[HN Gopher] Apple cancels work on electric car, shifts team to g...
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Apple cancels work on electric car, shifts team to generative AI
Author : coloneltcb
Score : 510 points
Date : 2024-02-27 19:02 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| jbuild wrote:
| https://archive.is/eJNAD
| riddlemethat wrote:
| This is a smart move. Apple seems so far behind in generative AI
| it's making Google look innovative.
| nightfly wrote:
| Why does everyone have to it?
| gordon_freeman wrote:
| i agree with your general sentiment but for Apple I do
| believe it makes sense to focus on AGI as they could
| incorporate it within their OSes and products to make them
| more productive for the users.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| If you don't have it, you'll pay your competitors to have it.
|
| Generative AI is significant enough to Apple's use cases that
| there would seem to be a very strong business case to bring
| it in house.
| observationist wrote:
| Apple has a reputation to uphold, of being bleeding edge and
| having the best, latest, greatest tech. Their "AI" is a not-
| so-great scripted bot over a decade old at this point.
|
| They are laughably behind the curve. Android should see
| widespread deployment of Gemini baked into the next
| generation of phones, and this could have a significant
| impact on Apple.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Apple has a reputation to uphold, of being bleeding edge
| and having the best, latest, greatest tech_
|
| Their reputation is of being the best. The most polished.
| The most accessible.
|
| It's _never_ been to be on the bleeding edge. Apple's brand
| is that of the perfectionists. Even in their hackiest 80s
| lore, the elements that rise to myth are those about
| resourcefulness and design.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Apple has a reputation to uphold, of being bleeding edge
| and having the best, latest, greatest tech.
|
| Quite the opposite.
|
| The iPod was panned by tech commentators; famously, "No
| wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame."
|
| The iPhone saw similar reactions;
| https://www.fastcompany.com/40436054/10-of-the-most-
| interest.... "There is nothing revolutionary or disruptive
| about any of the technologies."; "The real elephant in the
| room is the fact that I just spent $600 on my iPhone and it
| can't do some crucial functions that even $50 handsets
| can."; "That virtual keyboard will be about as useful for
| tapping out emails and text messages as a rotary phone."
|
| I can't imagine how apoplectic Gates was over the iPad's
| success after a decade of trying to make a Windows tablet
| sell.
| vGPU wrote:
| Considering the disaster Gemini has been so far it may
| easily turn to being just as mocked as Siri is now.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I think because if they don't, they'll be in the position of
| depending on someone else's platform to provide AI features
| for their products. This is just an analogy, but it would be
| like if you were an app developer, and instead of being able
| to control your distribution, you had to use someone's
| centralized store to sell everything, and then pay whatever
| they demanded, or be cut off at any time. Very dangerous!
| amelius wrote:
| But Google has Waymo. Either way, Apple will be far behind.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Yeah, but I don't think Google was planning on being an auto
| manufacturer. Isn't Google's plan to partner with existing
| manufacturers?
| chucke1992 wrote:
| They actually did but mainly with Google play. So far it
| feels like Microsoft is moving faster in that regard and
| getting partnerships with various automakers with AI at
| least.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| I would rather they focus obscene amounts of effort to making
| the keyboard text "correction" not utter trash. Ridiculous how
| frequently it will completely change the intention of my
| writing.
| huytersd wrote:
| Weird thing to say about the company that will be the
| definitive LLM once Pro 1.5 is available with its million
| tokens. I can't even imagine what ultra 1.5 will bring.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| As a _former_ google fanboy (and current genAI enthusiast
| that keeps being disappointed at all the models that claim to
| rival gpt4 and then don 't even beat gpt3.5), I'll believe it
| when I see it.
| staticman2 wrote:
| You're kind of contradicting yourself. If a high token count
| tells you all you need to know about how smart a model is
| Ultra 1.5 would be just as good as Pro 1.5.
|
| The fact of the matter is it remains to be seen how smart
| either model will be.
| astrange wrote:
| You can make up for a lot of smartness by having a smarter
| model generate all the text you put in that giant context
| window.
| staticman2 wrote:
| Could you point me to evidence what you just wrote is
| true?
|
| I just asked mistral 7b to provide 5 sentences that end
| with Apple. It couldn't do it. I then provided 5 examples
| generated from ChatGPT 4 and asked it to generate 5 more.
| It still couldn't do it. 10 ChatGPT examples- still
| couldn't do it.
|
| You seem to be saying the models can generalize on the
| entire context size, that I should keep provided examples
| up to the token limit because this will make the model
| smarter. Is there evidence of that?
| astrange wrote:
| I didn't say to provide examples. What it can do is
| search inside its window if you have an excessive amount
| of text.
|
| It can do some extrapolation on tasks it's already been
| proven to do, but that's not every task.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Apple seems so far behind in generative AI_
|
| Apple is a best-in-class second mover.
|
| With the clusterfuck that has been generative AI (from OpenAI's
| corporate drama to Google renaming and reorganizing their
| products every fifteen minutes) this seems prescient, with the
| only savvy player so far being Microsoft.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| And so we'll be back to Apple vs Microsoft? Nostalgia from
| the aughts.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _we 'll be back to Apple vs Microsoft?_
|
| Possibly. On the consumer side, they're in their own
| niches. What will get interesting is how Apple lets
| developers hook into the on-device AI, or one that's
| running on its own metal.
| Cyberdog wrote:
| And '90s. And '80s.
| init2null wrote:
| I feel Microsoft's desperation to put LLM's into every
| product suggests mismanagement. Same as Microsoft's past
| efforts to Bing everything.
|
| Adobe seems to be the only one with an empowered product team
| that's consistently finding sensible and profitable uses for
| machine learning.
| internetter wrote:
| I agree. The only two examples I've seen of embedded AI
| that "works" is Bard in search results, and generative AI
| in Adobe's. Everything else feels tacked on.
|
| Edit: And on my iPhone, the offline photo categorization
| and image OCR
| mhh__ wrote:
| Microsoft haven't really taken any deep interest into the
| (say) Office suite in decades so now they have no intuition
| at all for where its value is, thus the "umm copilot?"-ing
| everywhere.
| chucke1992 wrote:
| It is hilarious that people are trying to portray MSFT's
| moves in AI as "desperate" lol
| Spivak wrote:
| MS got the score of the century. They're selling the
| shovels and access to the mines.
| mcphage wrote:
| This is true, but most big AI companies are the ones
| selling shovels, and tons of money is pouring into the
| field because everyone wants to get in on shovel
| selling... but I don't know if it's yet determined that
| there are enough motivated shovel _buyers_.
| TeaBrain wrote:
| The GPUs that Nvidia is selling to Microsoft, Google,
| Meta and the venture-backed AI bandwagon are arguably the
| shovels.
| init2null wrote:
| They are oversaturating their products with internet-
| based LLMs. It is a desperate attempt to milk all
| possible potential value from their smart investment.
|
| A careful plan for a product would be less hamfisted and
| include more flexibility to deal with the backlash.
| paxys wrote:
| > Apple is a best-in-class second mover.
|
| Apple's biggest successes have come from being the first
| mover in a brand new space.
|
| Apple II, Macintosh, iPod, iPhone, iPad, Airpods, Watch were
| all category defining rather than "me too" products.
|
| In fact Apple is terrible at throwing its hat into an already
| crowded space, and doubly so when it comes to software.
| dbbk wrote:
| You just described second movers.
| Retr0id wrote:
| iPhone was category defining for sure, but it was far from
| the first smartphone.
| xcv123 wrote:
| Second mover in every example except maybe the Apple II
| where the competitors released in the same year.
|
| iPod was released in 2001. Portable MP3 players were
| released in the late 90s.
| timetopay wrote:
| > Apple's biggest successes have come from being the first
| mover in a brand new space.
|
| I would say that only one of the examples you gave was
| unambiguously the first mover in a brand new space. I will
| give you "category defining", though.
|
| For example, the iPod had tons of competitors already in
| the field when it launched.
|
| Airpods were not even close to the first wireless earbuds.
|
| One of the Apple Watch's major competitors (fitbit)
| launched 8 years prior. The first smartwatch that could
| sync with a computer came out in the 80s.
|
| The iPad came like a decade after Microsoft's first major
| tablet push. ATT and Sony/Magicap and Apple all released
| "smart tablets" in the early 90s.
|
| The iPhone was not the first capacitive touch screen
| smartphone, and certainly not the first smartphone - over a
| decade late to that game.
|
| The Macintosh was (sort of) a sequel to Apple's own Lisa,
| which itself was also not a first mover. The Mac was
| incredibly innovative and successful, but was preceded by
| the LISA, PERQ, Alto, various Lisp Machines.
|
| > In fact Apple is terrible at throwing its hat into an
| already crowded space, and doubly so when it comes to
| software.
|
| Couldn't be farther from the truth.
| chucke1992 wrote:
| iPhone has basically defined a category of mutli-touch
| screen devices. It essentially created the whole
| foundation how all the mobile phones went. It was a
| completely new consumer category of devices.
|
| Apple Watch was a success because it used iPhone as a
| moat. iPad was built upon iPhone's foundation.
|
| Apple is - by and large - "an iPhone company".
| xcv123 wrote:
| > It essentially created the whole foundation how all the
| mobile phones went. It was a completely new consumer
| category of devices.
|
| I was already using smart phones, handhelds, tablets,
| etc, for years before the iPhone. Apple entered an
| existing category.
|
| The iPhone wasn't even the first capacitive touchscreen
| phone.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada
|
| Back in 2007 it was not seen as a completely new category
| or truly original. It was a variation within an existing
| category. At the time we did not think it was
| revolutionary, but of course it became the new standard.
|
| Before they became an "iPhone company" they were an "iPod
| company", and that was also an existing category when it
| launched.
| albedoa wrote:
| > The iPad came like a decade after Microsoft's first
| major tablet push.
|
| Wow, you really got their asses. Who could forget
| Microsoft's first major tablet push.
| chx wrote:
| Really? _really_?
|
| you think when the iPhone came out the space was not
| crowded? You think they defined the category? Jobs himself
| have put up a number of smartphones in his 2007
| presentation. Yes, the iPhone was far, very far better but
| it was definitely not a first.
|
| Same thing with the iPod vs Diamond Rio MP3 layers.
|
| As for the Watch, gosh, I do not even know where to start.
| Pebble Kickstarter two years before that? Two generations
| of the Samsung Galaxy Gear came out well before the Apple
| Watch.
| paxys wrote:
| Look at a picture of what the top 10 smartphones looked
| like the day before iPhone launched and then again a few
| years later. That is what category defining means.
|
| They didn't take whatever was out there in the market and
| copy it/make it incrementally better. They started from
| scratch and built something drastically different and
| better than the rest. Same for iPod (yes there were
| plenty of cheap MP3 players out there, but none of them
| were comparable), Airpods and all the rest.
| Gigachad wrote:
| The Apple watch was only incrementally better than the
| existing options. The original one was probably worse
| than the Pebble in some aspects.
| xcv123 wrote:
| > the iPhone was far, very far better
|
| It wasn't that far ahead when it first launched. Very
| basic functionality. But a few versions later it was the
| end of Nokia and Blackberry.
|
| https://www.mobilegazette.com/2007-review-07x12x12.htm
|
| "No handset polarised opinions during 2007 more than the
| Apple iPhone. Although it has many good points, the list
| of bad points is equally impressive. The iPhone lacks 3G,
| the camera is only two megapixels and lacks autofocus and
| flash, you cannot send MMS messages, third party
| applications are not allowed, the battery is not
| replaceable and it is absurdly expensive."
| Retr0id wrote:
| People seem to forget that on launch, the iPhone was
| basically a feature phone.
| xcv123 wrote:
| I owned a Blackberry in 2007 and thought the new iPhone
| was trash.
| soylentcola wrote:
| These are all classes of device where existing options
| hashed out many of the growing pains before Apple released
| something more polished or attractive to buyers - the
| definition of second-mover.
| 015a wrote:
| Welcome to History Revisionism.
|
| Literally EVERY single example you listed were markets that
| already existed before Apple entered them (except maybe the
| Mac but that was so long ago who cares). MP3 players
| existed before the iPod. Smartphones existed before the
| iPhone. Wireless earbuds existed before Airpods. Tablets
| existed before the iPad. Smartwatches existed before the
| Apple Watch. VR goggles existed before Vision. Smartrings
| existed before the Apple Ring (just wait, its coming).
|
| Their skill isn't in being a first mover. Their skill is
| being a second, or even last, mover into a space that has
| untapped potential, and unlocking that potential (for both
| their benefit and competitors).
| mhh__ wrote:
| The issue here, although easier due to moving second, is that
| Apple don't seem to really have a software culture, and this
| is pure software in multiple limits.
| croes wrote:
| MS is putting all its eggs in one basket at the moment, AI
| everywhere.
|
| That's not savvy that's desperate.
| 015a wrote:
| Yeah its kind of insane how many times Apple can pull this
| trick yet we still get people saying "they're late, they look
| like morons, Apple is finished".
|
| Apple can arrive last to a product market. They can take six
| years of iterative releases to refine their vision on a
| product market. They will still dominate that market. Cue the
| "they can't keep getting away with this" meme, because this
| happens with EVERY PRODUCT THEY RELEASE and these people
| still keep thinking this time will be different.
|
| The whole "Siri sucks" thing is also hilarious, because you
| have to ask: So? So what? Apple, Google, and Amazon invested
| billions upon billions into these systems (Amazon
| especially). Then LLMs came around and are absolutely eating
| their same lunch ten times faster. Apple, _again_ , looks
| like a genius (intentionally, or far more likely, not). They
| didn't over-invest. They're not laying off a thousand people
| from the Alexa division [1], or removing a ton of Google
| Assistant features [2], or releasing hardware no one is
| buying. They built exactly enough of a voice assistant to be
| competitive throughout the 2010s, and now its time for the
| next generation of all these things anyway.
|
| [1] https://apnews.com/article/amazon-alexa-job-cuts-
| generative-...
|
| [2] https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/11/24034262/google-
| assistant...
| jcgrillo wrote:
| But what's it for? I can tell what an electric car is for, can
| you tell me what "generative AI" is for? A car can transport
| goods and people, really good non-deterministic typeahead is
| just.. well, I don't know what I'd use it for, do you?
|
| EDIT: what I really mean is what makes people think this is a
| commercially viable thing to spend time and money on? Like, say
| one of these companies hits some magic jackpot and discovers
| "AGI".. then what? Is that worth money, somehow?
| gs17 wrote:
| At very least, they could make Siri useful.
| exe34 wrote:
| Have you missed all the people complaining that it'll put
| them out of business?
| jcgrillo wrote:
| No, but having tried it I can't figure out what they're
| talking about. Seems like more NFT-esque nonsense.
| cududa wrote:
| That's a really myopic observation. They're very very
| different. ChatGPT Pro helps me learn new concepts in new
| languages much much faster than I did in the past.
| jcgrillo wrote:
| Who would that put out of business? Does that replace
| anyone's job function? It sounds like you're describing
| something like "really good search for Wikipedia" which
| to be clear I think is great, but who's gonna be replaced
| by that in their workplace?
|
| EDIT: actually, I overcommitted a little bit with "really
| good Wikipedia search". I can rely on Wikipedia search to
| not invent stuff from whole cloth and try to pass it off
| as results.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _can you tell me what "generative AI" is for?_
|
| Better keyboard text prediction and power management. A
| competent Siri.
| jwells89 wrote:
| Even if all it did was improve Siri's capability to
| understand requests and add the ability to ask clarifying
| questions with no other functional improvements, it'd make
| Siri vastly more useful.
| threeseed wrote:
| Apple already has transformer based text prediction and a
| model for power management.
|
| How does "generative AI" help ?
| madeofpalk wrote:
| That's it. So they're not behind, they're already there.
| dash2 wrote:
| "A competent Siri."
|
| This, but it is really exciting because for the first time,
| you can just tell your computer what to do. Not just a
| given set of tasks, but e.g. "go to my gym and book a slot
| with my personal trainer"; "contact Shauna and set up a
| meeting to talk about X, then book me tickets to get
| there".
|
| Think about how much monkey-work we all do with our
| smartphones. We might look back in 10 years and laugh at
| the idea that we had to press buttons all the time.
| jcgrillo wrote:
| I had this 15 years ago when my blackberry had a keyboard
| on it. It had buttons, and when you press them it makes the
| character you commanded go onto the screen. If they'd just
| put buttons on the phone instead of trying to draw a fake
| one on the screen you wouldn't need a statistical model to
| make the keyboard work
| k8svet wrote:
| I can type _significantly_ faster with GBoard, swipe or
| not, than I could on any physical phone keyboard ever.
| Blackberries, the G1, Droid OG. No way I 'd ever take
| those over GBoard.
|
| But iOS users don't really know what they're missing from
| GBoard, so.
| jcgrillo wrote:
| I haven't owned an iPhone since the iPhone 4, I lean
| really heavily on autocorrect on my Pixel (is that using
| Gboard?). It's just an infuriating experience to me
| compared to physical buttons. I probably hit the
| backspace key at least three times as often and often
| when I try to type a backspace instead it comes out as an
| "l", "m", ".", or enter.
|
| Most of the time I just wish I could plug my full sized
| keyboard into the phone, that would fix it completely
| most of the time (except, obviously, when I'm not near my
| desk).
|
| An ideal compromise would be physical buttons on the
| device for when it's necessary and the ability to easily
| use my workstation's external keyboard (dock + switch
| maybe?) the rest of the time.
|
| EDIT: Now that I think of it.. let me plug in a mouse too
| and give me a real OS (maybe in a container like you get
| on a Chromebook) and i can just replace my workstation
| with the docked phone. But then I would buy only half as
| many computers and wouldn't need all that GPU compute to
| train a bunch of statistical models so I guess that
| doesn't work for the computer companies.
| k8svet wrote:
| I knew halfway through your comment that I was going to
| end up agreeing with where you were going. We're so close
| to having a decent Android tablet, with maybe a new
| Firefox for tablets, with USB-C DP out. 90% of the time I
| also would rather just be on a _better_ device.
|
| I'm sad there isn't more built around Android's AVF. I
| thought for sure, by now, we were going to have "Linux on
| Android" ala Crostini.
| ezfe wrote:
| Generative AI won't lead to AGI any time soon but it does
| make our computers at lot better at understanding us.
|
| Simple example: Adding something to a reminder list, but the
| name of your lists don't exactly match the list you said to
| add to.
|
| Prompt: "Add milk to my shopping list"
|
| Siri: "I didn't find a shopping list, do you want to create
| one?"
|
| ChatGPT (when asked to pick from my actual lists), properly
| identifies the "groceries" list as the intended list.
| jcgrillo wrote:
| Does a computer understanding me make it better? I find
| that attempts the computer makes to understand me,
| "delight" me, etc. just end up pissing me off. It's a tool.
| All I ever want a tool to do is be completely invisible and
| become an extension of my body, which enables me to get a
| task done. Computer software which does anything other than
| exactly what I tell it to fails at this, because it
| instantly breaks my connection to the task I'm trying to do
| and refocuses my attention on the software itself.
|
| I wouldn't dream of trying to use a Siri, it sounds
| absolutely maddening. All I expect is that when I press a
| key on the keyboard the character I commanded with my key
| press shows up on the screen before I can blink, and does
| so exactly once.
| k8svet wrote:
| I love watching my friends and family use Siri. Maybe 20%
| of the time it does what they want first try. 40% of the
| time they end up unlocking the phone and tapping the
| screen.
|
| Sounds infuriating to me. (To be clear, I don't have any
| always-(maybe)-on mics in my life, I doubt Hey Google or
| Bard or whatever is much better.)
| ryandrake wrote:
| > But what's it for? I can tell what an electric car is for,
| can you tell me what "generative AI" is for? A car can
| transport goods and people, really good non-deterministic
| typeahead is just.. well, I don't know what I'd use it for,
| do you?
|
| It doesn't even seem to matter anymore. The tail is fully
| wagging the dog. Wall Street doesn't really care what
| companies are doing with AI, how they are using it, or
| whether their use of AI is going to actually drive earnings.
| They just care that they are using it. If a company says
| "We're doing AI blah blah blah" that's enough: investors are
| happy and stock price goes up.
| jcgrillo wrote:
| I think you're right, it'll be interesting to see whether
| the next AI winter brings a market crash with it. It would
| be one thing if it seemed like there was some commercial
| application beyond "neat nerd toy" but so far there just
| isn't that I'm aware of? That smells a lot like tulip
| bulbs.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| There's no crash, just vine swinging to the next. A
| couple years ago it was blockchain. Expect a new stupid
| rain dance in a few years.
| staticman2 wrote:
| If AGI is defined as a AI that can replace most humans at
| most tasks, it would be worth money if it's cheaper than
| paying humans. So instead of a Marvel film costing 100
| million to make, if an AGI can do it for 30 million it's
| worth tens of millions of dollars. Of course society might
| eventually collapse from mass unemployment, but corporate
| owners would live like kings until that finally happens.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| If AI replaces most humans at most tasks how are the humans
| going to pay for the products?
