on GPS or an internet signal in any shape or form do not have these issues, but any fully self driving car will have to rely on GPS and internet signals to properly function and add in the fact that these companies want to completely remove all driver controls like steering wheels, gas and brake pedals and you can see just how dangerous this really is.

 

[TrentS]

If Apple does indeed come out with their own autonomous, self-driving car, maybe they should call it "The Chauffeur".

 

[826317]

I'm still wondering whether it's just the technology they are developing or whether they're also creating the hardware.