[HN Gopher] Apple explores robotics in search of life beyond the...
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Apple explores robotics in search of life beyond the iPhone
Author : mfiguiere
Score : 45 points
Date : 2024-08-25 15:41 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| firesteelrain wrote:
| It does feel like Apple innovation is either stagnating or small,
| incremental gains. Certainly not huge leaps like iPhone or Apple
| Watch. Vision Pro hadn't really taken off yet.
| surfingdino wrote:
| When Apple had a smaller user base of devoted Mac fans it could
| allow itself to experiment, but it cannot do it at the current
| scale. They have two potential options: focus of research of
| various groups of their existing products, e.g. find out who
| uses iPads for what and see if there is a potential for a
| hardware product for that group of users. For example, pilots
| load flight plans and other information on iPads, maybe there
| is a potential for a product for the aviation industry? Second
| option is an experimental product spin-off that they would
| finance, a bit like Bell Labs, but for Apple.
|
| BTW. Apple Vision is not taking off anytime soon. At that price
| point it's going nowhere.
| ghaff wrote:
| The Vision would be uninteresting to me at anything beyond
| pocket change prices. I have an SF concept of the type of
| augmented reality that could be interesting but we're nowhere
| near there.
|
| Really, I'm an Apple fan but MacBooks and iPhones are the
| only devices I'm genuinely attached to. I haven't replaced a
| broken old iPad (at least not yet) and my Apple Watch is
| something I basically use for hiking.
| surfingdino wrote:
| I was in the Apple Store in Regent's Street in London
| yesterday. They had Vision on display. The headbands were
| already visibly dirty and nobody was looking at them
| anyway. At PS3,500 it's no wonder why. My personal take on
| Vision is that it was created to shut up Wall Street asking
| why Apple does not have a VR vision/product? So they
| produced a product that will join Pippin and Newton and
| will kill it before Wall Street starts asking why they have
| a VR product when nobody else is investing in VR?
| ghaff wrote:
| I was in their Covent Garden store late spring/early
| summer--admittedly not at a peak time--to ask to take a
| look at one of the new iPads. And, yeah, no one was
| playing with the Visions.
|
| Even if they're skeptical, probably makes sense for them
| to be playing with (even very visibly). But I'm not sure
| I see a general use case at this point.
| jwells89 wrote:
| The impression I get is that there's a substantial appetite
| for experimentation with (and attention for in general for)
| macOS among Mac fans that hasn't been satisfied since iOS
| began to suck all the air out of the room many years ago.
| It's understandable that Apple might not want to rock the
| boat too much for more general audience Mac users, though.
| Perhaps some kind of "enthusiast mode" for macOS that could
| act as a playground for these things is in order.
| ghssds wrote:
| They don't need to experiment with Mac. They still own the
| perfectly good Apple II brand they didn't use for decades and
| could experiment with all they want.
| dingnuts wrote:
| the watch was a leap? the only people I know who have them are
| Apple stans, and unlike the iPhone they certainly didn't kick
| off a new category of must have everyday item
|
| heck, after growing tired of having one more thing with a
| rechargeable battery, I went back to an analog watch
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Every person I see working retail has an Apple Watch. Think
| it's some weird mix of they can't have their phone and also
| rampant materialism through exposure at work.
|
| I loved my $30 EBay Apple Watch as a cheap running watch with
| GPS before the battery got so weak it wouldn't even do my 1.5
| hour runs anymore. Apple wasn't helpful about a battery
| replacement and encouraged me to buy a new one (starting at
| $249) and said they couldn't replace the battery since it was
| so old, when I met a Genius at the Apple Store. That soured
| me quite a bit on the whole thing.
| surfingdino wrote:
| They shot themselves in the foot with eSim for Apple Watch
| (Samsung did he same with Galaxy Ultra watch). You have to
| buy a contract for both your iPhone and your watch, because
| you cannot put your Apple Watch on a pay as you go plan. This
| is a big obstacle in Europe where PAYG plans are popular.