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| It is a smart move in the sense that building a car was a
| stupid move.
| fngjdflmdflg wrote:
| Google is innovative in AI though.
| thefourthchime wrote:
| They haven't released anything yet it's unfair to say how far
| behind they are. I don't expect them to catch up with Open AI
| but perhaps they could be on par with Google.
|
| Apple's advantage is always been superior hardware and
| processing. My guess is that they try to do some on device LLM.
| It's currently possible to run Mistral 7B on your phone
| (MLCChat app), which is quite decent for a small model but is
| pretty terrible compared to the largest / best models.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Apple knows it has a captive userbase already. Better to let
| the others make first-mover mistakes and then come in with
| something that avoids those.
| dougmwne wrote:
| I wonder if this is connected to the Vision Pro release. That's
| another giant hardware fishing project that failed to meet the
| "vision" of an all-day wearable iPhone. Perhaps it became obvious
| that the car was in even murkier waters.
|
| And to dump some of the employees on image and text generators
| off whatever self driving computer vision work they were
| presumably doing before? Interesting choice.
| jimkoen wrote:
| Honestly, a car made more sense than a VR headset if the vision
| behind the VR headset is "an all-day wearable iPhone". Though I
| doubt it is, nor was it for the forseeable future. Despite it's
| outward appearance, I expect Apple's management to consist
| mostly of engineering type realists, otherwise it becomes hard
| to explain how they keep being the #1 in Lifestyle products.
|
| I think the VR goggles were always a stab at what's supposed to
| become Meta's core business.
|
| Regardless, I would have really like to see a car from Apple.
| Tesla is still too small to get the attention of EU regulators
| when it comes to their stupid warranty and serviceability.
| Apple is large enough and already known to not play nice when
| it comes to repair - I'm sure we would've gotten some amazing
| legislature about electric vehicle repairability out of it!
| yreg wrote:
| AVP has not failed yet. Saying so today would be akin to
| stating that the iPhone failed in the fall of 2007.
|
| Some did, Steve Ballmer laughed his butt off, convinced that no
| one sane will ever buy a $500 phone.
| tapoxi wrote:
| I mean the hype around the iPhone was huge. There was obvious
| need for a phone that "runs OS X" and was part of the already
| massive iPod ecosystem. It sold itself.
|
| I still don't get the case for a screen you can wear. My
| phone screen is big enough for most use cases (like posting
| this comment). If I need to get work done, my laptop is
| realistically not much larger than the keyboard I'd need to
| use anyway. The laptop is also cheaper, and I can show what
| I'm working on to other people without jumping through hoops.
|
| Classic solution in search of a problem.
| dougmwne wrote:
| I understand it, or at least what it could be. Picture
| something in eyeglasses or even invisible contacts or
| neural implant. It adds an AR layer on everything. There
| are no devices, no screens, no buttons. You look and think
| and the world responds. The Vision Pro is a clunky preview,
| but decently feature complete.
|
| Utopian or dystopian, this is exactly the future that
| Apple, Meta and NeuraLink are chasing.
| dougmwne wrote:
| Not that it failed per se, but there were lots of reports
| that they ended up at a very bulky and compromised headset
| that was not much different than what Meta was selling when
| they really wanted AR glasses. Reports also said the
| executives were unhappy with the final design and that there
| was political debate if they should launch or fold.
|
| Maybe in a few versions they will have something that could
| sell a billion units, but they have a lot of work to do to
| get there.
| wombat-man wrote:
| Yeah but didn't the first iPhone sell pretty well? I tried a
| demo of AVP in NYC the week after release. The staff casually
| mentioned that they had units in stock if I'd like one.
|
| I think apple is having a difficult time selling these
| things. I had a harder time getting a hold of an iPad pro
| over a month after launch.
|
| Maybe later versions will catch on though.
| threeseed wrote:
| iPhone sold 270,000 units in the quarter it was launched.
|
| About the same as the Vision Pro.
| wombat-man wrote:
| What I've found when searching, is that is how much it
| sold in the first few days. It sold 1.4 million in year
| one.
|
| I don't think AVP will sell that well. My guess is they
| won't hit their goal of 400k in the first year.
| iaseiadit wrote:
| While some may have doubted the iPhone, Apple sold 1.9
| million iPhones in the year it launched, and cell phones had
| already been established as an enormous and growing market.
|
| VR seems very different from that. Most people simply don't
| want what companies are trying to sell them, and I think
| multiple major technical breakthroughs would be necessary to
| change that.
| yreg wrote:
| It hasn't been a year of AVP sales yet.
|
| And as you say, the VR market is small compared to the
| phone market of 2007.
| ARandumGuy wrote:
| While there were absolutely people who thought the iPhone
| would fail, the idea that most people were skeptical about
| the iPhone is simply ahistorical. The iPhone had a huge
| amount of hype from the moment it was announced, and it was
| pretty clear from the outset that this was the direction
| cell phones were headed.
|
| The Vision Pro just doesn't have that. Apple was able to
| clearly articulate what the iPhone allowed you to do that
| you couldn't do before. But the use cases presented for the
| Vision Pro just are a lot more niche, and a lot less
| compelling. Some people will certainly find uses for it,
| but right now the Vision Pro feels like a solution in
| search of a problem.
| threeseed wrote:
| Vision Pro was never designed to replace the iPhone from day
| one.
|
| People seem to have this revisionist history where every Apple
| product is an instant hit. But the iPod, iPhone, Apple Watch
| etc all took years to reach that product-market-fit stage.
|
| All Apple has done is establish a baseline for what they want
| the category to be.
| jm4 wrote:
| Correct. All of those products were pretty crappy when they
| were first released and then got very good. In the case of
| the iPhone, I think it was like the third revision when it
| got good. The iPad comes to mind as one of their only
| somewhat recent products that was really good right from the
| start. That one still benefited from being more or less a
| giant iPhone and it was years before it really came into its
| own. For at least the past 25 years, their initial forays
| into a new category have been marked by potential that isn't
| realized for several more years. I think the Vision Pro will
| be fine.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| I'm extremley sceptical on Vision Pro or AR/VR headsets in
| general, but I think it's too early to call it failed. I think
| it met exactly the vision it was supposed to - it just needs
| years and years of iterating to get to the final goal.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| The demand for expensive EVs is not unlimited, despite the ardent
| desires of California and federal politicians.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| There's plenty of latent demand; there isn't currently a viable
| charging network and NACS doesn't take over until 2025.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| There's also quite an oversupply at the moment.
| MisterPea wrote:
| Cook's best trait is being reactive very well. What he lacks in
| the Jobs "magic", he has in the ability to react to industry
| incredibly well and do better than most.
|
| I have little doubt Apple is going to be a major player in AI,
| especially in the non-Nvidia hardware space after playing around
| with MLX
| stevev wrote:
| I disagree. They had a leading edge with Siri but failed to
| invest in AI over a car. This move is just correcting a vital
| mistake in time past. They're playing catch up.
| internetter wrote:
| OP said reactive, not anticipative. You are both in
| agreement.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| How would one know how much they invested in AI, if they've
| not discussed such?
| ldjkfkdsjnv wrote:
| Cook just optimized Jobs vision. He hasnt done anything special
| geodel wrote:
| Huh, optimizing is special. Most of the time people in
| highest positions just unravel and crap out.
| astrange wrote:
| Everything environment, health, wearables related is Tim
| Apple.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I really hope Apple continues its privacy-first ethos and offers
| an on-device LLM. It would also be great if they could use
| Handoff-like technology to let my (almost always nearby, almost
| always plugged-in) laptop do the thinking, instead of depleting
| the battery of my phone. I'd surely buy a bunch of HomePod minis
| if I could tie them into a local LLM.
| checker659 wrote:
| I wish they'd put a huge FPGA on every device.
| internetter wrote:
| For all Apple's flaws, I trust that they could disrupt the AI
| industry once they enter it. Their decisions are all highly
| calculated, and they employee vast swaths of researchers. I
| would not be surprised if they entered the market with a well
| functioning local LLM
| mdhb wrote:
| Have you actually used Siri? They are absolutely garbage at
| anything even remotely resembling the basics of AI/LLM
| related after spending a decade on it.
| internetter wrote:
| Obviously, they haven't invested any money into it (well,
| apparently they will for iOS 17). When Apple _does_
| invest money, however, which they seem to be doing now,
| there are usually impressive results. Take the M1, for
| instance.
| mdhb wrote:
| Im not debating the mechanics of why it's so shit, I'm
| saying that they are many years behind everyone else and
| that it's not obvious that simply throwing money at the
| problem is going to fix that for them or that they
| actually have much of a track record of making good
| software again despite unlimited budgets and many years
| of opportunity to prove otherwise.
| smoldesu wrote:
| It feels like it's too late. Microsoft, Meta and Google all
| beat Apple to the punch with highly usable and competitive
| local inferencing frameworks. Apple could release a
| Tensorflow-style library with full-fat CUDA and Linux
| support tomorrow, but they would just be Another Competing
| Solution next to ONNX and Pytorch.
|
| The hardware side doesn't look much better. Apple's biggest
| userbase is located on iPhone, which poses hardware
| constraints on what kinds of model you can realistically
| deploy. The Mac has a deeply-ingrained audience, but it's
| unlikely that the AI will be a selling point to commercial
| customers (who have Nvidia) or PC users (that have other
| models).
|
| Honestly, I believe AI research would be a wasted
| investment relative to supporting third-party libraries
| upstream and welcoming Nvidia back onto their platform.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| You're not going to like the battery lif
| astrodust wrote:
| I'm assuming your phone died before finishing this comment,
| thus proving your point.
| moffkalast wrote:
| I hope they put a laser on every shark.
| londons_explore wrote:
| And I hope the reverse. Most of my data I am happy to entrust
| to Apple, and I don't want them to release substandard not-
| very-smart products just because they're limited to AI models
| that only take a few gigs of RAM and can run on a single phone
| processor.
|
| Please just use some huge models to make actually smart
| products and run them in the cloud if it isn't feasible to run
| them on-device. Perhaps have an 'offline mode', which runs
| small models (the google assistant already does that - and it's
| very noticeable that the online mode has very accurate speech
| recognition, whereas offline mode can only recognise basic
| words reliably).
| gnicholas wrote:
| I assume they'll continue working on Siri-like cloud based AI
| and will be happy to use that as well.
| crooked-v wrote:
| There are lots and lots of rumors suggesting an LLM-driven Siri
| 2.0, as well as broad integration of minor LLM-driven
| functionality like locally creating smart playlists.
| Reubachi wrote:
| I really need to know who thought that the best, first
| consumer visible iteration of siri 2.0 is to "locally create
| smart playlists."
|
| More impressive would be shortcut automation/smart shortcut
| tips IE; "Create a shortcut routine based off my device
| habits for week XYZ."
|
| Is there any other examples you've heard talked about?
| croes wrote:
| >privacy-first ethos
|
| Apple doesn't have a privacy first ethos, it's more of an All
| your-data-are-belong-to-us.
|
| They just don't like to share the asset of their users data,
| that's not privacy.
| thefourthchime wrote:
| That's not true you can have complete end to end encryption.
| By default. iCloud is not encrypted, but you can encrypt it
| and nobody but you can get access access your data.
|
| It's off by default because if you lose the password then you
| lose everything and that's a support nightmare.
| croes wrote:
| They own the OS they don't need to decrypt the transport if
| they own the source.
|
| They could track every button pressed if they wanted to.
|
| https://gizmodo.com/apple-iphone-analytics-tracking-even-
| whe...
| krunck wrote:
| Who can confirm this though?
| the_mar wrote:
| Can and do are two vastly different things. The
| assumption that data privacy can only be accomplished by
| no one having any access to data is ridiculous. Of all
| the companies that exist right now, apple does a fair bit
| of work regarding data anonymization and access
| restriction.
| appplication wrote:
| This is not true at all. I would recommend reading a bit on
| Apple's privacy practices and how they differ from other
| players in the space to arrive at a more informed
| understanding here.
|
| From Apple's legal page [0] for e.g. maps: "Individual usage
| metrics are associated with an identifier that rotates
| multiple times per hour, and is not tied to your Apple ID.
| This means Maps cannot search for information about you based
| on an identifier linked to you or your device."
|
| [0]: https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-maps/
| xp84 wrote:
| I am sure Apple leadership agrees with your overall idea of on-
| device, but don't see how this could compete with big GPUs in a
| data center for "actually doing a good job." Apple is a distant
| last place in everything to do with AI today, so I'm skeptical
| that they can suddenly make an impact with both hands tied
| around their back (in other words 1/100th the TDP, one iPhone
| chip on battery vs farms of GPUs).
|
| I'd honestly more appreciate the ability to choose "best
| quality with theoretical decrease in 'privacy'" over "best that
| you can do without hurting the tiny iPhone battery but perfect
| privacy." I'd always pick the first one if given the choice.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I think the way they could compete is by having on-device
| handle a limit universe of queries, and then use some souped-
| up Siri for the rest. Currently iPhones can do some Siri
| commands even when offline, for example.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Hell even the most recent Apple Watch does some Siri
| commands, including voice to text, on device. Apple is
| certainly pushing low power on device processing with their
| own custom chips (S9 on the watch I believe).
| gnicholas wrote:
| Yep, I could totally see them enabling this only on Pro-
| level iPhones, for example. This would presumably be
| because Pro devices could have different chips that are
| designed to handle these specific tasks, as well as
| having larger batteries.
|
| I expect there will be a lot of iPhone upgrades this
| fall, as buyers will finally see a difference between
| their 1-3 year old device and a new iPhone.
| orenlindsey wrote:
| It was always a distraction for them. Apple couldn't add anything
| real to cars that other manufacturers did not have.
| yreg wrote:
| Aside from CarPlay.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| Good. This was an idea that never made any sense to me. It's high
| overhead/low-margin and requires infrastructure, sales and after-
| sales support that just aren't aligned with how Apple does
| business.
|
| It's one thing to create a new car company (even tho those
| attempts usually fail), it's another to purposefully take it on
| as a business line when your existing business groups prints
| money and have 40%+ margins. Especially when you could just have
| a higher-margin business selling software for other people's
| cars.
|
| What surprises me is that it took this long to kill the product.
| And while I feel bad for the engineers and researchers who worked
| on this project, this really does seem like the best outcome.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > What surprises me is that it took this long to kill the
| product
|
| Maybe I'm misremembering, but I seem to recall that it was
| killed once before?
| SheinhardtWigCo wrote:
| It's been scaled down and then back up, never fully shut
| down.
| odshoifsdhfs wrote:
| I think the Apple car has been killed maybe 10 times or more
| in the last decade.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| It's been killed, restarted, scaled down, scaled up about
| every 9 months for the past 10 years.
| MBCook wrote:
| Yeah based on rumors they were on like version 12 of the
| program.
| brandall10 wrote:
| Is this current news more irreversible?
| madeofpalk wrote:
| I expect news to say that the project has been restarted,
| with smaller scope, by the end of the year.
| silverquiet wrote:
| > requires infrastructure, sales and after-sales support that
| just aren't aligned with how Apple does business
|
| I always thought Apple was far and away the best consumer
| electronics brand at this part at least. I'm not saying it
| would directly translate to a car business, but they do have
| some real retail skill.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I was going to say. If anyone knows how to quickly create and
| expand a network of dealerships and post-sales support, it's
| Apple. They literally wrote the book on this with computers
| and phones and all their accessories.
| PheonixPharts wrote:
| > They literally wrote the book on this
|
| I didn't realize Apple _literally_ wrote a book on the
| subject. Sounds interesting, what 's the title?
| scarface_74 wrote:
| They didn't though. They piggybacked off of the existing
| network of phone carriers. They did slowly build out Apple
| Stores. But they aren't nearly as ubiquitous as resellers
| and carriers for selling devices
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| Cars are different both for sales and more importantly for
| support. Apple is best in class for a turnkey consumer
| experience. But if you've ever had to deal with Apple Care
| Enterprise, which is a lot more similar to the sort of
| support you have to do for luxury cars, in my experience it
| just isn't the same. It is fine, but it isn't the same
| experience that a consumer gets (I'm unsure of what the
| experience is like for people that shell out the money for
| the on-site support from IBM or whoever the contractor is
| now).
|
| And that's the thing. Apple does really well at attainable
| luxury consumer goods. I think it does less well the higher
| the price point and market segmentation. Hence why the
| $10,000 Apple Watch didn't work (and that was for lots and
| lots of reasons, first and foremost I think a
| misunderstanding of why watch enthusiasts spend so much on
| watches).
|
| But putting that aside, partnerships (dealers) make up the
| car market for everyone with the exception of Tesla, and
| although with enough time and money, Apple could absolutely
| build out their own network, unlike Apple Stores, where
| they had a solid 5 years to a decade to really grow
| (coincidentally timed to Apple's rise as a consumer giant)
| into that infrastructure, they'd need to have that
| basically day one for a car. Which is my whole point about
| it being overhead/capital intensive. Even Tesla had a
| chance to grow over time as it was a new company and not
| expected to sell and service cars everywhere. Apple would
| have a difficult time, I think, releasing a car and saying
| it could only be bought and serviced in select cities. The
| stakes are higher the bigger you are.
|
| It isn't that I don't think Apple could do these things.
| It's that I don't think Apple could do them at the scale
| and margins at which it has based its business on.
| Especially if the net result is growing $100b in market
| cap. Apple added $1T to its market cap in 2 years (2018 to
| 2020) and another briefly in 2023 (current is $2.82T). I
| think there are far less intensive ways to add $100b to the
| bottom line than to become a car company.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| If you look at the market cap of Ferrari, it's not crazy why
| Apple was considering this.
|
| They could maybe sell 4k cars a year and increase their market
| cap by $100B (~3.5%).
|
| You could potentially have some shop hand build them and not
| have crazy cap-ex or infrastructure.
|
| I don't think Apple was planning to take on Tesla in the mass
| market - that would've been a pretty strange move, I agree.
| open_ wrote:
| Or they could launch some much lower hanging fruit and wait
| for stock price to appreciate by that much or more. A car
| company, no matter how small, is very, very hard.
| jcgrillo wrote:
| Exactly, it looked to me like they were going for the
| supercar market (>$250k price tag, low volume) which (I guess
| naively) seemed pretty sensible..
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| It's in opposition to the brand. Apple products range from
| affordable to aspirational. But every line is carefully
| segmented so there's a somewhat affordable option -
| certainly not cheap, but relatively accessible.
|
| And all mass-produced in incredible numbers.
|
| A low volume $250k car would be pure luxury for the sake of
| it. That's not Apple's market.
|
| Apple's market would be a $50k Tesla killer with far better
| styling and build quality and some attempt at a game-
| changing killer feature, all bundled with cross-marketing
| for other walled-garden products.
|
| I'm not surprised that turned out to be impossible - for
| now.
| bluGill wrote:
| A common way to break into the car market is to start
| with the very expensive cars. You just barely break even
| at best, but you learn enough in those early cars so that
| in 5 years you can build the next cheaper model, and so
| on down the line.
|
| It isn't the only way to break in, but it is common.
| nradov wrote:
| Ferrari's value is driven more by merchandising than by car
| sales. Even if a hypothetical Apple car did well, that
| wouldn't drive billions in sales of Apple branded jackets,
| hats, luggage, shot glasses, etc.
| spaceguillotine wrote:
| Ironically this was something Apple used to be good at but
| they killed off all the fun things with apple branding on
| them, now all you get is two campus exclusive shirt
| designs.
|
| I'd love some retro apple "lifestyle" gear, throwback
| porsche racing jacket would be clutch right now with the
| yoots
| vineyardmike wrote:
| I never understood why each of the flagship Apple stores
| don't have custom merch.
|
| I'll admit that I've stopped at plenty of Apple stores
| while traveling, simply because they're nearby. They're
| usually in very nice locations for tourists (5th av,
| grand central station, etc) and I can totally see them
| dramatically improving brand appeal and catering to
| fanboys with localized tee shirts or Apple Watch bands or
| polishing cloths or any number of other gimmicks.
|
| Oh and their retro stuff would sell out in an instant.
| Their 80s stuff was cool.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I would totally buy a (corrected!) Apple Pascal T shirt
| after the poster.
| rasz wrote:
| >more by merchandising than by car sales
|
| That was the case until SUV release. Ferrari announced
| plans to limit SUV sales, but that wont last in light of
| what Lamborghini is doing.
| jakeinspace wrote:
| I'm guessing that most of Ferrari's market value comes from
| the brand compared to future revenue or IP. Apple is just not
| that elite of a brand, I don't see how selling million-dollar
| vehicles would significantly change their brand (assuming an
| Apple logo hood ornament).
