If they are meaningless, why are you arguing against my point, yet confirming in the same post that Apple uses contract manufacturing?
I am arguing that your definitions are so broad as to be meaningless. To compare the design of the product and design of the manufacturing process (including things like precision laser drills where Apple bought the company that made them) that Apple does, to the kick starter phones made with off the off the shelf SoCs and parts and say “they are both contract manufacturing“ and so equivalent is just silly.
They may have Apple designed silicon and circuit paths, but they rely on TSMC and other vendors manufacturing technologies to produce them at smaller sizes.
You say this as if it is incidental to the product.
Customers owning the equipment manufacturers use to build their products is not unique to the Foxconn / Apple relationship. It is a neat CapEX trick that Apple learned from other companies who use hybrid outsourcing, yet does it quite well as a rule. It gives them more control of the process, but isn't the same as them making it themselves as you seem to be implying.
Apple does not just own the gear used in these contract manufacturers, they design the whole manufacturing process. The contract manufacturers provide bodies and space. Pretty much everything else in the
process comes from Apple.
Regarding your question to me, it is totally irrelevant.
Sorry, my question is not irrelevant it is central. The premise of the discussion was that manufacturing a car is so complex and unlike anything Apple has done as to make it unlikely they will succeed. My point is not that manufacturing a car is easy or simple (although electric cars are much simpler than cars with internal combustion engines), just that it is no more complex than the kind of manufacturing Apple does already, it is just different. Since no one here has yet come up with a clear quantification of complexity of manufacturing and therefore we cannot reach an agreement, I moved back to the underlying question.
I wasn't commenting about Apple's ability (or not) to make a car, nor was that ever my point in responding to your posts.
But that was the whole point of the discussion. Not some abstract measure of manufacturing complexity, on which no one here seems to be able to agree.
You need to stop moving the goal posts and this isn't the first time you have done that. In another side conversation, you brought up the Apple Watch when the topic I was responding to was regarding differences of complexity in building a car versus a mobile phone.
Again, the discussion was not about the phone
per se, but about Apple skill in manufacturing and design for manufacturing, hence the example of the watch.
To bring together both issues and posts of yours I commented on, Cars are very complex, if they weren't, Apple would be in the market already, there are many moving parts both literally and figuratively to bring something to market.
Completely agree that cars are complex, and that they are different than other things Apple has manufactured. I have never claimed otherwise. My point is simply that are not more complex than other things that Apple makes, just different. While it is true that electric cars are much easier (not easy, just easier), they are still very large complex systems. Given how long it took Apple from their first prototype until their first phone, I am not convinced the reason they are not on the market is that car manufacturing is hard. I would guess they are not on the market yet because they have not even figured out if they want to build a car and what exactly their value add will be. Apple likes to figure these things out in private, rather than with early public releases like the GSM card for the Handspring was them trying to understand what people might want in a phone.
If there wasn't Tesla wouldn't have so many recalls or poor customer satisfaction with regards to component failures up to this day. There would also be FAR more electric cars available as (like the SUV Boom) Manufacturers could charge a premium on the overall hype and popularity of such products that are less complex to build than an ICE powered car.
Please show me where I claimed that car manufacturing is easy. I have never said that, nor do I believe that. I just think it is no more complex than other things that Apple already does, just different. It will require new people with new expertise, just as each new manufacturing process they have adopted has needed. They have a process for building these things out and if they decide a car it will be one more thing they make.
That said, in response to your question (that was never part of our previous conversation) I have faith that Apple can overcome these issues and build a proper automobile but It will take time.
You responded to points in an ongoing discussion. My response to you, was not intended to be separate from that conversation, but supporting my general points that:
- if Apple decides to build a car (something I still am not convinced is certain), they have and/or can add the needed skills to do it.
- if Apple decides to build a car their measure of success will not be that they are the volume leader or have the largest market share, rather that they will take a disproportionate share of the market‘s profits.
This isn't a modern replacement for an antiquated feature phone, this is a technological advancement in Transportation with many, many complex technical and legal obsticals attached.
The iPhone was not “a modern replacement for an antiquated feature phone” it was a competitor to years of other companies smart phones with “many complex technical and legal obstacles attached”. Cars have safety standards and related regulations, but the ecosystem into which they fit is pretty simple in that they do not directly interact with other complex systems. All the complexity of a car is internal to the car (at least until we get smart roads), meaning that one gets to mange that complexity any way one wants. By way of clarification (and an extreme simplification) one could decide to build an active suspension because one already has experience with electronics that would be needed, rather than build a passive suspension because one does not have the experience with the mechanical components needed to make that work.
Phones have lots of regulations as well, but also have to directly interact with many networks built with many different companies hardware and software. When Apple wanted to add visual voicemail, that was not just something they could do on their device, but it was something they needed to get AT&T (and eventually other carriers) to make changes to their systems to support.
What makes makes self driving cars hard is that they can only control what they do, rather than force changes that would make this much easier and safer (
e.g. make all traffic control devices transmit a signal that reported their state and let cars in transit request changes based on traffic flow, rather than force smart cars to read their state from signals optimized for human vision).