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Aren't they? Their entire business is pretty much based on
| brand. Apple products aren't actually better than the
| competition (often they are worse, like the iPhone not
| letting you install apps outside the app store). But it
| doesn't matter because people think Apple is cool. I don't
| see why that wouldn't translate to cars.
| rescbr wrote:
| 61% marketshare for phones in the US doesn't sound like a
| luxury brand to me.
|
| They might position themselves as an aspirational brand
| outside the US, and by keeping retail prices close to the
| same as in the US, no matter the local purchasing power,
| I can see how they can be perceived as an upscale brand
| in some markets.
| boznz wrote:
| A luxury car is different to a "luxury" phone, you are
| fighting for share at the top 10% of the market.
| eastbound wrote:
| I love how Apple haters don't understand the phenomenon.
| Look, I bought Sony headphones, some reference like
| xixikxixkklkxwx. I now have tinitus. Everyone tells me
| it's because I didn't buy the xixikxixkklkxwii, which
| were obviously better. The entire PC market is like this.
| Intel sells i7, but it's not the same as the i7 of 20
| years ago. LG sells screens where you have 90% chances of
| buying shit and get told "Well they do make good screens,
| you should have bought the other reference. What did you
| expect. You noob." The entire Android market is like
| this. You buy Samsung and you get OEM preinstalled shit.
| "Yeah everyone knows you should gave bought the Pixel,
| not the Samsung."
|
| So now, instead of buying things twice because the one
| was shit, I just buy Apple. I don't buy "the iPhone". I
| buy "iPhone". It could be 99% more expensive, it's still
| less than buying things twice.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I don't know why you think one needs to buy Apple in
| order to get good products. I research and find out what
| products are good, buy them, and am happy. If you're
| happy with Apple then good for you, but don't kid
| yourself that it's because they are just better. They
| aren't.
| melenaboija wrote:
| > I'm guessing that most of Ferrari's market value comes
| from the brand compared to future revenue or IP
|
| See what Rimac did, it is a good example that starting a
| luxury sports car company and be successful is possible
| nowadays, and talking from the ignorance it seems to me
| easier than the past. If that is what apple wants or needs
| is a different story.
| notahacker wrote:
| Building supercars has always been a cottage industry
| that anyone can get involved in but nobody can dominate
| in the way Apple has certain classes of electronic
| product. There's a lot of choice, few buyers and it's not
| high margin compared with mass produced electronics at
| industry-leading markup even if engineers at the popular
| companies aren't more obsessed with beauty and speed than
| the bottom line.
|
| What Rimac did was partner with big automotive OEMs for
| research joint ventures and sell a _tiny_ number of cars
| and a relatively large amount of battery and drivetrain
| tech to other OEMs. Difficult to imagine anything less
| like Apple 's business model than that.
| bluGill wrote:
| Most of your cottage automotive manufactures are partners
| with a big brand. You can do many things on your own, but
| you want the large partner to supply engines (it is
| basically impossible for a small industry to build an
| emissions compliant engine from scratch - expect to spend
| over a billion $ in the R&D if you try - and you can only
| get that cheap if a lot of the engineering is done in
| places like India). You also buy your airbags from their
| supplier.
| tengbretson wrote:
| What companies serve the market segments above Apple's
| offerings in the phone, laptop, tablet and VR categories?
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| But I guess my question is, why would you bother with only
| making 4,000 cars a year, if you're Apple? Especially if the
| initial cost of making that $100b market cap (which a solid
| iPhone quarter alone will net you) is more than $100b (not
| accounting for R&D tax rules fuckery because I'm not versed
| enough in how all that works and what the current rules are)
| on development work.
|
| I have similar concerns about the Apple Vision Pro, given its
| small yields and current high ASP/muted demand, but at least
| there you can see the vision (pun unavoidable) of how it
| could eventually be an iPad-sized business or greater. A car
| _only_ works if you do go after Tesla and Mercedes and BMW,
| etc.
|
| I just don't see any reason Apple would enter any business if
| not to take it on as a mass market player. Selling a $10,000
| variant of a $500 watch is one thing (and that strategy
| failed, for what it's worth), selling a low quantity machine
| that you still have to maintain and support that isn't part
| of your core competency as a company is something else
| entirely.
| matwood wrote:
| But Apple's M.O. is Toyota volume with Ferrari margins. No
| way would they be happy selling 4k of anything. And Apple's
| required margins is why I never thought they would release a
| car - there isn't enough money in it.
| fullshark wrote:
| The only time it made sense to me was the idea they had some
| proprietary or trade secret 10x battery efficiency breakthrough
| from their work on computers and had a massive opportunity to
| utilize it in electric car space. Otherwise struck me as as a
| "tesla is doing this so we should too" move.
| wredue wrote:
| Apple started work on this car when vehicles were still
| reasonably priced.
|
| I'd wager this cancellation is purely due to there being no
| chance in hell Apple could get the Apple premium for it when
| vehicle sales are stagnating due to massive price increases.
| acdha wrote:
| The much-overstated "Apple premium" largely reflects that
| they don't compete in the lowest end of the PC/phone market.
| They'd be competing with BMW, not charging even more.
| ein0p wrote:
| As a current owner of a BMW 5 series, buying anything non-
| electric for the price of an EV sounds ludicrous to me. The
| moment your warranty expires, BMW takes ownership of your
| wallet and never lets go, and there's _a lot_ of expensive
| maintenance and repairs you need to do. I know they also
| make EVs, but just based on my current experience with
| their dealers buying anything from BMW would be insanity.
| Whoever overhauls the ownership experience will make a ton
| of money. In the meanwhile my next car will be a Tesla. My
| wife already has a Model Y, and in 3 years we paid $0 for
| maintenance and the car has been in the shop 0 times.
|
| IOW Apple could easily charge their customary 20-30% margin
| and create fierce brand loyalty by just looking at whatever
| it is BMW is doing and doing the opposite in nearly every
| situation.
| acdha wrote:
| A friend used to drive an M3, so I've heard plenty about
| their pricing and how often parts had to be air-shipped.
|
| My point was simply that I don't think an Apple car would
| sell for a notably different price than other premium
| brands.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Agree, repairing a recent-gen out of warranty MacBook at
| Apple is nearly as expensive as servicing a car. Why
| wouldn't Apple want those margins from premium cars as
| well?
| ein0p wrote:
| You probably haven't had your car serviced in a while. My
| BMW is currently is at the dealer, to replace water pump
| and thermostat. The invoice is $4.5K. The winning
| strategy for a newcomer is not to charge for repairs, but
| to create a car that doesn't need repairs or maintenance.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| I have serviced a car, but not a BMW since I don't shit
| money.
| scottyah wrote:
| If there's a spectrum where "Apple premium" is a 10, and
| lowest end of a market is a 1, where do you place these?
| https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MX572ZM/A/apple-mac-
| pro-w...
| zer00eyz wrote:
| >>> Good. This was an idea that never made any sense to me.
| It's high overhead/low-margin and requires infrastructure,
| sales and after-sales support that just aren't aligned with how
| Apple does business.
|
| Apple, in a twist of fate, is in the same position that AT&T
| was when it started Bell Labs, and in the same place as Xerox
| was when it started Parc.
|
| The history of Parc and Apple is well known, the early history
| of unix being a thrown out the car window by AT&T at speed to
| avoid more anti trust issues is often forgotten. Apples
| products are built on legacies. "Resting on the shoulders of
| giants" is probably true in this case.
|
| Apple is now an AT&T, its now a Xerox, it is now the company
| that can just do R&D for the sake of doing it (as can Google
| and a lesser degree MS). Apple, unlike google, knows how to
| make a consumer product, and one of these moonshots could make
| it even bigger...
|
| I wonder if in 20 years something from apples car project
| changes the industry in a way we never expected. Time will only
| tell.
| klik99 wrote:
| Yeah, I absolutely believe that Apple can bring something to
| car industry - I remember Elon once said that Teslas hidden
| strength that no other car manufacturer caught on to was
| treating the car as technology akin to an iPhone with
| incremental updates and improvements pushed over the air.
| I've owned a Model X for a few years and I see that approach
| but don't think Tesla has perfected it. Apple has the
| potential to innovate there. Cars, even ones that look like
| "traditional" cars, have been computers on wheels for a long
| time - for example, when you press the brakes there isn't and
| hasn't been for a long time a direct connection to the
| physical brakes. I have no idea what that would look like,
| and as someone who thought the iPhone was a worse version of
| an iPod and that the iPad filled a non-existant need I don't
| think I can speculate. But it just feels like an area that
| lags behind in terms of UX, which Apple often excels at.
|
| _Edit_ : I'm a dumb dumb and the brakes example was bad. I
| don't edit my mistakes in forums so peoples replies make
| sense. I still think the rest of the point is valid.
| throwaway11460 wrote:
| That seems wrong. My brakes work with both batteries
| disconnected, though I have to push very hard. Audi made in
| 2014.
| ksherlock wrote:
| With power brakes, there's a brake booster (usually
| vacuum powered) which applies most of the force. When the
| engine is off (or if you have a broken brake booster)
| braking is entirely on you.
| throwaway11460 wrote:
| Indeed. The brake boost works one or two times right
| after engine power down, it's kinda funny - I like to
| push the brake before getting out just to feel it harden.
| davitocan wrote:
| Small nitpick but almost every car today still has brakes
| that work via direct force vs by wire.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brake-by-wire
| gambiting wrote:
| >>for example, when you press the brakes there isn't and
| hasn't been for a long time a direct connection to the
| physical brakes
|
| I'm sorry but you're getting it completely wrong. Brake by
| wire isn't legal anywhere in any market of the world and
| consequently there are zero cars implemented this way -
| every car currently on sale everywhere has to have a
| physical connection between the brake pedal and the actual
| brakes.
|
| Throttle by wire on the other hand - sure. Nearly all new
| cars only have an electronic throttle.
|
| Steer by wire is making progress, with Lexus making the
| first road legal car that has a steering wheel that's fully
| disconnected from the steering rack, with only electronic
| control.
| klik99 wrote:
| Thank you, yes that was probably literally the worst
| example I could have given.
|
| But isn't there famously brake by wire in toyota EVs? And
| that physical connection is required as a fallback?
| gambiting wrote:
| Yes, they always have a physical fallback :-) and don't
| worry the systems like that do exist just not with brakes
| - it's an easy mistake to make.
| iknowstuff wrote:
| Lexus has a backup mechanical link it engages when a
| fault is detected. The Tesla Cybertruck is the first
| vehicle on the road with no such backup. They rely on
| redundancy of motors, power, and compute instead
| gambiting wrote:
| Does it have a backup link? According to this video:
|
| https://youtu.be/agMrewRJTow?si=DrjfGsrKp5_ZazB-
|
| There isn't a mechanical connection of any kind - the car
| just relies on triple(!) Backup for every component,
| including three fully independent power sources.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Lots of cars brake by wire -- but not through the brake
| pedal.
| mfashby wrote:
| > there isn't and hasn't been for a long time a direct
| connection to the physical brakes.
|
| I don't think this is true for most vehicles. Skoda Octavia
| 2020 for example still has hydraulic brakes. I was going to
| suggest that no mass-production vehicles use a brake-by-
| wire system but I would have been wrong, according to
| wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brake-by-wire
| whycome wrote:
| I wish more comments were like this. Misjudging the iPhone
| etc probably just comes down to a lack of information about
| broader needs. Its not always a bad take.
|
| I think Apple can provide an emphasis on modularity for the
| car manufacturers. What if you literally had a place to
| slip in an iPad as your display? What if cars legitimately
| came with VisionPro type headsets - if not for the drivers,
| then the passengers. What if apple encourages people
| fr.shifting away by car ownership by making it easier to
| jump into a car and have it show all your customizations
| (lighting, adjustments, heads up display arrangements).
| Another car company could make the shell and the power
| train. Apple would handle the "experience" and integrate it
| into its other offerings. Cloud Cars.
| jsight wrote:
| The accelerator likely would have been a better example.
| I'm not sure that any car currently shipping has a direct
| connection between the accelerator and a throttle.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Embarrassingly, I was eves dropping on a (loud) woman in a
| coffee shop who worked on the Apple Car project. She did SLAM
| work. I was evesdropping because that was a core part of my
| thesis and I was curious. She told her dining partner she was
| moved to the Vision Pro team to build the inside-out
| tracking.
|
| Research for the sake of research sometimes pays off. Who
| knows if this product will recoup the billions spent on R&D
| but that's how the game works.
| babyshake wrote:
| There was a recent YC podcast about Vision Pro where SLAM
| and the overlap with autonomous vehicles was explained.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| Link? I didn't know YC had a podcast and Google didn't
| help.
| whycome wrote:
| Ohhh. I thought the commenter was using some sort of
| slang about the quality of their work.
|
| For others out of loop:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simultaneous_localization
| _an...
| bee_rider wrote:
| Yes, I also don't work I computer vision but played with
| it just a tiny bit--I think somebody saying they worked
| in SLAM and are moving to a Vision Pro project is not a
| huge leak or anything. It is like a chemist saying they
| work in lithium ion batteries and are making the same
| move. A very broad and fundamental concept.
|
| Maybe the fact that they were moved away from the car
| project would have been a leak though, depending on what
| else they said.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| I am incredibly jealous of you guys living in a place where
| you just bump into random people at coffeeshops that happen
| to work on incredibly interesting things. The density of
| talent must be amazing.
| boznz wrote:
| And I am so happy I live in a place where this doesn't
| happen.
| epistasis wrote:
| Interesting, but I can't understand why that makes you
| happy. What benefit does it bring you?
| bogota wrote:
| Some people like talking about things not related to
| their job when they aren't working. The culture out in SV
| is very much still "work is life".
| khokhol wrote:
| The benefit of being a part of the actual human world,
| where real people live. Where not essentially everyone is
| obsessed with their careers and/or comparative wealth.
| That sort of thing.
| tptacek wrote:
| It can be alienating to move through the world in spaces
| where your work is everywhere you go. It's a thing I
| appreciated moving from San Francisco back to the
| midwest. Every once in awhile, I bump into someone with a
| Github sticker or whatever, and it's a happy surprise,
| but for the most part the world I inhabit has nothing to
| do with my work. Everyone has different things to talk
| about.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Please elaborate
| imajoredinecon wrote:
| The Bay Area is pretty special that way
| tekla wrote:
| These people are everywhere. Most are not stupid enough
| to yell about it in public.
| margalabargala wrote:
| Why is it stupid to talk about non-confidential aspects
| of your job in public?
| sneak wrote:
| The Apple Car R&D project is (or, I suppose, was)
| absolutely confidential. I am sure Apple has reprimanded
| or fired people for less.
| margalabargala wrote:
| Fired people for less than what?
|
| What part of it is confidential? Its existence? Obviously
| not. The fact that it uses SLAM? Not confidential, of
| course it does. That a person was transferred from that
| to the Vision Pro? Probably also on their linkedin page.
|
| Nothing that OP described this person as saying sounds
| "stupid" or confidential. Sure, maybe they _also_ said
| something that was confidential in addition to what was
| described. Maybe they also insulted your mother. We don
| 't know.
| brailsafe wrote:
| I'd argue this is true of a lot of cities where you're
| likely to bump into anyone, depending on how narrow your
| scope is of what one considers interesting. Also true of
| probably most universities if they're doing anything
| right.
|
| The problem with some particularly uptight places is that
| people aren't always open to chatting (or maybe under
| strict NDA), and you want to find a place on that nice
| area of the venn diagram where you actually do bump into
| and communicate with new and stimulating people.
| bluGill wrote:
| Everybody is interesting if you get talking to them. You
| just think the guy who collects your trash is
| uninteresting and never talk to him (or do you?). Sure
| not everyone has the same background, and so they are
| interesting in different ways, but they are all
| interesting.
| passion__desire wrote:
| Interests must align. People must know common jargon
| which convey high density information faster. I would
| like to have positive ROI on the conversations that I
| have.
| matwood wrote:
| > I would like to have positive ROI on the conversations
| that I have.
|
| You must be fun at parties.
| operatingthetan wrote:
| I usually cringe when people make this quip but it might
| be the first time I've seen it used effectively.
| brailsafe wrote:
| > I would like to have positive ROI on the conversations
| that I have.
|
| Seems pretty hollow and transactional to me.
|
| > Interests must align.
|
| That's part of the dice roll. Sometimes interests do
| align, sometimes they don't, but someone looking for ROI
| is easily spotted and ran away from. Chemistry and common
| ground are a matter of luck.
| boredtofears wrote:
| How tiresome
| devmor wrote:
| Having a conversation with someone who provides a
| perspective or experience I do not have is automatically
| a positive ROI in my book.
| 123pie123 wrote:
| some of my best conversations - that I still remember
| many many years from them - are from people who have
| nothing in common to me.
|
| some of them made me question my reality that changed my
| life, something you may want to try. Even keeping a
| conversation going that you think is not going well,can
| be a really good skill to have
| brailsafe wrote:
| This is exactly what I meant, but even beyond relatively
| common jobs, if you're likely enough to bump into open
| people, there's a good chance some of them will be doing
| more niche interesting things too
| genghisjahn wrote:
| I'm in Philly and about 20 years ago I sat next to an old
| man at a dinner for something. Neither of us wanted to be
| there. We talked, found out we both did tech things. I
| asked him what he worked on and he said "well back in the
| day I helped build ENIAC." I was blown away. Had a great
| talk.
| brailsafe wrote:
| These are the moments in life to cherish. As Ferris
| Bueller once said "Life moves fast, if you don't stop to
| look around once in a while, you might miss it".
|
| Incidentally, one of the scariest things about the
| volatility in the housing market and in my (lack of)
| career, is that I may at some point be forced to abandon
| the neighborhood and city in which I've adopted as my
| home and in which I've befriended many of these random
| delightful people of all ages, and they might have to
| too. They're my community, I see them at the gym, the
| coffee shop, walking down the street, or at the park. A 1
| bedroom condo _starts at_ around $650k CAD, and most of
| the people here who haven 't already owned something for
| a while depend on renting basements.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| It is amazing, and happens exactly this way.
|
| I'm a "regular person", engineer, and since moving here
| over 10nyrars I've met a lot of famous tech people,
| witnessed lot of amazing things, all mostly by
| happenstance just because there is so much of it, so many
| people like me, here.
| op00to wrote:
| Interesting things happen in many places, not just
| Silicon Valley. You simply need to keep your ears open
| and listen.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| You have to step over the poop and the needles to get
| into the coffee shop though, and while you're inside your
| car is being burglarized.
| sjwhevvvvvsj wrote:
| South Bay is just like a giant company town, it's
| actually pretty boring - 60% of people work at the same
| handful of giant companies, the other 30% work at a
| startup, and the last 10% serve the first group fair
| trade coffee.
|
| The weather and climate are amazing, but socially its
| suffocating when everybody you meet is a variation on a
| tired theme.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| People who work for startups can't afford coffee?
| sjwhevvvvvsj wrote:
| They have to make their own, and it's not fair trade.
| johndhi wrote:
| This was funny and I meant to update it but instead down
| voted it and now can't find how to undo that. Sorry!
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| You can click the 'undown' button next to the username
| and timestamp of the comment.
| fragmede wrote:
| there's a undown button to the right of the username if
| the timer hasn't expired
| spacecadet wrote:
| haha this, its great to try it, but like NYC, dont stay
| too long...
| sjwhevvvvvsj wrote:
| Yeah, its *super interesting* at first, but once the
| novelty fades you aren't left with much.
|
| That said, nowhere on earth had better driving directions
| on apps since people will notice the bugs on the drive
| into work and fix them. ;-)
| CydeWeys wrote:
| What are you talking about, NYC is great! You could live
| your whole life there and never run out of things to do.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| >You could live your whole life there and never run out
| of things to do.
|
| Look, I know I'm being pedantic here, but as a rural
| nerd, I just gotta say that this is true of literally any
| habitable location on the planet if you decide to no-life
| the right hobby or hobbies.
| sjwhevvvvvsj wrote:
| I'm very fond of both New York City, and spending time in
| nature for the same reason: you just don't know what
| you're gonna see when you walk out your door.
|
| Am I going to hear a violin performance on the subway
| platform that is utterly sublime from a world class
| performer?
|
| Am I gonna see the rarest bird in North America perched
| branch in front of me?
|
| For me, the worst is the middle ground between crazy
| urban and pure nature where there is low probability of
| seeing anything exciting.
| quotz wrote:
| You mean besides drinking and dining and spending
| outrageous amounts of money on 13$ beer and overpriced
| bland food? As a european I dont like the city at all.
| The only thing going for it is the vibe and the energy of
| the people. If it werent for the high salaries, people
| wouldnt be moving here.
|
| It needs serious clean up, from the mentally-sick
| homeless domesticating the subway, to the stench and the
| rats, from the grime, to the zero outdoor culture besides
| the monotonous central park which after dark gets swarmed
| with rats which my dog loves to chase. They need to
| narrow the avenues and start building outdoor areas the
| same way Barcelona is doing. In the winter you put
| heating mushrooms and you are good to go. NYC has a long
| way to start looking like a decent city that europeans
| would like to move to. Americans find it great because
| its the only thing resembling a city and not an airport
| where you dont need a car to move around.
| dmoy wrote:
| > never run out of things to do.
|
| Unless the thing is "afford housing"
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| > It's weird. They always travel in groups of five. These
| programmers, there's always a tall skinny white guy, a
| short skinny Asian guy, fat guy with a ponytail, some guy
| with crazy facial hair and then an East Indian guy. It's
| like they trade guys until they all have the right group.
| sjwhevvvvvsj wrote:
| And they all drive Teslas with vanity license plates.
| cqqxo4zV46cp wrote:
| Different strokes I guess. How long have you
| been...working? The vast vast vast majority of people
| want a little more variety in lives as opposed to more
| more more of the stuff they spend 40+ hours a week doing
| as it is. The exceptions to this rule are almost always
| unhealthy workaholics / people that'll learn about the
| benefits of work / life balance the hard way. It doesn't
| make them some higher tier of world-class engineer like
| some (often including themselves) expect.
| hn72774 wrote:
| People also do that to get insider info to trade on or for
| industrial espionage/competitor spying. They'll hang out in
| the lobby of a building, coffee shops nearby, appearing to
| work while eavesdropping and taking notes.
|
| At my last bigco job, I was advised not to discuss company
| matters outside of the office.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I know a guy whose job it is to eavesdrop for industrial
| espionage purposes. Coffee shops and the like are haunts of
| his, as well as taking commuter flights in and out of SV.
| pjmlp wrote:
| It even sells goods at Xerox prices!
| dmix wrote:
| There's always going to be the debate between
| entrepreneurship vs "intrapreneurship". Whether large
| companies can successfully develop what amounts of startups
| in-house with separate R&D labs vs buying startups.
|
| aka The Innovators Dilemma
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator's_Dilemma
|
| The solution the follow up book to this one ^ was to build
| isolated teams that are flush with the resources/capital of
| the parents but aren't at the whims, or constant meddling, of
| the parent company's management class / stockholders / old
| ideas.
|
| For all the effort Google/Apple/Meta/Xerox/Bell/etc put into
| their internal moonshot divisions the whole concept mostly
| hasn't been very successful.
|
| But at the same time they also haven't been great at buying
| young up and coming startups either, often ruining them the
| second they arrive by the same impulses which demands R&D
| moonshot teams be isolated from the host.
| bluGill wrote:
| Large companies often are significant investors in small
| R&D moonshots. Because they own a large part of the startup
| they can choose to buy it if the product turns out
| profitable, or they can sell. And since it is a separate
| investment when things go south they can stop investing and
| thus save money without appearing to let anyone go.
| sydbarrett74 wrote:
| When Ma Bell existed, Wall Street wasn't as myopic and short-
| termist. The stock market tolerated private-sector R&D
| because it mostly consisted of investors rather than
| speculators. These days, if something doesn't bear immediate
| fruit, the Masters of the Universe want no part of it.
| psygn89 wrote:
| And when it does bear fruit, many big tech companies come
| to copy or purchase it only to have it wither in some
| corner of their company.
| brian_cunnie wrote:
| > unix being a thrown out the car window by AT&T at speed
|
| I beg to differ; when I was at AT&T in the late eighties we
| tried to enter the computer business, on the PC side with
| Olivetti, and on the UNIX side with the 3B2 minicomputers
| made with our own chips running System V UNIX. I even had a
| 3B2-200 in my house for a couple of years.
|
| Entering a new business is hard: although the engineering was
| solid, we didn't have a saleforce trained in selling
| computers, and we didn't have a rich ecosystem (Oracle!
| Ingres! Informix!). AT&T didn't throw UNIX out the window,
| but found that capitalizing on UNIX was hard.
| samstave wrote:
| you're (mostly not) wrong.
|
| If anything of !35 years of cyberpunk input - and output
| building shit that spies on you:
|
| Apple is Ono-Sendai and your iPhone is your deck. - the real
| battle is going to be how much agency does a Human Being have
| over all PII - all their data?
|
| Your jack-in is your screen. Your data is your ID. But, who
| are YOU?
| StableAlkyne wrote:
| It's an interesting parallel because part of the unspoken
| agreement between AT&T and the feds was that they had their
| monopoly, but had to use the funds for some kind of public
| good. Bell Labs was part of the public good - and why they
| employed multiple physicists and materials scientists whose
| employment involved basically researching whatever they
| wanted as long as it had some link back. Shannon was hired
| after his master thesis (which basically created the field of
| information theory) and, among other things, had a side
| project involving the application of computers to chess. They
| constructed the New Jersey lab specifically to encourage
| watercooler conversations and deliberately had greenhorns to
| work with the most senior researchers like Shannon. Bell Labs
| solved engineering problems needed by AT&T and Westinghouse,
| but they had the financial security to spend money on
| incredibly theoretical projects like transistors, operating
| systems (unix), and programming (C). Those pie in the sky
| projects would both benefit AT&T through automation, and
| covered the public good requirements of their monopoly.
|
| AT&T (owner of Westinghouse and Bell Labs) then proceeded to
| take their monopoly and patent factory, and started buying up
| competitors and new small companies. Eating their golden
| goose in this way is what caused the government to break them
| up.
|
| Bell Labs was independent for a few years doing... Stuff.
| Spent their remaining prestige on falsification scandals
| because of the publish or perish culture this new profit
| motive created. They were bought by Nokia a few years ago
| (now called Nokia Bell Labs) and now only employ a couple
| theoretical physicists last I read. The lab that put into
| practice the foundations of modern tech (Unix and C are in
| almost every non-consumer-facing device) just does some Nokia
| product development nowadays. What a loss.
| Animats wrote:
| > It's an interesting parallel because part of the unspoken
| agreement between AT&T and the feds was that they had their
| monopoly, but had to use the funds for some kind of public
| good.
|
| It wasn't an unspoken agreement. It was an explict one, the
| Kingsbury Commitment.[1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsbury_Commitment
| Keyframe wrote:
| _company that can just do R &D for the sake of doing it (as
| can Google and a lesser degree MS)_
|
| I'm curious what makes you say that about MS? Out of three,
| I'd actually put MS first and Apple last if for nothing else
| than Microsoft Research which is like a separate entity in
| its own strong right (judging from the outside). So many
| things useless to Microsoft business from them, yet so many
| many things..
| jsight wrote:
| The problem is that the companies that can do that are rarely
| also the company's that are willing to do the hard work of
| productionizing those moonshots. Lots of people have nice
| salaries and jobs that depend on pumping out ideas and PoCs,
| but few have a clear dependence on getting it to market.
|
| But the really big stuff all requires working like your
| future depends on it. They can't do that, so they usually
| just end up with laundry lists of fancy PoCs.
|
| Even when they work, the rollouts can be glacial at best (eg,
| Waymo).
| complianceowl wrote:
| > Time will only tell.
|
| Tim will only tell.
|
| ...I'll walk myself out now.
| starluz wrote:
| If jobs was still around I'd be as curious as you. Under cook
| I have no faith
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| > I wonder if in 20 years something from apples car project
| changes the industry in a way we never expected. Time will
| only tell.
|
| I hope so. That would be a great result, even if the consumer
| product didn't land. That said, I would argue that sometimes
| you do just have to call something and move on. You're right
| that Apple is one of the few places that can do research for
| research sake, but this wasn't a research project. By all
| accounts this had a real goal of making and manufacturing a
| car.
|
| It appears this project was in the works for more than a
| decade, had numerous stops and starts, leadership and focus
| changes and if your goal isn't just research for the sake of
| research (which I do actually think is demonstrably different
| from Bell Labs or Xerox Parc which are more akin to things
| like Microsoft Research and Google X and the like), you need
| to ship at some point.
|
| I think giving ten years to something like this is definitely
| a gift and I hope we see fruits from some of the work that
| went into it other places. But at the same time, there are
| other moonshots you can try if one doesn't work out and there
| is arguably a cost if you keep focused on one idea that isn't
| going to pan out for too long. Ten years for a project like
| this seems like a fair amount of time to try and a fair time
| to pull the plug.
| dbbk wrote:
| Apple was never going to release a product that would
| inevitably kill lots of people. Absolute non-starter.
| DinaCoder99 wrote:
| Was the car supposed to have self-driving or something?
| jayd16 wrote:
| I think the implication is that all cars kill people.
| dbbk wrote:
| Yes
| AJ007 wrote:
| Apple has the data on how many iPhones are being used by
| drivers, while moving, and how many are involved in
| accidents. It's almost like if you had a handgun that had a
| camera on it that knew children where on the other end of the
| barrel, and had the ability to not fire when the shooter
| pulled the trigger. Apple knowingly put a tremendous amount
| of senors on a device that distracts drivers. The class
| action lawyers haven't figured this one out yet, but give it
| time.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| How would Apple know if the iPhone is being used by a
| driver, as opposed to a passenger?
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Why? Plenty of companies and products kill loads of people or
| at least are involved in slave labor and environmental damage
| and their stocks are through the roof and their products fly
| off the shelves. See Saudi Aramco, Chevron, BP, H&K, BAE, and
| Nestle.
|
| Do you think Apple and consumers are gonna grow a conscience
| right now?
| mortenjorck wrote:
| I think this made a lot of sense circa 2011 when it looked like
| autonomous vehicles were about to rapidly reshape the world
| around us.
|
| While it may yet happen, the "about to" part of course turned
| out wrong. There was no AV revolution in the late 2010s, and
| Apple reportedly pivoting away from self-driving a couple of
| years ago was probably the actual death knell for the project.
|
| Apple making an AV in the middle of the self-driving revolution
| makes sense; Apple making just a nice EV in a very crowded
| market does not.
| bredren wrote:
| I suspect Ive (and Jobs) had a big impact on how this project
| got off the ground.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/transportation/2015/2/16/8045625/jo...
| DinaCoder99 wrote:
| I just don't see how they can make any more money with
| "generative ai" than a useful tool that actually can get me
| around. Seems like chasing after fool's gold.
| nerdix wrote:
| Seems more like a defensive play rather than one designed to
| directly open new revenue streams.
|
| In the short term, Google is going to fully integrate Gemini
| into Google Assistant (the takeoff has been bumpy but there
| is a chance they stick the landing). The risk there being
| that Siri will fall further behind.
|
| In the long term, capable models will be running locally on
| device. Google's past mobile AI plays haven't moved the
| market much. But the risk is that generative AI is a paradigm
| shift that will unlock some game changing capability that
| could catch Apple off guard.
|
| Same story with Microsoft and Copilot on the desktop.
|
| If your two primary competitions are doing similar things
| then you start paying attention.
| calf wrote:
| Apple probably envisioned not a car company but a revolutionary
| personal transportation industry that highly integrates compute
| power in the form of self-driving AI. Remember, Steve Jobs
| famously poopooed the Segway. It doesn't surprise me that they
| got into it and then took their time. With advances in robotics
| and more powerful AI on the horizon, I can see a reasonable
| internal debate on whether to stay the course on R&D or not.
| gambiting wrote:
| The only way it could possibly work was always as an apple
| branded model under the umbrella of another manufacturer, with
| their support and dealership network. Think polestar being its
| own brand but using Volvo workshops for servicing and support,
| as well as using a lot of Volvo parts internally. I can imagine
| an Apple car that's just a really fancy version of an existing
| car, with their own infotainment.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| Oh, this I could also see. Apple hates to partner with
| others, for the most part, which is why I don't think that
| happened. And some of that is for good reason. The awfulness
| of the Motorola Rokr is what convinced Steve Jobs that Apple
| had to fully own and control the iPhone.
|
| And Apple is showing off parts of Car Play that could be
| fully integrated by manufacturers in a much deeper way,
| assuming they want to give up control (which given GM's
| decision to drop Car Play and Android Auto, seems like it'll
| be a challenge).
|
| There is certainly a world where Apple could be a modern QNX
| unencumbered by its parent company baggage and a better
| business model (ongoing subscription and not 50-cents a car
| or whatever it is QNX gets) and provide the software for all
| that stuff, but based on everything that has been reported,
| that wasn't what Apple was doing here. They were trying to
| build a real car. And as challenging and interesting as that
| might be as an R&D exercise, I just don't see why that would
| be a business you'd willingly want to enter when you are so
| successful in other areas and the margins are so poor.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| I think I know _why_ GM and the others fear CarPlay and
| Android Auto, but it 's just so dumb to me.
|
| It makes sense for companies like Netflix to shy away from
| the Apple "walled garden." They want to deliver a unique
| experience with exclusive content, not just be another
| content supplier to the Apple experience. They don't want
| to wind up like the record companies.
|
| But car manufacturers? There's a whole lot of stuff going
| on w.r.t. your driving experience. Like driving. Hundreds
| of physical things. Etc. Unlike the media industry I can't
| think of a future where the car companies eventually find
| themselves subsumed by allowing CarPlay integration.
|
| Then again, I can't tell what's the main fear... if car
| companies are scared of getting iTunes'd, or if they really
| just want that revenue from 5% of car buyers paying for the
| Premium GM Infotainment Experience Recurring Subscription
| or whatever.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| From my past discussions with car executives (that are
| ~10 years old so grain of salt), I really do think it's
| as simple as that recurring infotainment subscription
| revenue.
|
| The small margin GM gets on its cars is buffered by the
| revenue splits it gets with Sirius XM and the various
| call for assistance services. Sirius revenue is on the
| decline because everyone listens to Spotify on their
| phone. The GPS revenue stream died with Google Maps on
| phones. So they have to try to lock in those fees where
| they can. See also: BMW selling a subscription to unlock
| features like heated seats.
|
| Now, I think this backfires for GM. I think way more
| people will not buy new cars if they lack Android Auto or
| Car Play than they think. I also think that it will be
| harder to maintain the apps and services than GM thinks.
| When Ford was doing its partnership with Microsoft 15
| years ago (and then they took it in-house because
| Microsoft Connect or whatever it was called was buggy as
| hell), I think that made a lot of sense. But it was also
| expensive to do and so you saw the car companies offload
| a lot of those details to Apple and Google via a QNX or
| other middleware layer. Tesla built its own software as
| sort of a foundational part of the car experience, and I
| think it has worked well for them. I don't have the same
| confidence in GM.
|
| The thing is, if GM just made a $30 a month connected car
| subscription package to unlock Car Play and 5G assistance
| or whatever, I think they'd sell tons of it. People would
| complain but I know that I would pay the money in a
| second versus trying to pair my phone with a non-Car Play
| infotainment system. But I bet Apple and Google would
| insist on 30% of that revenue (at least).
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| They wouldn't have needed to partner; they could have
| bought a small car manufacturer like Polestar outright.
| numpad0 wrote:
| I suspect Ioniq 5 and 6 were supposed to be those models, up
| until Hyundai exec leaked negotiations to media presumably
| thinking it'll somehow give them advantages. Timelines match
| up.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| >This was an idea that never made any sense to me.
|
| I mean, for Apple, it absolutely makes sense.
|
| Electric vehicles are relatively straightforward to make.
| Everyone and their mother are producing some sort of electric
| scooter/dirt bike these days with new companies popping up
| every month. Furthermore Tesla has proven that for a lot of
| people a car is simply an appliance.
|
| Apple could easily outsource most of the functional development
| and design and certification, and then focus on their core
| competency which is aesthetics and marketing and integration
| into iOS ecosystem, which would be a winning combo
| economically.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _Furthermore Tesla has proven that for a lot of people a
| car is simply an appliance._
|
| Interesting, it doesn't feel like this at all, to me. It
| seems that, relative to its market share, a lot of Tesla
| buyers make the brand part of their identity. Who "settles"
| on a Tesla when they don't care about what they drive?
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Tesla has many faults to it. Poor materials, lack of
| general reliability (door handles getting stuck, spoilers
| getting stuck up), NVH issues, and so on. Many people don't
| really care that much about those issues though, as long as
| the core use of the car to get from point a to b is there,
| and being able to top up at home is convenient, and
| maintenance costs are way lower.
| serjester wrote:
| Having worked at a car company, this is categorically false.
| Cars have thousands of moving parts (even EV's), are expected
| to operate reliably for a decade, represent the second most
| expensive thing most people will buy and any mistakes will
| kill people.
|
| If it were easy, we'd see a lot more profitable car
| companies.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| An Apple that doesn't attempt something because it's hard is an
| Apple that is going to fade. There aren't many trillion dollar
| markets; I think attempting to break into cars was probably the
| most accessible of the trillion dollar markets to Apple. What
| were the alternatives? Oil? Real Estate? ...?
| x0x0 wrote:
| A self-driving car is not something that Apple has any
| relevant expertise at building. They can't even make siri
| work well. They had zero hope to make a self-driving car.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| That's far from true. They have world class expertise in
| design and supply chain management. That would transfer
| over to the car market a lot easier than it would to pretty
| much any other trillion dollar market.
| duped wrote:
| Shipping a billion iPhones and shipping millions of cars
| only reasonable each other at a surface level. Apple does
| not have much expertise in maintaining the same supply
| chain and logistics, and certainly not in design.
|
| They could hire people with the expertise, but Apple is
| allergic to growing engineering expertise outside of
| Cupertino.
| jsight wrote:
| They could hire Magna to build it for them!
|
| Then again, that isn't necessarily working out perfectly
| well for Fisker.
| x0x0 wrote:
| What AI thing (I can't think of a single one) does Apple
| excel at?
|
| Waymo and Baidu can credibly claim they have the people
| and track record to do this thing. Apple isn't anywhere
| close.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| They could easily buy Volkswagen sized company from the
| reserve cash they have and still have quite a good amount
| of reserve left. I don't think car experience is something
| that is the limiting factor.
| adra wrote:
| Yes, let's take a very high margin business to buy a very
| low margin business. Our shareholders will surely
| appreciate that.
| tippytippytango wrote:
| Healthcare is still on the table.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| Healthcare is even more heavily regulated than the auto
| industry.
|
| Generally, the closer you are to "people will die if this
| code has a bug," the more regulated the industry.
|
| People that don't work in a heavily regulated space
| _vastly_ underestimate the constraints. It 's hard enough
| to create a product that's beautiful and works well at a
| price point that the market will bear, but it's often near-
| impossible to do all this while _also_ complying with all
| the regulations of all the markets in which you intend to
| sell your product.
|
| It takes a tremendous amount of commitment, money, and
| time, and companies that aren't used to working within
| snail's pace regulatory environments quickly lose focus and
| the projects sputter out.
| vikramkr wrote:
| And apple successfully got wearable health monitoring in
| their watch to be a thing and got 510(k) clearance as a
| class 2 medical device etc. They're already big players
| in health even if not marketed that way.
| vikramkr wrote:
| I don't think an apple that works by stack ranking existing
| high capex low margin markets and ruthlessly focusing on
| revenue growth is an apple that's not gonna fade. That sounds
| more like Amazon's vibe. Creating trillion dollar markets is
| more apples vibe but that's not exactly an easy thing to do -
| they're trying again with vision so let's see how that goes.
| gumby wrote:
| I agree with your entire comment but have some nuance about one
| point:
|
| > It's one thing to create a new [lower-margin business], it's
| another to purposefully take it on as a business line when your
| existing business groups prints money and have 40%+ margins.
|
| While I agree that this plan didn't fit with _any_ of Apple 's
| strengths, as a general principle good companies plan for
| margin erosion. In fact failure to do this is a classic failure
| described in The Innovator's Dilemma, where you're leaving room
| for a disruptor to grow. Or as Sun used to put it: "if
| someone's going to show up and eat our lunch, it should be us
| who does that"
|
| But a car...SMH
| kypro wrote:
| > It's high overhead/low-margin and requires infrastructure,
| sales and after-sales support that just aren't aligned with how
| Apple does business.
|
| Probably, but who knows with Apple. I suppose they could have
| created a cheap Citroen Ami type thing with some cool tech and
| just doubled the price because it's Apple. I would assume they
| got into it because they saw a product with good margins.
|
| If you think about it cars are poorly designed for the average
| journey. They tend to be designed for that one time you
| actually need to drive 300km, or the one time a year you need
| to fit 5 people in the car, or the one time you need to load 3
| suitcases in the boot. And in America they're also way too big
| for no good reason.
|
| Apple more than anyone might have been able to experiment with
| the conventional car design perhaps.
|
| But we don't really know what they were trying to do do we? I
| think you assuming that they were just trying to create another
| low margin electric car company to compete the likes of Tesla
| and Ford is probably wrong though.
| hanniabu wrote:
| > It's high overhead/low-margin
|
| Only if they were to sell vehicles. I think it's more likely
| they were planning on having a fleet of self driving cars.
| i_have_an_idea wrote:
| > Good.
|
| Also bad. From the article:
|
| > many employees on the car team -- known as the Special
| Projects Group, or SPG -- will be shifted to the artificial
| intelligence division
|
| So, the people that failed to build a car, when Tesla, Xiaomi,
| BYD and half a dozen EV startups succeeded, will now fail to
| build generative AI.
| kjreact wrote:
| > So, the people that failed to build a car, when Tesla,
| Xiaomi, BYD and half a dozen tech startups succeeded, will
| now fail to build generative AI.
|
| I don't work at Apple (so I don't know for certain), but I
| don't think the point of the Apple Car was ever to just copy
| the industry and produce an EV; it was to reach the holy
| grail of a fully autonomous vehicle, which no manufacturer
| has been able to successfully build.
|
| Lucky for Apple, generative AI doesn't need to work for 100%
| of the cases to be successful, unlike autonomous vehicles, so
| maybe Apple has a better chance to be successful this time.
| i_have_an_idea wrote:
| I get what you're saying, however I don't think that's
| true:
|
| > the goal was to reach the holy grail of a fully
| autonomous vehicle
|
| Otherwise, why release a device like the Apple Vision Pro?
| It's also very far from the holy grail of AR/VR.
|
| It's very heard to beat the state of the art. It's almost
| impossible to surpass it by some unbelievable margin. It
| seems very unlikely that fully autonomous driving was the
| goalpost for going to market.
|
| Much more likely, the project failed for more mundane
| reasons -- they figured out their EV would be somewhere
| between a Tesla and a Mercedes on the luxury scale, but
| with better integration into the Apple ecosystem. When the
| market for EVs cooled down and many traditional car
| companies already launched EVs, it became clear that
| they're both too late and entering a highly competitive
| market with small margins.
| lumost wrote:
| There are very few businesses which can add 1+ Trillion to a
| companies market cap. To grow at pace with the S&P, Apple needs
| to find a new 1 Trillion dollar business every 2-3 years.
|
| Cars were a good candidate, but it sounds like AAPL now thinks
| that GenAI is a better bet. ChatGPT is such a basic product,
| that it sounds reasonable that there will be bigger and better
| products in the future.
| Animats wrote:
| > Good. This was an idea that never made any sense to me. It's
| high overhead/low-margin and requires infrastructure, sales and
| after-sales support that just aren't aligned with how Apple
| does business.
|
| Right. The electric car business took a wrong turn when most of
| the players decided that electric cars were a premium product
| that could be sold with huge margins. Tesla started there, and
| it seemed to be working for them. This led to excesses such as
| the electric Hummer, a 9,000 pound vehicle with sports car
| acceleration and a price in 6 figures. It's a great engineering
| achievement but a silly product. It also led to electric
| versions of vehicles having a price premium around US$10,000
| over the same model with internal combustion.
|
| Then Tesla exhausted the fanboy market. Reality ensued. Price
| mattered. Tesla had to start offering discounts.
|
| This is a big problem for some major car companies that bought
| into the high margin myth. Ford should have known better.
| Stellantis' CEO was running around saying that they were going
| to get margins like tech companies, partly by adding on
| aftermarket fees. That didn't work out.
|
| Electric cars are doing just fine, and prices are coming down.
| That's a good thing. BYD gets this.
|
| Having to compete on price scares Apple.
| MBCook wrote:
| I was always rather puzzled by the car. I can't see them ever
| competing even with the small makers like Jaguar or Polestar or
| Lamborghini. They're certainly not going to take on Ford or Mazda
| or Honda.
|
| The idea of making the infotainment guts is interesting but I
| can't see any carmaker giving up that much control. If they don't
| like CarPlay they'd never like full Apple infotainment.
|
| Sure Apple could do ADAS stuff, but why would an OEM choose Apple
| instead of others they're used to and are likely far easier to
| work with.
|
| Unless they went highly left field for the US, like tiny city
| cars more like Smart, I just don't get it. And if they did
| that... well Smart isn't breaking records in the US are they.
|
| The initial idea seemed to be self driving cars, but for
| individuals you have the problems above and for fleets why would
| they want to buy from Apple? So unless Apple wanted to be Uber
| that doesn't make much sense either.
|
| An odd move all around.
| eli wrote:
| To be fair, that was what a lot of people thought about Apple
| making a cell phone. That they'd never compete with Nokia or
| Motorola and that US carriers would never give them enough
| control.
| MBCook wrote:
| The phone made sense to me because by that point Apple had
| clearly proven themselves as a consumer electronics company.
| It's wasn't as big a jump and cell phone software was largely
| junk.
|
| The carrier thing was true, but they could have launched
| outside the US. Instead they found a carrier desperate
| enough.
|
| But they've never done safety critical stuff like a car. Of
| highly mechanical stuff like a car. Or things that need
| something of a dealer network the way a car does (existing
| Apple stores wouldn't cut it). And really I'm not sure how
| much they could add a special "Apple touch" outside
| infotainment/interior controls compared to luxury automakers.
|
| If they a fully self driving car by 2018 and beat everyone by
| 7 years maybe. But as time went on it went from little to
| almost no sense.
|
| I enjoyed following it for that reason. But I never thought
| it would happen.
| theturtletalks wrote:
| Apple is still waiting it out until most of the existing EV
| issues are resolved. Then, they can swoop in and leverage
| their walled garden to get buyers/users. They'll also be
| different than Ford, Mazda, Honda, etc since I don't think
| they will try to sell their cars. It'll be a subscription
| fee and Apple will own the car.
|
| All this news tells me is that Apple is putting EV in the
| back burner since users are still not convinced about EVs
| in the long-term. AI is here to stay so it makes sense
| pivoting the team to that. Hell, the AI might make it into
| their cars for all we know.
| MBCook wrote:
| What does Apple's walled garden have to do with buying a
| car?
|
| I'm so tired of people claiming apples walled garden
| gives them magic abilities. It has nothing to do with
| this. Do you really think people are going to pay an
| extra $30,000 for a car because it works with the iPhone?
|
| I have an iPhone. I love Apple stuff. I'm not paying any
| premium for an Apple car, they have to convince me it's
| worth it over the competition.
| theturtletalks wrote:
| What does Apple's walled garden have to do with bluetooth
| headphones? Now, look at AirPods, simple bluetooth
| headphones, with tight integration with iOS. I was the
| one ridiculing Apple for even entering this market and I
| thought they looked dumb. Sony XMs looked way better.
|
| Now headphones are a sizable market for Apple. So many of
| my friends are awaiting the refreshed AirPods Max. The
| same people that said they would never buy AirPods when
| they launched.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| You still haven't said what the differentiator of an
| Apple car would be.
| vel0city wrote:
| > simple bluetooth headphones
|
| That's the thing. With other Apple devices, they're not
| _simple_ bluetooth headphones. They have added features
| and functionality that only really work with other Apple
| products due to their proprietary protocols on top of
| regular Bluetooth. _No_ other Bluetooth headphones can
| work quite like Airpods do, because of the walled garden.
| So, you have your expensive Apple headphones that only
| really give full functionality with Apple devices so you
| 're more likely to keep buying an iPhone.
|
| Are there really features that Apple is going to bake
| into their cars to ensure it only really gets those
| features for Apple users? Like what, the head unit will
| only work with an iPhone? Would you really buy a $30,000+
| piece of equipment that necessitated a specific phone
| model to actually get a lot of key features out of it?
| dartos wrote:
| That's some Apple fan boy cope.
| theturtletalks wrote:
| Nope, just seen it in action over and over.
|
| No one thought they would do VR and they did.
|
| No one thought they would compete with Netflix and their
| movies are winning awards now.
|
| No one thought they would cannibalize the iPod with a
| phone and they did.
|
| The state of US tech companies is that they will also go
| into new markets. When Netflix came out, did you really
| think Amazon and Apple would get into that market? To
| Apple, cars are an untapped sector they'll want to tackle
| when their existing sectors are saturated.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > No one thought they would do VR and they did
|
| What has this VR achieved? Nothing so far.
|
| Cannibalising your own product isn't an achievement
|
| They have never shipped a large physical product or
| anything mechanical in the entire history of the company,
| this is outright delusional.
| MBCook wrote:
| It's been like a month. Seriously. That's a ridiculous
| hurdle to clear.
|
| "The new Samsung ring came out this morning. At 11:30 the
| entire management resigned in unison apologizing and
| cancelled the project due to low sales."
| dartos wrote:
| That's what's weird though.
|
| A month of near 0 buzz for apples introduction to the era
| of "spatial computing"
|
| Usually Apple parades around a few exemplar apps or use
| cases, but for the vision pro, it was just business
| meetings?
| pg_1234 wrote:
| If a car model won't run, you can't all your customers
| they're "holding it wrong".
| ethbr1 wrote:
| > _And really I'm not sure how much they could add a
| special "Apple touch" outside infotainment /interior
| controls compared to luxury automakers._
|
| The right time was between 2010 (iPad launch) and 2014
| (CarPlay launch), with a complete infotainment-only
| product.
|
| Essentially, mimic the iPhone-on-one-carrier bargain.
|
| Go to a struggling automaker (Fiat Chrysler?) and say "What
| if we told you that you won't have to worry about any of
| your infotainment solutions? We'll build the unit, in
| exchange for owning the exclusive app store it uses. And
| you'll get to say your cars are powered by Apple." Win/win.
|
| Instead, they dicked around until the automakers figured
| their consoles out (mostly... still looking at you angrily,
| Nissan) and Apple was left without a key differentiator.
|
| Hell, the mind-numbingly obvious reason for Apple -- do it
| at a loss for the real-time mapping and traffic data!!
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| I saw Huawei cars being sold in Huawei stores in China.
| (Huawei stores are like Apple Stores). They were incredibly
| normal, beautiful cars. In contrast, Apple would have to
| make a gamechanger. Too big of a risk?
| borski wrote:
| > The carrier thing was true, but they could have launched
| outside the US. Instead they found a carrier desperate
| enough.
|
| That's not quite how that happened. They were turned down
| and laughed out of the room by nearly every carrier they
| approached. The only one that didn't was AT&T; but they
| definitely weren't "desperate" at the time.
|
| They had lots of leverage, which is how they got
| exclusivity.
| MBCook wrote:
| Sorry I meant the carrier was desperate, not Apple. That
| was the case with AT&T (Cingular when the deal went
| down). They wanted customers so bad they were willing to
| give up everything for a possible hit phone.
|
| And it worked out.
|
| You're right Apple was riding high on the iPod, they
| weren't in any danger of going under. They could have
| waited longer.
|
| I think it would have been funny if they released it in
| Europe or something where the carriers weren't in control
| and then told Americans "call your carrier, sorry, they
| wouldn't let us". Not that that would have ever happened.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| Not really the point. Apple succeeded because they applied
| their strengths, product and user interface design, to what
| is essentially a small computer.
|
| Apple have always developed core products that are
| essentially a computer.
|
| Even though cars increasingly look like laptops on wheels,
| the actual computer bit is relatively minor and the user
| interface is mostly the wheel and pedals, not so much the
| screen.
| MBCook wrote:
| I think that's why they were a bit more interested when the
| original idea was to skip all that and do all automatic
| driving.
|
| But as soon as it became clear that wasn't going to be an
| option I don't understand why they didn't just give up and
| instead seemed to try to shift towards a more normal car.
| eli wrote:
| I agree that a car is on a different scale, but I think
| it's only in hindsight that a phone is obviously just a
| computer and that the user interface is important part.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| Do you really not see how a car is a much greater
| departure from their core expertise than the iphone? They
| were already making handheld electronic devices well
| before the iPhone. And they were making computers pretty
| much for the whole history of the company. Ipod touch was
| a natural evolution of the ipod and the iphone was
| basically just an incremental improvement on the ipod
| touch.
|
| The closest thing they've made to a car is those wheels
| for the mac pro.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| The Mac Pro comment is an unfair comparison. It's closer
| to a car on cinder blocks since the wheels cost extra.
| fabioborellini wrote:
| iPhone predates iPod touch, though.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| Wait, you're right. I could've sworn I remember the ipod
| touch being first.
|
| Now I'm wondering why it existed it all.
| derefr wrote:
| Because parents didn't want to buy an entire flagship
| smartphone just for their 6yo to listen to music on the
| schoolbus. But they were okay with buying them an iPod.
|
| iPods were just _mid-tier consumer-electronics_
| expensive; which, back in ~2005, was nowhere near _entry-
| level smartphone_ expensive, let alone _flagship
| smartphone_ expensive.
|
| Then, after the iPhone started getting rev after rev,
| Apple's "lean manufacturing" cost-optimizations gradually
| led to "an iPod" just becoming a particular assemblage of
| reused old iPhone parts, optimized for manufacturing cost
| and battery life. All the other iPods died out, leaving
| only the iPod Touch, there to consume old iPhone parts
| off the line.
|
| Around six years after _that_ , "a commodity Android
| phone" became as cheap as an iPod Touch. At that point,
| the Touch continued to exist mostly due to brand value,
| and its ability to run iOS games (still a specific /
| "better" market than Android games, back then), without
| having to pay for an iPhone to do that.
|
| It's only in the last five years that it began to make
| economic sense to just get your 6yo who wanted to play
| iOS games an old iPhone rather than a "new" iPod Touch.
| It was at the exact moment that happened, that Apple
| finally killed the iPod Touch.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| Interesting, thanks for the history lesson. /g
| MBCook wrote:
| > Because parents didn't want to buy an entire flagship
| smartphone just for their 6yo to listen to music on the
| schoolbus. But they were okay with buying them an iPod.
|
| Yep. Well said. The cost of a full phone + expensive plan
| is a lot.
|
| Plus kids wanted the apps (really games) the iPhone had.
| Apple wanted to sell them games.
|
| And besides that parents were far more hesitant to give
| young kids phones than (for better or worse) than today.
|
| The final reason I've heard is the number of hand-me-down
| phones given to kids now that smartphones are ubiquitous
| means sales slowly fell to ver little compared to when
| introduced.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Turn your thinking around. The only reason we still call
| it a phone is because that's what the original function
| was. They are pocket computers in everything but name. A
| significant percentage of the population doesn't even use
| them for voice calls anymore.
| caskstrength wrote:
| > Even though cars increasingly look like laptops on
| wheels, the actual computer bit is relatively minor and the
| user interface is mostly the wheel and pedals, not so much
| the screen.
|
| Ha, it seems like that to you because you are obviously a
| car person! For someone like me ideal Apple car would be
| something without any kind of wheels or pedals. Instead, I
| should be able to crawl drunk into it, mumble "Siri, take
| me home" and pass out snoring loudly on the back seat. I
| guess several years ago when it seemed that (true) self-
| driving cars are just around the corner Apple had something
| similar in mind.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Rumors of Apple making an "iPhone" were rampant and always
| seen as the next step from making the iPod.
| kazinator wrote:
| Phones are just networked computers though.
| xorcist wrote:
| A connected PDA was always a thing. Palm/3Com made phones.
| HP/Compaq made iPaq phones. Sharp made their Zaurus. The were
| OEM phones you could get branded. The Qt guys had their
| Trolltech phone.
|
| Everyone wanted to see what phone software developed by an
| actual computer company who knew software would look like.
| Everyone and their brother wanted to see what an iPod phone
| would look like.
|
| The Apple phone was perhaps the most anticipated device in
| years. What surprised people wasn't that they released one,
| it was that they went all in on a capacitive touch screen,
| which was novel tech, and that it didn't have real mobile
| data or native apps. There was this long song and dance about
| how apps were to be replaced by web pages but people were
| still skeptical.
| jitl wrote:
| I'm interested about the Sony/Honda joint venture car (Afeela),
| and I'd buy an Apple/Toyota joint venture car in a heartbeat.
| MBCook wrote:
| I'd be _far_ more willing to buy a partnership as reasonable,
| but that didn't seem to be the plan. At most they'd find
| someone to act like Foxcon and built it, but not a real
| partnership.
|
| And I just doubt any existing manufacturer would want to
| partner with Apple to the level they'd want.
| xp84 wrote:
| > doubt any existing manufacturer would want to partner
| with Apple to the level they'd want.
|
| It's increasingly obvious that Apple has ensured by their
| cutthroat and rent-seeking behavior in the one place they
| have market power (the App Store) that no sane business
| wants to partner with them on anything. Everyone knows
| Apple will leverage any partnership to get a firm foothold
| and then extract as close to 100% of the possible margins
| for Apple, leaving them with crumbs, or possibly just
| losses. And the whole time, Apple's corporate personality
| seems to genuinely believe that all of this is not
| ruthlessness, but just Apple being fairly compensated for
| their great work.
|
| By the way, this doesn't make them bad, lots of companies
| are known for margin extraction, like Walmart famously did
| with its suppliers. Apple are very good at Doing Capitalism
| in this way, but competitors are rightly going to defend
| themselves by ruling out anything that could help Apple
| expand further.
| MBCook wrote:
| Even if you ignore the App Store, Apple's ethos is to
| control their own destiny. That means they try to bring
| everything in house or control it with an iron fist.
|
| And they have more money than god.
|
| So if you parter with them, they will learn from you. And
| you'll get "the Apple bump" if the car is successful.
|
| But don't expect to be partners in 10 years. Expect to be
| competitors or a new division.
| ponector wrote:
| From the other side, phone and home electronics producer Xiaomi
| invested few billions into car business and now is producing
| car similar to Porsche.
|
| Why you think Apple can't do the same if focused?
| MBCook wrote:
| I was under the impression that Xiaomi did not target only
| the top end of the market as Apple tends to. I would expect
| an Apple card to start at $120k or more.
|
| I suppose Apple could go after the Corolla or something if
| they really wanted to but that just doesn't seem like an
| Apple move to me.
| ponector wrote:
| Apple does not target only top end. New Iphone starts from
| under 500$.
| sitkack wrote:
| Xiaomi is better at being the New Apple than Apple is. Apple
| should be selling micro transportation appliances that fit
| into a higher urbanized environment. Extremely small cars
| would be the _largest_ thing I would _rent_.
| closewith wrote:
| Car manufacturers must be coming around on CarPlay. I made a
| purchasing decision largely because one of the car suitable
| cars supported wireless CarPlay.
| mrcarruthers wrote:
| You'd think so... GM has stated that they're doing away with
| CarPlay and Android auto in favour of their own thing, which
| will most likely suck on large ways.
|
| Ford, on the other hand, came out and said that they lost
| that battle 10 years ago and are going to keep them.
| Tostino wrote:
| Which rules out GM for me as an option for my next vehicle.
| Maybe they can make up the lost sales by data mining the
| rest of their customers.
| DinaCoder99 wrote:
| GM is hardly a car brand that knows what consumers give a
| shit about, this is just enshitification to squeeze their
| remaining customers.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| Their trucks still sell massively and the Blackwing
| Cadillacs are both on many 10-best lists.
| hnav wrote:
| Their own thing is Android Auto(motive) developed by
| Google.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I'm pretty sure when you hand in the paperwork for creating
| a car company, there's a little pledge you have to take: I
| will make the crappiest possible OS to include in my car.
|
| It is really bizarre that they insist on continuing to try.
| Just give us AUX in (stereo or usb). Cellphones can do it
| all now anyway. The car's entertainment system should be
| about as complex as a pair of headphones.
| nradov wrote:
| Tesla has never supported Apple CarPlay and their sales keep
| rising. GM recently dropped CarPlay from new models so we'll
| see how that impacts sales.
|
| https://www.motortrend.com/news/general-motors-removing-
| appl...
| MBCook wrote:
| In my mind Tesla is sort of special because they offered
| something no one else did. For a long time the only other
| electric cars were the volt/bolt and the leaf. None of
| those are performance cars in the slightest.
|
| As other brands get more and more popular in the US I
| wonder if the CarPlay issue will really start to hurt them.
| But we won't know for a while.
|
| I'm certainly very curious to see what happens since GM was
| dumb enough to remove CarPlay. I expect that's gonna hurt.
| But maybe I'm wrong.
| ahepp wrote:
| I haven't driven a Tesla, so maybe I'm way off base here,
| but their infotainment software seems modern and at least
| reasonably well designed.
|
| Legacy automakers have thoroughly demonstrated that when it
| comes to making a decent infotainment system they are
| unwilling, incapable, or some mix of the two
| mmcconnell1618 wrote:
| Car manufacturers have ISO standards for symbols/icons on
| controls: https://cdn.standards.iteh.ai/samples/68409/6480e87
| 3c14b4e56...
|
| One of the pain points that CarPlay and Android Auto solve
| for is that any car I rent or buy has the same media controls
| and all of my presets. When I travel for work, I try to
| always pick a rental vehicle that is compatible with my phone
| in order to reduce cognitive load of learning a new vehicle's
| unique controls.
| jejeyyy77 wrote:
| yep, Tesla has won the war.
| jcfrei wrote:
| Don't have a source ready but if I remember correctly they
| never planned to build the car themselves. There are plenty of
| contract manufacturers out there that build for a variety of
| brands (Magna Steyr in Austria is a typical example). Then
| Apple adds it's custom electronics and AI driving assistants
| and voila you got an iCar.
| MBCook wrote:
| I believe you're right, but I thought the plan was to
| _design_ it all themselves as opposed to buying /licensing an
| existing platform as skinning it + their electronics.
|
| But then again they've changed things so many times according
| to the rumors maybe both were true at various times.
| DinaCoder99 wrote:
| > I can't see them ever competing even with the small makers
| like Jaguar or Polestar or Lamborghini.
|
| None of these are practical luxury car brands. Certainly their
| competitors would be, say, BMW or Porsche?
| MBCook wrote:
| I was trying to pick brands that we're both expensive and low
| volume. If I don't think Apple could get the sales of some of
| those makers then I definitely don't think they could target
| numbers like BMW.
|
| Lamborghini may be a little small for that list, I don't
| really know. But I would think they would stay pretty
| boutique due to output size.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| There are generally 3types of car buyers today.
|
| 1. People who are into cars as status items (which encompasses
| car enthusiasts, because lets be real, very few of those people
| who are into "performance" even touch 50% of the cars
| capability on public roads). This is your BMW/Porsche and other
| buyers.
|
| 2. People who want cheap modes of transportation. This is your
| cheapest level sedan buyers.
|
| 3. People who want specific utility and are willing to pay for
| it. This is the largest group of buyers that ranges from people
| wanting the convenience/novelty/technology of an electric
| vehicle, to people who want the safety/robustness/cargo
| capacity of a pickup truck. Apple car would definitely fit in
| here.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| Apple cars would aim more for the (1) bracket than the (3).
| Apple products are status items. Same particular utility can
| be had much cheaper.
| dublinben wrote:
| How can Apple products be status items when over 60% of
| smartphones in the US are iPhones? Is Coca-Cola a status
| item? Is it possible that they're just good products that
| deliver good value to the majority of people who buy them?
| Is a $1300 Galaxy S24 Ultra not a status item?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > How can Apple products be status items when over 60% of
| smartphones in the US are iPhones?
|
| How can an official suit and tie be a status item if most
| men have one?
|
| How can a good beard be a status item if it grows for
| free?
| zuhsetaqi wrote:
| I wouldn't say a general suit and/or tie are a status
| item. Maybe if it's a expensive one.
|
| A beard definitely isn't a status item. That's like
| saying black hair are a status item
| kube-system wrote:
| > 1. People who are into cars as status items (which
| encompasses car enthusiasts, because lets be real, very few
| of those people who are into "performance" even touch 50% of
| the cars capability on public roads). This is your
| BMW/Porsche and other buyers.
|
| I don't disagree with what you're probably trying to say
| here, but I disagree with how you're stating it.
|
| First, "car enthusiast" != "performance enthusiast". There
| are plenty of people who like cars for reasons other than
| going fast, and sub-interests in the car enthusiast community
| that are not performance oriented.
|
| Second, people who actually do enjoy the art of performance
| driving don't have to do it on the road. There are hundreds
| of thousands of people in the US that have driven on race
| tracks.
|
| Third, there are certainly performance cars that people do
| take to the limits on the streets, often in violation of some
| traffic rules. Not every performance car is a 911 GT3.
| Probably a very high percentage of Miata owners have
| approached cornering limits on the street on cloverleafs.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| > I was always rather puzzled by the car. I can't see them ever
| competing even with the small makers like Jaguar or Polestar or
| Lamborghini. They're certainly not going to take on Ford or
| Mazda or Honda.
|
| Why were you puzzled? What is so impossible about making a car
| from scratch, then making money on it? I don't own any Apple
| products, but I know they could do it. Yes it's difficult, but
| a lot of the difficulty comes from a lack of resources, not
| something Apple is worried about.
|
| I find it really interesting that you (and those who did not
| contradict you) choose to form this opinion. I suspect Apple
| shares it. But to me it's a missed opportunity combined with a
| self-fulfilling prophecy. It's probably the lack of this very
| characteristic that makes Elon so successful. He never lets FUD
| get in the way of his goals.
|
| There are some companies out there who don't seem subject to
| these artificial limitations, at least, at certain points in
| their history. For a while Mitsubishi made both cars _and_
| televisions. Panasonic made both batteries _and_ bicycles.
|
| I think what really separates winners from losers when it comes
| to developing a product and selling it is the willingness to
| set aside artificial limitations and really commit to beating
| the competition. Core competencies matter more for companies
| who are no longer interested in growing. Apple definitely wants
| to keep growing. So if Apple really was putting R&D money into
| cars and then quit, then I see this as a failure of Apple
| leadership. Apple can make a great car, and people would buy
| it.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Because just being _able_ to do it isn 't the point. The real
| question is whether or not it's a good use of the cash they
| have available. OP is saying that it doesn't make good
| business sense for Apple to do this, not that it's impossible
| for them to pull it off.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| I can't help but think of Sears and all their decisions
| that probably made "good business sense".
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > I can't see them ever competing even with the small makers
| like Jaguar or Polestar or Lamborghini.
|
| Jaguar is owned by Tata motors, Polestar is a Volvo subsidiary,
| Lamborghini's ownership is Audi -> Volkswagen, so not really
| small makers in any sense.
|
| But generally I agree, I think Apple making the full car is an
| odd choice. I think so much of their DNA, though, is "hardware
| and software working in concert together", and that's probably
| what they thought this was a good idea to begin with.
| Fricken wrote:
| The comments here are all so off-base. People who work on cars
| don't get moved to gen-AI. People who work on robocars get
| moved to gen-AI.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _I was always rather puzzled by the car. I can't see them
| ever competing even with the small makers like Jaguar or
| Polestar or Lamborghini. They're certainly not going to take on
| Ford or Mazda or Honda._
|
| That was what people saying about them getting in music
| players, phones, and smart watches.
|
| The average car is crap compared to what it could be - and
| that's without any self-driving involved either: purely the
| basic car functionality has seen little thought UX and
| convenience wise in 50+ years.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > That was what people saying about them getting in music
| players, phones, and smart watches.
|
| Nobody was saying that about music players and smart watches.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| I'm more surprised they haven't bought a smallish car maker
| with proven automotive engineering experience that is already
| making EVs and then focus on the software and self-driving
| aspects. Polestar would have been a nice fit and Apple could
| easily afford it.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yeah, so glad they're ditching the car.
|
| CarPlay? Cool.
|
| Actual car?
|
| The world doesn't need another tony, luxury car. The world
| needs an affordable (preferably electric) "folks" car (and I
| don't see that as Apple's market).
| hx833001 wrote:
| Any of the car companies are more likely to give Apple business
| after this announcement that they're not competing.
| zyang wrote:
| It's insane how many companies went down the "full self driving
| by 2020" rabbit hole.
| jeron wrote:
| I think it makes sense if consider the fact it "solves an
| actual problem", would have a massive adoption rate and has a
| massive market, and the potential value of developing a product
| like that is easily in the 100 Billions if not Trillions
| pton_xd wrote:
| Now everyone's diving straight into the "full AGI by 2025"
| hole. Which, to be fair, would solve the "full self-driving"
| problem as a pure side-effect, I guess.
| consumer451 wrote:
| I believe Musk once admitted on camera that ~"full self
| driving basically requires AGI." If anyone could help me
| identify that video, I would appreciate it.
| starbugs wrote:
| > I believe Musk once admitted on camera that ~"full self
| driving basically requires AGI." If anyone could help me
| identify that video, I would appreciate it.
|
| You mean this one? He actually says self driving and LLMs
| are both headed towards AGI there:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEm81F3vjy0
| postalrat wrote:
| Its a deep rabbit hole that led us to the current AI craze and
| will lead use to AGI in 2025.
| PlunderBunny wrote:
| I suspect the impetus for the car project was Jony Ive saying "If
| you don't let me design a car, I will quit."
| jitl wrote:
| Meanwhile Xiaomi and Sony both have electric car projects nearing
| release:
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/02/26/xiaomi-bets-on-new-ev-su...
|
| https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a42400955/afeela-sony-hond...
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| I (maybe incorrectly) feel that Asian companies are better at
| this type of vertical diversification. So many of the big
| Japanese and Korean companies do so many different things. I'm
| thinking of Yamaha, Casio, Sony, Samsung, etc.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Does this mean Waymo and/or Cruise had given up and they're no
| longer a threat to Apple?
| resolutebat wrote:
| Cruise has given up, but Waymo is doubling down I don't see how
| either is/was a "threat to Apple" though, people aren't going
| to replace their iPhones with Waymo rides.
| jimkoen wrote:
| Surely this must be a hardware focused move? I can't see
| generative AI benefiting Apples core software. Rather I'd be
| interested to see what I can do with some specialized, custom
| hardware on their platform.
| asow92 wrote:
| Can you imagine how expensive that car would've been? Carplay is
| enough for me, thanks.
| baron816 wrote:
| I really wonder if Lucid was positioned to be bought by Apple.
| threeseed wrote:
| Lucid is not a car company.
|
| It's a strategic, capability building project for Saudi Arabia.
|
| They want to turn the country into the AI / advanced
| manufacturing / software development hub of the Middle East and
| they need an innovative brand that can help to attract talent
| and foreign investment.
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| Finally!
|
| The idea that Apple had any business making cars was rooted in
| overconfidence and business school nonsense.
|
| It was overconfidence to think that the shipping of tens of
| millions of smartphones meant the company was well-suited to make
| heavy machinery.
|
| It was business school nonsense that birthed the idea. Consumers
| never needed Apple to make a car; the car presumably was to
| 'diversify' and placate investors worried about smartphone market
| saturation.
|
| Tim Cook, and whoever else had a part in scrapping this dumb
| project, are probably mourning its death, but they ought to
| congratulate themselves.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| No clear goal (other than "build a self-driving EV") was ever set
| for Project Titan. This isn't surprising news.
|
| 9 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9047833
| modeless wrote:
| Tesla is already the Apple of cars. Designed in California.
| Capacitive touchscreen instead of buttons. Vertical integration.
| Minimalist hardware design. Focus on software. Over the air
| updates. Custom SoC.
|
| When Apple did all this in phones it was unique. There was no
| Tesla of phones. But there is a Tesla of cars and it's tough to
| imagine what unique thing Apple could bring to the market.
| bombcar wrote:
| Ten years ago Apple buying TSLA would have been something that
| could have happened.
|
| Today, not so much.
| intrasight wrote:
| And if they had, they would likely have killed it off years
| ago. Apple's not exactly a "move fast and break things" kind
| of culture.
| jejeyyy77 wrote:
| this.
| tomdell wrote:
| Definitely similar in a lot of ways (going against the current,
| similar design language), but there are a couple of key
| differences to the point I wouldn't say Tesla is the Apple of
| cars -
|
| Apple typically productizes mature technology and ensures that
| its products are designed well. Tesla is an early adopter and
| productizes immature technology which it overhypes and
| overpromises on (e.g. self-driving).
|
| Apple's manufacturing quality control and attention to detail
| is also generally pretty impressive. Tesla products looks
| impressive on the outside but feel cheap on the inside, and
| there are a lot of issues with the quality of manufacturing.
| Apple uses nice materials and Tesla uses cheap materials.
|
| Apple making a car always struck me as weird, though.
|
| I would argue BMW or Mercedes are much closer to being the
| Apple of cars - they aren't early adopters of new technology,
| and their products are immaculately designed (though using a
| much different design language than Apple does) and are and
| feel expensive, unlike Tesla's cars, which look nice but feel
| like toys.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Imagine driving a Tesla and then saying they have Apple-like
| focus on software.
| cowsup wrote:
| Disappointing to hear. It seems every car manufacturer has
| settled in to their niche, and they are now working to become
| software companies, adding a bunch of "smart" functionalities to
| their cars. I was very curious as to whether it was easier for an
| automotive company to get good at tech, or for a tech company to
| get good at automobiles. Perhaps this result is a good indicator.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| Granted it's already been several years since Apple reportedly
| abandoned self-driving as a priority for its car project, but I
| wonder if this signals a larger shift.
|
| A decade ago, the popular sentiment was that autonomous vehicles
| were going to completely reshape our built environment in the
| coming decade. And yet here we are in 2024, with the industry
| leader still only running limited trials in two markets, the next
| two woefully behind, and everyone else out of the market.
|
| Perhaps AVs have entered the realm of fusion, something that may
| yet be transformative, but on a much longer time scale than
| initially thought.
| h2odragon wrote:
| "shifts team" ... 'cuz the skillset overlap is so high, seems
| natural. Cars, AI; as far as Apple is concerned, is all
| _marketing bullshit_. A "direction shift" like this is turning
| the spout this way or that.
| Philpax wrote:
| The car was partially autonomous. The people who were working
| on making it autonomous will be moved over to the full-time AI
| team.
| gamepsys wrote:
| Replacing an ICU with an electric car reduces carbon output.
| Training an AI model costs a lot of carbon in manufacturing chips
| and in electricity. I'm worried that this will negatively impact
| their goal of being carbon neutral by 2030.
| ARandumGuy wrote:
| I'm kinda surprised it took this long. On a broad level, there's
| nothing that Apple really brings to the table that would help
| them build a successful car. They don't have the internal
| expertise necessary to help with the practical elements necessary
| to build a car, like fine tuning a suspension or manufacturing
| brakes that work. And they don't have the logistics
| infrastructure necessary to handle actually manufacturing a car.
|
| The main thing Apple had that could help them build a car is a
| lot of money. But they could also use that money to get into food
| delivery or manufacturing CNC machines. Realistically, if Apple
| invested their cash into car manufacturing, they'd just end up
| with a whole lot less cash.
| bcx wrote:
| I still think it's reasonable to have Apple consider building a
| car. Their core competency is in design, integrated
| platforms/ecosystems, and outsourced manufacturing.
|
| Assuming that they could use their supply chain expertise to
| simplify and outsource manufacturing, the cars of the future
| likely looks more like a software enabled consumer electronics
| device than a consumer mechanical device, and there are some
| really neat things you could do in that ecosystem that only apple
| could pull off (cutting edge design coupled with high end
| finishes, and a software ecosystem with a self-driving car as a
| new platform).
|
| That said, it's likely not the right market timing for Apple to
| bring an electric car to market.
| skmurphy wrote:
| It's a highly regulated product, something they have no
| experience with.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| they're growing experience with regulated markets -- but with
| a privacy/medtech slant.
|
| Of the two, I'd probably rather fight with the FDA versus the
| NTSB, though.
| debacle wrote:
| Many companies are shifting away from electric cars right now. As
| someone who doesn't pay much attention to the industry, is it
| about capital costs, battery material shortages, consumer
| behavior, loss of subsidies, general competition, etc? It feels
| like we made a lot of promises about a shift to "all electric" in
| certain places by 2030 and I see those promises being rolled back
| or weakened.
| geodel wrote:
| They have large low level software teams with compilers, runtimes
| and what not. They also have great hardware teams to develop
| whatever custom hardware is needed for purpose. I think they can
| do a full stack thing for AI.
| ranyefet wrote:
| Car does not make sense to me. But I would love if Apple will
| make a home robot, like HomePod on wheels maybe with a projector.
|
| I would also really like if they will make an electric
| skateboard, or some kind of personal electric vehicle.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Would one day want to see what they had envisioned
| summerlight wrote:
| This decision makes sense. Apple failed to establish a good
| relationship with the existing car makers and they couldn't even
| begin their very first manufacturing process over 10 years. Which
| means even if Apple gets a magic wand to bring all the
| technologies that it needs, it would take another decade to ramp
| up the business.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| I can see Jenson picking up the phone to call Tim right when he
| saw this headline to make a deal for 100k A100s or 20% of their
| next gen chips
| BogdanPetre wrote:
| Good ! Chinese are already ahead of everyone in EV
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| So Apple pivots from one thing that it doesn't have a natural
| advantage with to another.
|
| Apple has gone from leading the industry to increasingly
| desperate and huge "me too" developments that they've failed at.
| AI, generative or otherwise, is going to be their next failure.
| To say AI moves fast is a serious understatement. I predict that
| which is white hot now (LLMs) will be a blind alley long left
| behind in a year or two.
|
| How are Apple going to attract the talent they need to pull of
| something decent in AI? Their share price can't have the upside
| of hot startup or even a sleazy non-profit for that matter. I
| predict they buy something fairly pedestrian from some large
| player at some point.
|
| Apple is a huge cash cow and with Cook at helm it will remain so
| but will slowly fade over time and resort even more to extractive
| behaviours on their customers and suppliers.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> AI, generative or otherwise, is going to be their next
| failure._
|
| Just look at how retarded Siri is. Same goes for Alexa.
| scottyah wrote:
| If they can make a voice assistant that runs on-device I'd
| pay good money for that. Now that a lot of LLMs are able to
| run (slowly) on raspberry pi's, they could get a great
| following by just not stealing data and not having their
| assistant get very noticeably worse over time.
|
| Google assistant has completely dropped the ball from a user
| perspective, though I'm sure they're capturing great data and
| have reduced server costs 90%.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Apple had a huge lead on this with Siri, and then let it
| stagnate - actually devolve - instead of throwing money at it
| to develop it further.
|
| My guess is they'll try to turn VisionPro into some kind of
| generative gaming system.
|
| Text/image is close to being a solved problem, video is on its
| way but still not great. Both will be impossible to beat from a
| cold-ish start.
|
| I'm not convinced Apple has the hire-power to attract the best
| people for any of this.
| mdhb wrote:
| If Apple's grand plan is convincing large numbers of people
| to stick a $3000 clunky ass rectangular box to their face
| they are in serious trouble.
| sneak wrote:
| Obviously, it won't be $3000 and it won't be clunky. The
| current version is basically a dev kit.
| mdhb wrote:
| It's very literally a $3000 clunky rectangular box
| marketed as a premium product.
| chucke1992 wrote:
| The problem with Siri (and with Alexa) is that Apple was not
| able to provide enough value for people to make it
| mainstream. Alexa at least worked for home appliances but
| using Siri for Macbook or iPhone? Why? Not to mention Apple
| was not able to monetize it.
| pests wrote:
| I haven't heard someone talk to Siri in a loooong time.
| meowtimemania wrote:
| When driving I use Siri to control Spotify and to call
| people. At home I use google home every day to know the
| weather, to set alarms and to play music. I'd use Siri for
| those functions but it responds way slower than google
| home.
| thefourthchime wrote:
| Siri being terrible is thrown around thoughtlessly, you
| should try it. It's actually pretty good these days. It's
| shocking how many things it can respond with actual answers.
| __loam wrote:
| I think Siri being terrible is probably an indictment of ai
| now broadly, more so than people believe right now.
| lamontcg wrote:
| I use Siri all the time for really trivial things like
| settings alarms/timers. Any time I try to do something
| slightly more complicated, like maintaining a shopping
| list, it gets terrible pretty quickly.
| dabbz wrote:
| The issue is actually that they are throwing a ton of money
| into Siri. That's partly why it appears to have gotten worse
| for most queries.
| bastawhiz wrote:
| > My guess is they'll try to turn VisionPro into some kind of
| generative gaming system.
|
| I'd speculate they can't do this without 5-10x the compute,
| which means a wildly bigger battery. I can't think of how
| you'd mash VR gaming and generative AI together into a
| headset form factor in a way that's practical _for gaming_.
| We can _only just_ run image models in almost real time, and
| that still requires some heavy lifting and compromises on
| quality. Doing generative AI on-device for a gaming
| experience is a hugely tall ask. (And if you 're doing it in
| the cloud, why not do it for the simpler, more popular
| hardware instead, like iPads?)
| tqi wrote:
| Yeah, the consensus here seems to be that this is a good move
| because the car was a bad idea... but it doesn't follow that AI
| is a therefore a better idea? Apple's poor reputation in ML
| related areas not withstanding (I've heard its a lot of bad
| infra and silo'd development), I don't see how they will make
| money from this.
|
| Siri is fine for sending a text or setting a timer, but I don't
| think most people are going to pay money for an "AI assistant"
| to plan vacations or make restaurant reservations, if for no
| other reason than most people aren't busy enough for it to be
| worth it?
| samatman wrote:
| Apple has built-in hardware for neural networks in every chip
| they produce.
|
| That's a natural advantage.
|
| Your post contains a whole lot of what you want to see, rather
| than an analysis of the available facts.
| smoldesu wrote:
| In a lot of Apple's hardware, the fastest way to inference is
| to ignore the built-in Neural hardware and use Metal Compute
| Shaders. Suffice to say that simply shipping dedicated
| silicon is not equivalent to accelerating everything well, or
| supporting it upstream.
| intrasight wrote:
| SMOB (simply matter of bytes) as they say. Will they
| finally invest in AI software? My take from this
| announcement is that they will. Dedicated silicon with a
| dedicated hardware stack shouldn't be so hard for Apple.
| They can throw considerable resource at the problem.
| smoldesu wrote:
| It would be great to see, if they pull it off. I suspect
| that Apple's desire for control and curation (as well as
| limited liability) will prevent them from making an
| effective "one size fits all" model, though. Considering
| that local AI isn't a paid service or a system-seller, it
| makes more sense for Apple to double-down on software
| support rather than trying to Sherlock the world with
| their own model.
|
| Time will tell what the future holds, but I sincerely
| believe it's too late for Apple to ride the AI bubble.
| The iPhone is their last stand; they need to deliver a
| competitive AI experience, ideally one that's open and
| supports older hardware models. Their work is cut out for
| them.
| intrasight wrote:
| I think they'll be training-agnostic (will use whomever's
| hardware gets it done) but will optimize their silicon
| and hardware stack for running models locally. This is
| VERY EARLY days of use-facing AI (besides the Nvidia
| bubble, which is late-days)
| smoldesu wrote:
| I definitely agree that Apple will optimize their SOC,
| but IMO their best solution is to just copy Nvidia's
| homework. Dedicated inferencing hardware is power-hungry
| and rarely any better than the beefed-up GPU or even a
| RISC CPU core at a decent clock speed. Integrating AI at
| the GPU-level lets you get dual-purpose functionality out
| of the same silicon; it's what Nvidia has built towards
| since they started shipping CUDA.
|
| > besides the Nvidia bubble, which is late-days
|
| The Nvidia bubble might just be beginning, if we keep
| relying on phrases like "training agnostic" to pay our
| dividends.
| kccqzy wrote:
| I predict they are going to use whatever Google provides
| (Gemini) and asks Google to pay them money to make it the
| default. Siri powered by Gemini. Why develop a technology
| yourself when you have enough market clout to let others pay
| you to use their tech? And Google, desperate for market share
| and mind share, might just agree to that while paying Apple a
| tidy sum (probably not a whole lot).
| MyFirstSass wrote:
| Apple is one of richest companies in the world, already has
| chips most competent for AI in any widespread portable
| devices, and smaller teams like the one at Mistral can create
| something as competent as the 7b model without backing from
| the largest players, ie. if Apple wants it they could buy up
| a lot of talent create something wild.
|
| Also Gemma is a complete joke, and gemini is still not on par
| in my view.
|
| If they drop the ball it's organisational - like the way they
| have ignored any documentation for the Neural Engine and just
| started with MLX now, Ferret etc. But they are moving!
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| > Apple has gone from leading the industry to increasingly
| desperate and huge "me too" developments that they've failed
| at.
|
| Apples biggest advantage is having piles of cash to spend on
| R&D.
|
| Developing new products that it doesn't have much previous
| experience with is how it's gotten this big to begin with.
| That's what the iPod was, that's what the iPhone was, that's
| what Apple TV was, that's what the Apple Watch was, that's how
| it became such a good chip designer, etc...
|
| The difference between now and 2001, is that it's got so much
| cash today that it doesn't need all, or even most, of its new
| R&D to succeed, so it can invest in more less-potentially-
| viable R&D, and it's not such a big deal if it never gets to
| market. Which seems like the opposite of desperation to me...
| __loam wrote:
| Apple has a massive war chest of cash and the equity they give
| people is liquid. I think you're really underestimating their
| ability to attract talent and pay people.
| PheonixPharts wrote:
| I do _a lot_ of open source LLM research /dev work on a Mac
| Studio. While it doesn't quite compete in terms of speed with a
| GPU for standard transformers models, I can run pretty huge
| models locally. When I'm working with llama.ccp, the speed and
| model size I can run is _very_ impressive.
|
| I can also run Stable Diffusion XL in reasonable time frames on
| an _iPad Pro_. The current gen Mac _book_ Pro can perform
| almost as well as the Mac Studio with an M2 Ultra, only the M3
| Max has about 1 /2 the bus speed (though still wild that you
| can run good sized local LLMs on a _laptop_ ).
|
| If local generative AI becomes a major part of computing in the
| future, Apple has a huge advantage over the other players out
| there. This was obvious the second I started working on my Mac
| Studio. I have spent plenty of time using a traditional GPU
| setup for LLM work, and yes it is _faster_ , but the complexity
| of getting things running is way beyond the average user's
| ability. Not having to fight with cuda _ever_ is amazing, and
| so far everything else has 'just worked' as is typical of
| Apple.
|
| If Apple has a team of talented people working to get gen AI
| performance tuned specifically to their hardward, I suspect
| we'll see some very competitive offerings in this space.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| I feel like there's going to be a lot of movement towards the
| CPU with AI compute, and Apple's processors show the
| possibilities.
|
| GPUs happened to have a lot of throughput lying around so
| they got put to work, but already the importance of having
| lots of memory to hold huge models even just for inference is
| clear. I also think the future AI will have a lot more going
| in 'conventional' compute rather than just large arrays of
| simple tensor ops or the like.
|
| CPUs will increasingly gain specialist hardware to accelerate
| AI workloads, beyond what we have now and less monolithic
| too, in that it'll probably have a variety of kinds of
| accelerators.
|
| That will combine well with big main memory and storage that
| is ever closer to the CPU to enable very fast virtual memory.
| I wouldn't be surprised if we soon see CPUs with HBW storage
| as well as HBW memory.
| max-throat wrote:
| I can't wait for Apple's "emperor has no clothes" moment. Their
| status as industry leader has caused untold amounts of damage.
| bradgessler wrote:
| Have you read the headlines about how difficult and expensive
| it is to procure NVIDIA GPUs?
|
| Apple has an enormous hardware advantage over Google,
| Microsoft, and even OpenAI in the space if the constraint is
| hardware. If software ends up being the "easy part" and
| hardware remains difficult, Apple is in a great spot between
| the volume of hardware they're already moving and their cash
| reserves.
| cush wrote:
| The biggest limitation and expense for most players looking to
| get in on the generative AI land-grab is hardware, which Apple
| already has completely solved. If anything, they're already
| ahead of everyone else in the game. The "me too" thing is
| nothing new. They're just following the classic Apple playbook
| and biding their time to wait for the market to solidify before
| unleashing the best user experience in it.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Is this also the end of their autonomous program? I've enjoyed
| reading the DMV reports of people crashing into them all over the
| Bay Area. Seemingly Apple are alone in testing on freeways.
| edfletcher_t137 wrote:
| > The two executives told staffers that the project will begin
| winding down and that many employees on the team working on the
| car -- known as the Special Projects Group, or SPG -- will be
| shifted to the artificial intelligence division under executive
| John Giannandrea.
|
| It sounds like this means the official end of SPG, the group that
| Tony Fadell took over to eventually build the iPod (among other
| things). A storied history, to say the least.
|
| RIP SPG.
| unsignedint wrote:
| I'm questioning whether cars align with their business strategy
| in the first place. Their approach seems to focus on creating an
| ecosystem where users are deeply integrated into their suite of
| products and services. Introducing cars, which inherently need to
| appeal to a broader demographic, might lead to a disconnect from
| this model. (Sarcastically: Were they considering a car that's
| unusable without an iPhone?)
| tbatchelli wrote:
| I don't think the market can take what would probably be a very
| expensive EV, at least not at scale. EV sales in the US seem to
| be stalling, in part because the charging infrastructure is not
| fully there, and in part because of cost. The price to get mass
| adoption would have to be significantly lower than current
| offerings, and Apple is not known to undercut on price. Vision
| Pro is 3.5x Meta Quest Pro, for example.
|
| In the EU the EV adoption is mostly on the heels of BYO cheaper
| EVs, with the exception of Norway and other northern countries. I
| assume Teslas are only luxury items elsewhere, and EV adoption is
| also based on cheaper Chinese builds.
|
| So this is not like when the iPhone was a step function in
| quality, functionality and price over a commoditized mobile phone
| market. This is a market that is still mostly luxury, with some
| attempts at commoditization. A 3.5x price would be over mostly
| Tesla prices.
|
| Maybe Apple realized they would take too long to achieve scale if
| they went to market anytime soon?
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| To be honest, I'm not sure what Apple could've brought to the
| table in regards to making an electric car. Apple's _hardware_
| design philosophies[1] don 't really align with what consumers
| want in a car. Apple being _less_ minimalistic than a Tesla --
| which is already at an extreme -- is a hard sell.
|
| [1] Examples of what I mean:
|
| - Cars use faux materials all the time for cost and weight
| purposes, or even just looks (i.e. fake chrome bits, spoilers and
| vents that don't do anything etc.). Apple these days does not, if
| it looks like metal, it almost always is, same for glass, and
| vents are as hidden as possible.
|
| - _Creature comforts_ : Cars are a place people spend a lot of
| time in, and are usually as comfortable as possible for it.
|
| Apple examples where ergonomics took a back seat for looks: All
| their mice, Airpods Max (Heavy, can't fold _or turn off without a
| case_ ), Vision (Heavy), Apple TV (ZERO buttons, need to unplug
| to reset from a crash). I'm not saying it's impossible for them
| to make a comfortable car, but I am saying they've prioritized
| looks over comfort several times.
|
| - Apple design in general has lost a lot of it's soul. They used
| to be more fun and whimsy, just look at iMac designs of the past.
| The Cyber truck, love it or hate it, is not boring. Everything
| apple sells is a glass and metal slab, or as close as possible to
| it.
|
| By the way, I _like_ a lot of Apple 's hardware design decisions,
| like premium materials etc. I just don't think it's in their DNA
| to launch a car that isn't a touch-screen-hell appliance with
| rounded corners.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >- Apple design in general has lost a lot of it's soul. They
| used to be more fun and whimsy, just look at iMac designs of
| the past. The Cyber truck, love it or hate it, is not boring.
| Everything apple sells is a glass and metal slab, or as close
| as possible to it.
|
| The Cybertruck is also a glass and metal slab.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| a fun and whimsical one.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Not so much for pedestrians and bicyclists, or people using
| other forms of travel that don't involve being inside a
| tank-like vehicle.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| That's not the point I was making. I was only stating
| that the Cyber Truck's design isn't boring, and that
| today's Apple seems incapable of designing something
| exciting.
| xp84 wrote:
| Strong agree. I think even having to make compromises of their
| aesthetic minimalism and platonic form to something as
| pedestrian as "aerodynamics" would pain Apple's hardware
| designers (the ones whose output we've seen, anyway). I almost
| think they would prefer a car to be a perfect sphere or cube or
| something. Or a big symmetrical blob with all the wheels
| carefully hidden underneath.
| swozey wrote:
| "I drive an Apple" sounds so odd.
| zeitgeistcowboy wrote:
| Richard Scarry's Lowly Worm character drives one. He was ahead
| of his time.
| itomato wrote:
| Crafted from the fruit of the earth and driven by a worm, the
| Literal Apple Car embodies the principles of renewable
| resources and minimal environmental impact, setting an
| imaginative precedent for eco-friendly design.
| medion wrote:
| Ugh, Apple doing generative AI. At least the car idea was
| interesting.
| jedberg wrote:
| I wish they would get into medical devices, especially for
| consumers. Apple is really good at making interfaces for
| technology. Imagine an Apple version of a CPAP or a diabetes
| sugar monitor/artificial pancreas.
|
| Hopefully some of the SPG group was/is/will be working on this.
| nextos wrote:
| Same here. I think Apple Watch is their best product, and it
| has a lot of potential as a biomarker monitor, e.g. to measure
| insulin.
| croes wrote:
| Sounds like Apple is in panic mode and FOMO because they are late
| to the GPT game.
|
| Similar cases didn't work out for MS
| stonogo wrote:
| They absolutely did. Microsoft was late to web and now we have
| O365, Azure, etc.
|
| I'd say, however, that this is less FOMO and more employee-
| retention. A team shifting from electric cars to generative AI
| sounds more like a directionless hype squad where you park
| flight risks who can still add value to other departments while
| they play with the newest shiny.
| chucke1992 wrote:
| The issue with MSFT is they missed a lot during the era when
| they had to deal with regulators. It took away basically
| their whole decade starting from early 2000s.
| croes wrote:
| O365 is not an example of MS's web strategy, it's just an
| example of cornering the users.
|
| MS has simply done away with the on-premise version of Office
| and left them with almost no other choice.
|
| I don't know if it's worthwhile for car engineers to work on
| AI. That's how you lose specialists.
| samatman wrote:
| Apple's playbook for at least three decades has been getting in
| the game late, but timing "late" very carefully so that the
| product they debut defines the category.
|
| The iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, Watch, AirPods. It's the most
| obvious thing about the company, this is a bland truism at this
| point.
| croes wrote:
| iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, Watch, AirPods had USPs, will be
| hard in the AI sector where people don't care about round
| corners.
| wes-k wrote:
| Oh we care plenty! Some AI round corners: hands in images,
| hallucinations in GPTs
| runeofdoom wrote:
| But... without Apple's car, my only choices for vehicles will be
| tanks, batmobiles, and Microsoft's Rube-Golberged mopeds.
| ra7 wrote:
| An Apple car wouldn't be attractive without autonomous driving.
| The real (and unsurprising) news here is that Apple has given up
| on autonomous driving. They are far, far behind Waymo and don't
| want to compete with them, just like how they didn't want to
| compete with Google for search. They simply lack the expertise to
| do it.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| They have no servicing model anymore. Replacing the stock like
| for like for each and any issue isn't going to scale for a car.
| At least not in a way that makes any sustainability claims
| total greenwashing.
| legitster wrote:
| > Apple cancels work on electric car
|
| Phew. Probably a good idea.
|
| >... shifts team to generative AI
|
| Actually, I think I would rather them work on an electric car.
|
| I know a car was not a realistic idea, but I'll say it: Apple's
| software stinks. They used to take bold risks with hardware, but
| this is going to be another dollar-store ripoff of another
| popular product.
| nerdjon wrote:
| It still seems wild that Apple was even working on it, similar to
| the rumors that they were working on an actual TV.
|
| I have to imagine that there was some shared tech with other
| products that helped make it make sense for so long.
|
| Maybe some of the CarPlay stuff? Like the next generation CarPlay
| that takes over all the screens and controls.
| itronitron wrote:
| It's shocking/hilarious how much/many people believe that there
| are any economic prospects in generative AI. By definition, if
| something is generated by an AI then it's worthless if for no
| other reason than supply and demand.
|
| There's also a reason it's called a singularity, it sucks
| everything in that touches it but otherwise has very little
| influence on anything else.
| bradgessler wrote:
| Have you tried talking to Siri? Compare that to ChatGPT and
| you'll see that it's much better. The predictive nature of LLMs
| are perfect for voice assistant use cases, which when connected
| to "plugins" means we'll all have our own personal assistants.
| That's worth something.
| input_sh wrote:
| Why would they want to run LLM queries every time someone
| asks Siri for the normal shit people ask their voice
| assistants: weather, timers, controlling music; on a scale of
| _every_ iPhone user out there.
|
| It'd just be waisting compute money with no obvious way of
| recouping the cost. Doubt many people would be interested in
| paying for Siri.
| wes-k wrote:
| They already run compute for siri for voice to text. So
| they could in theory still provide an LLM backed siri
| service for free for their customers/users.
| moooo99 wrote:
| > The predictive nature of LLMs are perfect for voice
| assistant use cases
|
| But people in general don't seem to be interested in voice
| assistants in general. They were a huge hype when you
| basically had to manually uncheck boxes to not accidentially
| order an Amazon Echo, etc, but as quick as the hype was there
| it was gone. To my knowledge Amazon has yet to make any kind
| of substantial revenue with Alexa stuff.
|
| With LLMs I would expect this to be even more of an issue
| given how costly the inferencing alone is when we're talking
| about an LLM. And yes, the utility will likely increase
| substantially with the adoption of LLMs as opposed to
| previous language processing techniques, but I don't think
| this will outweigh the disinterest in the overall technology.
| MyFirstSass wrote:
| People aren't that interested in voice assistants atm,
| though i know plenty people who look up stuff, start music
| etc with it.
|
| When voice synthesis, long context etc. i'm pretty sure a
| lot of people would love to have a private "Her" like
| friend/assistant that could both be therapy, a PA and a
| friend, and i don't think we're that far from that.
| Dystopian and lonely as it is.
| jordanpg wrote:
| I'm not interested in voice assistants because they suck at
| the moment.
|
| When they achieve something like 99.9999% accuracy and
| near-undetectable latency, I will become much more
| interested in them.
|
| As it stands now, if I have to repeat something -- ever --
| I'd rather just type it.
| Spivak wrote:
| This is such a weird take, at $dayjob we're selling a product
| right now that's based on generative AI to end users who
| largely have no idea or care that it's an LLM behind the
| scenes. The previous version of this product used NLP via spacy
| and it was pretty bad because even with lots of tuning
| wrangling the kind of unstructured text we consume just didn't
| work in general.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _if something is generated by an AI then it 's worthless if
| for no other reason than supply and demand._
|
| AI is a tool. Are houses worthless because any hammer can
| create them?
| __loam wrote:
| What an inane strawman argument. Houses are obviously not
| worthless because there's finite land to build on and
| building houses takes a non trivial amount of labor and
| capital. The problem the user you responded to is pointing
| out is that a lot of people assume productivity was the
| problem with so-called creative fields and these tools are
| going to somehow fix that problem. What's actually going to
| happen is a ton of people are going to produce a ton of trite
| AI content that is essentially identical because everyone is
| using the same models, thus inflating the supply. In
| addition, nobody actually gives a shit about AI generated
| garbage, so demand isn't suddenly going to rise. In many
| ways, the attention economy is already saturated, and the way
| you succeed there is not through productivity but by
| differentiating yourself in ways that make your content more
| desirable.
|
| Put simply, have you heard of or do you follow any AI based
| creators? I can name 10 or 20 artists, content creators,
| movie directors, or writers that I respect pretty much
| instantly. Can't really do the same thing for people using
| AI.
| __loam wrote:
| Could not have said it better myself.
| 015a wrote:
| Sure the AI input/output itself doesn't have a ton of value.
| Tell that to Microsoft and Google, who seem to be obsessed with
| chat interfaces while lacking any creativity as to where else
| the technology can be deployed.
|
| Apple's key strength is Integration. If their AI play is
| different and better, this is why it will be so. When Samsung
| puts AI in their phones, its a sparkles-and-magic button in an
| action bar that pops up a list of actions that might as well be
| chat prompts. Microsoft releases 365 Copilot and its a chat
| sidebar to the normal Office apps. There's real opportunity to
| integrate AI more deeply into the OS and the actions users take
| when using the OS.
|
| I don't know what form that takes; that's Apple's job to figure
| out. I think WWDC this year is when we'll be presented their
| vision (ha) on how it fits together. I think: If it looks a lot
| like the Galaxy AI event, then your take is right and I
| immediately become bearish on AI and honestly bearish on
| Apple's future among the ultra-high-value companies of the US.
| But, I'm leaning toward feeling that they're going to surprise
| us, and I'd put money on the outcome that WWDC represents an
| "iPhone Moment" for AI, leaving a lot of organizations
| scrambling to understand how their product fits into Apple's
| world and not the other way around. But, we'll see.
| vikramkr wrote:
| Didn't think our boy karl marx would be relevant here lol but
| yeah that's a very commodity-fetishistic way to look at the
| value of AI/assumes that the value of the generative models is
| that they generate output that has some sort of market value as
| a commodity by itself. Makes way more sense to think of it as a
| service than a means of production. I'm not gonna pay for an ai
| generated image, but would I pay for access to better internet
| search, or document understanding, or for help
| understanding/writing code in new codebases? Yeah I would.
| Clearly there's enough people that haven't cancelled their
| chatgpt subscription that the value is greater than zero.
| Including negative externalities net value might even end up
| negative, which would make it hard to argue it has little
| influence elsewhere if it has a negative influence on e.g.
| artist pay or electoral democracy.
| paxys wrote:
| > Apple made the disclosure internally Tuesday, surprising the
| nearly 2,000 employees working on the project
|
| Was Apple really trying to build a self-driving electric car from
| scratch with just a 2,000 person team?
| ec109685 wrote:
| They were going to have a manufacturing partner.
| Handy-Man wrote:
| I mean probably most were Software Engineers, some designers
| etc. Someone else would have handled the manufacturing anyway
| earth2mars wrote:
| A clear sign of shift focus on AI. They understand the importance
| of focus and resource (money, people) allocation. Never too late.
| Good move.
| tippytippytango wrote:
| It seems almost like they kept the rumor of an Apple car going to
| ensure a stock price tailwind during the EV boom. That's over,
| now layoffs and AI are the new hotness. This move hits both of
| these. Seems to be working, stock is up on the news.
| singingwolfboy wrote:
| https://archive.ph/aYAWK
| andrewia wrote:
| I know somebody on the project. The cancellation makes sense,
| they were years from release and every new VP pivoted the project
| and lost progress. If they had committed to their original
| project (a bus) or the first revision (a very high-end car) they
| could have released on a timely schedule. But they're far too
| late to the game.
| baal80spam wrote:
| Apple-bus (iBus?). Now that sounds glorious.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Now demanding 30% of revenue from the businesses they take
| you too!
| nicce wrote:
| > But they're far too late to the game.
|
| Not so sure about that. You need battery and 4 x electric
| motors to wheels.
|
| The idea is much simpler than regular combustion engine car.
| Less parts that wear out.
|
| Idea is actually so simple that all the manufactures compete on
| putting as much nonsense into cars as possible, insted of
| making easily replaceable battery and car which would last 50
| years and accelerate like Ferrari.
| gtirloni wrote:
| If it's so simple why don't we see regional manufacturers
| popping everywhere?
| nashashmi wrote:
| During the hayday, we saw new companies come up with new
| cars all the time!!! And then they slowly went belly up.
| Part of me thinks that the endless number of regulations
| prohibited new car companies from entering.
|
| You can import a car from china in a crate that fits on the
| back of a pickup. But it won't be legal on roads until it
| gets things like a DOT approved windshield.
| pie420 wrote:
| We do. Rivian(illinois), Fiskar (Los angeles), VINFast
| (vietnam), 20 chinese brands, Polestar (china), Lucid
| (saudi arabia), Canoo, Rimac (balkans).
|
| When was the last time a new car company was started, pre-
| EV?
| sitkack wrote:
| Saturn.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_Corporation
|
| And it wasn't entirely independent. Before that it was
| DeLorean? But he was kinda setup in a trap that put him
| into prison.
| Raptor22 wrote:
| > original project (a bus)
|
| This is actually insane to me. Like bonkers, even. The MBA
| types are surely the source of that idea. From a brand
| perspective, the only car that ever truly made sense for Apple
| to make was something at least resembling a supercar. They
| could have made do with a Telsa Model S kind of car perhaps,
| but I'm shocked that a brand-conscious company like Apple
| thought a _bus_ was the best bet as an initial product.
|
| First impressions are vitally important. In my opinion, a car
| brand can go from making high performance cars to more
| "practical" vehicles once they've established their brand, but
| not the other way around. Slapping an Apple badge on a Corolla
| isn't going to work. Steve Jobs said it best, paraphrasing "We
| want to build computers that customers would want to lick.". If
| Apple wants to be a legitimate car company that enthusiasts
| like, they'd have to build a car those people would lick. Not a
| bus...
| rubyn00bie wrote:
| I think this makes sense. Right now Apple can focus its energy on
| something that they can more easily compete in and is absolutely
| overflowing with money and margins. In a few years, if Apple
| wants to get back into EVs they'd likely be able to just buy a
| smaller manufacturer with good margins (sort of like what they
| did with Beats). Right now Apple is the only company who can
| compete with NVidia (besides AMD) because they can afford to buy
| up TSMCs shiniest new node capacity. Until Intel does a reverse
| AMD and jettisons its chip design business from its fab business,
| being able to buy up TSMC capacity is a massive advantage.
| golbez9 wrote:
| One pipe dream for another
| rhelz wrote:
| This reminds me of the oil curse. After a country discovers it
| has lots of oil, it nukes every other sector of their economy.
| Why? Because there's nothing you can invest your money in which
| would give you a larger return than oil. It sucks the lifeblood
| out of every other sector.
|
| Apple just didn't invest in its electric cars enough to let them
| develop it fast enough, and now with China coming online, the
| window of opportunity has past.
|
| Same reason why Google didn't productize its deep learning R&D.
|
| The only company which has ever ben able to escape from this trap
| is Intel--when the Japanese chased them out of the memory chip
| market, they switched to microprocessors. And now, when ARM
| chased them out of microprocessors, they are switching over to
| building fabs. The chip architects I know over there are watching
| their budgets being switched over. Only the paranoid survive.
| fngjdflmdflg wrote:
| To be clear, Intel aren't moving away from uarch design.
| Gelsinger has stated the economics of their fab business don't
| make sense without a large guaranteed customer like their
| processor business.[0]
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PrmrMQ9gJU&t=637s (Ian
| Interviews: Pat Gelsinger, Intel CEO)
| iancmceachern wrote:
| We all saw this coming
| r0fl wrote:
| If Siri goes from being complete garbage to half as good as
| chatgpt while doing all processing on device they will sell
| 100mil+ new phones in a quarter
|
| The bar has been set so low with Siri. Almost seems like a smart
| move
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| The R1 chip in the Vision Pro came from this effort so there's
| definitely some return on investment here.
| hosh wrote:
| I wonder if some of the car UX or generative AI will help Apple
| improve Siri.
| iExploder wrote:
| From one bandwagon to the other. Spicy.
| brailsafe wrote:
| Maybe they just realized the same thing I did nearly 6 years ago;
| the best car is none at all.
| lasc4r wrote:
| This never made sense. They just have an ungodly amount of money
| to burn.
| janaagaard wrote:
| I hope this means that CarPlay gets some more focus, because I
| would like a CarPlay integration where everything I have
| configured in a car is stored in a profile on my phone. This is
| what I imagine: When I get into a car, I just have to connect my
| phone, and the seat automatically adjusts, the radio has my
| favorite stations configured, and the UI is set up as I prefer
| it. When I find myself in a car model that I haven't driven
| before, the phone is able to make a good guess of how to
| configure things based on my setup in other cars.
| pylua wrote:
| Maybe they will just acquire a firm?
| RecycledEle wrote:
| Why does this remind me of Admiral Yamamoto's orders to switch
| his bombers from AP to HE at Midway in 1942?
| kristianp wrote:
| It takes balls to cancel a project that has probably taken large
| resources and is probably at late stages of development. Or it
| was going to be too late and too expensive.
| bbor wrote:
| NOOOOOOOOO it's been literal DECADES. I am literally heartbroken.
| "Did you know Apple has a secret car project" has been a fun fact
| for my entire life, and I'm just supposed to walk away like it
| never happened?
|
| Sorry for the not-professional comment but jeez. Dark days.
| chucke1992 wrote:
| It feels like Apple is really aimless these days.
| typeofhuman wrote:
| The Vision Pro is a flop. I can't remember when Apple has had
| this bad of a product. Maybe those messed up keyboards on
| MacBooks years ago?
| wolverine876 wrote:
| I hope it's not an overreaction to the current reactionary anti-
| ESG trend. We do need electric cars; they are the future.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| AI has given a lot of people a lot of cover to kill projects
| which are going nowhere. Rather than "this was a terrible idea,
| we've wasted a bunch of money" they get to say "AI is
| transformational, we have to allocate resources to it and hence
| we are cutting X, Y, Z".
| tr_user wrote:
| Future of what? Reliable mass public transport is the best
| option for a sustainable future. We don't need car centric
| suburbia but with heavier and more expensive cars.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > Reliable mass public transport is the best option
|
| I agree, but I don't think that's actually going to replace
| cars and it doesn't serve everyone, such as the people who
| live far outside cities.
| tumult wrote:
| Even if the US and other car-centric countries started a
| serious effort on that today, it would take decades. During
| which people continue to use gasoline cars, and emitting more
| CO2 we will need to undo in the future. Electric cars make
| sense right now regardless of your perspective on trains (I
| like trains, and dislike cars, and I am sympathetic)
| not2b wrote:
| Electric cars make sense. Having Apple build electric cars,
| when they've never built anything like that before? That's
| far less clear.
| tumult wrote:
| I also agree with this.
| cmdli wrote:
| We already have car centric suburbia and its going to take
| decades to change that. We might as well switch to electric
| cars which are quieter and produce less air pollution rather
| than wait for thousands of homes to be rebuilt.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| except that mass public transportation is never going to
| happen on the needed scale in the US; electric cars is the
| next best thing and much preferable to the current status quo
| cagenut wrote:
| you don't even need to agree on 'never' as 'not in the next
| 25 years' and 'never' both look the same for the timeframe
| we have to decarbonize personal transportation.
|
| whether we have a world of 3 billion cars (doubling) or a
| world of 750 million cars (halving) in 2050, they _all_
| need to be electric.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| I absolutely am on board with the idea... but reliable mass
| public transport requires an entire country of cities to be
| redesigned (this is in a country that struggles to get zoning
| laws changed to move from single to multi-family housing in
| many places), we'll have self-driving cars first.
|
| Hell, I think we'd get _flying_ cars first. It 's nearly
| impossible to touch anything that requires modifying suburbs
| or their streets, politically.
| somedude895 wrote:
| Do we need Apple specifically to make an electric car?
| astrodust wrote:
| This is not the question Apple is trying to answer.
|
| If you're trying to expand the market of a company with such
| a broad reach already there aren't many markets big enough to
| move the needle on revenue. Real-estate, food, fashion and
| automotive are the only ones really significant enough to
| tackle, and of those, automotive isn't an unreasonable one to
| explore.
|
| Unless you want a literal Apple Home.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I don't follow. Why would anti-ESG folks be against an Apple
| car?
| evan_ wrote:
| If I were running a successful company I would stay as far away
| from selling cars as possible- it can't imagine how bad it is for
| PR (not to mention your psyche) to suddenly have "Family killed
| by drunk driver" headlines with a giant color picture of your
| flagship product, blood-stained and mangled below it.
| coldtea wrote:
| That's a strange thought.
|
| Neither the name or logo of famous car brands got associated or
| tarnished by tens of thousands killed every year...
|
| Even when some of them ocassionally made a specific "death
| trap" model or production run, that's simply not how people
| thinks of them.
| fiskeben wrote:
| At least here in Norway, if a Tesla is involved in anything,
| the headline will make sure to mention it.
| dmd wrote:
| Our local (Boston area) town police blotter always mentions
| if a Tesla is involved in so much as a bumper-scrape,
| whereas no other car brand has ever been mentioned even
| once.
| zemvpferreira wrote:
| True, but still, Tesla is as popular as a car brand can be,
| which confirms the original sentiment.
| throwitaway222 wrote:
| I mean, Toyota, Ford, Dodge, Honda, Hondai, Tesla, the list
| goes on... have all had that picture already, and they seem to
| be doing fine?
| evan_ wrote:
| I think it's different when the brand started out as a car
| company. As grim as it sounds, the public is aware and mostly
| unconcerned with the idea that vehicles made by the Ford
| Motor Company are sometimes involved in accidents that kill
| people.
|
| I don't think that awareness is built in to every consumer
| brand.
| kube-system wrote:
| I think more specifically, traditional automaker brands are
| boring and they garner little public discussion or
| attention.
|
| Tesla I think is a good example of this -- some have a bad
| image of Tesla, which is probably in part to their
| propensity to attract media attention and public hype. When
| someone puts a Ford Escape on cruise control and crashes,
| nobody hears about it. If Apple released a car, it would
| have a ridiculous amount of hype, and ever darn scratch
| someone put on one would be front page news.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| People are taking issue with your comment (by more or less
| excusing other car companies) but I get what you are saying.
|
| Working in software I didn't sign up for something that people
| will put their lives in the hands of (awkward wording, but you
| know what I mean).
| evan_ wrote:
| I think it's more than just the coders, it's just like... you
| know there's going to be a news story about an Apple Car
| running over a toddler and then right next to it there's a
| banner ad for the newest iPhone. Bad vibes.
| LeafItAlone wrote:
| Nobody is excusing the car companies, because there is
| nothing to excuse. It's not Toyota's fault is someone drives
| drunk and nobody associates the two.
| coldtea wrote:
| From now on they'll be known as the "Hype" team: working on
| whatever technology is hyped at the moment.
| russellbeattie wrote:
| This is the problem with Tim Cook. He was able to execute on the
| ideas that Steve Jobs had about the future of computing, but has
| no real vision of his own. For the past decade he's made all the
| right decisions about how to best expand personal technology and
| introduced a couple new products like the Apple Watch and
| AirPods. But those are just extensions of the same basic idea.
|
| But in terms of the future? He's just been chasing trends. The VR
| headset is a copy of a fad that peaked a few years ago. The car
| project is the same - way outside Apple's core competency and
| doomed from the start. It probably started simply because Cook
| drives a Tesla and wanted an Apple version. Just like the push to
| make the iPad a replacement for the Mac - it's all he normally
| uses, so that's what he thought was important.
|
| Apple completely dropped the lead they had with Siri. They should
| have had a massive generative AI project for the past 5 years.
|
| It's not a secret that Cook isn't a visionary, he's the type of
| guy who implements the vision of others. I think over the next
| decade we're going to start seeing Apple start to pay the price
| for that deficiency.
| acaloiar wrote:
| > The two executives told staffers that the project will begin
| winding down and that many employees on the car team -- known as
| the Special Projects Group, or SPG -- will be shifted to the
| artificial intelligence division under executive John
| Giannandrea. Those employees will focus on generative AI
| projects, an increasingly key priority for the company.
|
| This line really excited my PR-spin senses. The set of people
| working on automobile R&D who are good candidates to work on
| "generative AI projects" is so small that it's hardly worth
| mentioning. "Many employees" will be moving to jobs within Apple
| only insomuch as ~5% of 2000 people is arguably "many" (or
| whatever the size of the autonomous vehicle software team is).
|
| I understand this line as a large layoff announcement that reads
| more like an internal team reassignment.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| I thought the skills for building an engine and those for
| building software were largely the same? /s
|
| Yes. They'll be letting a lot of people go. This smells like a
| controlled leak to signal that the company isn't experiencing
| cooling sales / services when that happens.
| anonylizard wrote:
| Where does it say only 5% will move jobs?
|
| You underestimate the overlap between GenAI and EVs. Apple is
| not merely a software company, their AI strategy will not be
| merely send data to datacenter to run LLMs.
|
| Apple has to run local LLMs heavily amongst its devices, for
| responsiveness, cost, and privacy reasons. This will entail a
| holistic effort from batteries to the neural inference chips to
| the AI models to the user design. Much more complicated than
| the datacenter only approach.
|
| The car division would have also had people working on the
| battery, neural chips, UI design, etc. I would estimate 30% at
| least get moved to AI.
| tibbar wrote:
| There is more overlap between the two than you'd think,
| specifically in producing and evaluating datasets for training
| and fine-tuning models. Most software engineers and ML
| engineers who worked on self-driving cars would do fine at
| working on GenAI; in fact, they're more qualified than the vast
| majority of engineers to work in a brand-new industry. Same
| goes for engineers working on compute hardware. Even engineers
| working on automotive controls and sensors could easily have a
| role working on increasingly multimodal models and
| applications, though I have no idea what projects Apple is
| actually prioritizing within that space.
| pquki4 wrote:
| The question is: does Apple actually need so many people
| working on GenAI? Would a team with 300 people be twice as
| good as a team with 150 people for what Apple is going to
| release as products? I wouldn't be surprised if Apple is
| going to lay off most of them.
| maxerickson wrote:
| It doesn't need to be twice as good, it needs to generate
| more net income.
| pavon wrote:
| > "Many employees" will be moving to jobs within Apple only
| insomuch as ~5% of 2000 people is arguably "many" (or whatever
| the size of the autonomous vehicle software team is).
|
| I would expect the majority of the people on that team to be
| working on autonomous driving. So the software folks would be a
| good fit for genAI and most of the remainder would be
| mechanical and electronics folks working on the sensors who
| also have very transfer skills in a company that builds their
| own hardware.
|
| From all the rumors I've heard Apple was never planning on
| building this car from scratch, so most those 2000 employees
| weren't focused on designing a car.
| pyromaker wrote:
| Was the project Titan - the Apple car project - actually
| initiated by Apple execs & from the strategic PoV? I read the
| book "After Steve" [1] and I remember reading a section in which
| there was a lot of grumbling from employees about how Apple is
| not working on the latest & greatest R&D project and one of them
| was self-driving cars. Not sure how "strategic" it was and I
| guess the question is "What would have Steve done?" My call is he
| would've never jumped in the car game.
|
| https://www.amazon.com.au/After-Steve-Became-Trillion-Dollar...
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