| It's not going to change, because operators like it and LTE
| smartwatches do not cut into smartphone sales.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| I know a bunch of people with some apple watch at this
| point but I never met anyone who pays for cellular for it
| dangus wrote:
| The market leader who captured more than half of all
| smartwatch revenue shot themselves in the foot?
|
| I don't think Apple cares whether you activate the watch on
| cellular or not. The product doesn't really need it.
| surfingdino wrote:
| I'm talking about the LTE watches. They will not let them
| become untethered from the iPhone, which contradicts the
| marketing that convincing you the LTE watches are not
| reliant on the iPhone. Technically they are not, but you
| cannot use LTE on them without having a contract tied to
| the iPhone.
| semireg wrote:
| After 3 years my Apple Watch needed a battery replacement. I
| went a week without it. There were times I missed an
| important call or text because I don't have any habit of
| checking my phone and I refuse to use audible alerts.
|
| Overall, the Apple watch is less distracting because you can
| quickly glance and ignore most notifications, or filter
| notifications based on who it is, time, etc.
|
| But if I had to think harder ... another reason I love the
| Apple Watch is getting stripe sales notifications. Someone
| halfway around the world buys a thing of yours and you get a
| tap on the wrist as a reward. I'm not sure I'll ever turn
| that off.
| dangus wrote:
| Kinda weird to say that only Apple stans have them when they
| are the global marketshare and revenue leader. Sticking to
| objective facts will make your point more effective.
| sosborn wrote:
| Let's travel back to 2016 ...
|
| > It does feel like Apple innovation is either stagnating or
| small, incremental gains. Certainly not huge leaps like iPhone
| or iPad. Apple Watch hasn't really taken off yet.
| skgough wrote:
| This might be true on the user-facing side of things, but
| moving chip design in-house and transitioning their entire
| hardware lineup to the ARM ISA is a big innovation. M-line Macs
| can't be beat in efficiency or performance any time soon.
| talldayo wrote:
| M-line Macs have been beaten in pure-performance terms since
| the day they were released, and that goes for everything from
| the M1 to the M3 Max: https://browser.geekbench.com/opencl-
| benchmarks
|
| It's the single-core scores that are really impressive, but
| as time goes on, the performance gap is closing and not
| widening. It's been said many times before, but it was
| Apple's TSMC alliance that mattered more than their core
| design or ISA choice at the time.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > M-line Macs have been beaten in pure-performance terms
| since the day they were released
|
| I don't think anyone would ever argue this based on
| performance alone, which is why I think your geekbench link
| is irrelevant, and I think a fair reading of parent's
| comment talking about "efficiency and performance" would
| mean these two aspects taken _together_ , not
| independently.
|
| That is, nobody is surprised a beefy server chip has more
| computing power than an M3, and nobody is considering an
| Nvidia H100 a competitor to an M3 in any sense.
| talldayo wrote:
| The problem is, we can correct for wattage and it's still
| a blowout.
|
| Compare the M2 Ultra's 5nm GPU performance-per-watt to a
| product like Nvidia's RTX A5000 laptop GPU on Samsung
| 8nm. The M2 Ultra is rated to pull over 290w at load,
| compared to the A5000's maximum TDP of 165w. Apple's
| desktop-grade iGPUs are less power-efficient than
| Nvidia's last-generation laptop GPUs, _even when_ they
| have a definitive node advantage and higher TDPs.
|
| You don't have to just look at the server chips. Compare
| like-for-like and you'll quickly find that Apple's GPU
| designs are pretty lacking across the board. The M3 Max
| barely swaps spit with Nvidia's 2000-series in
| performance-per-watt. When you pull out the 4000-series
| hardware and compare the efficiency of _those_ cards, it
| 's just plainly unfair. The $300 RTX 4060 outperforms
| Apple's $3000 desktop GPUs in performance and efficiency.
| throwadobe wrote:
| Why are you comparing SoCs to dedicated GPUs?
| talldayo wrote:
| Why not? Apple's SOCs are in the 200-300w range that
| desktop systems occupy, it's only fair to compare it with
| it's contemporaries. Nvidia is said to be developing
| desktop SOCs too so we'll soon have systems for
| comparison, but I don't see how laptop dGPUs are an
| unfair comparison against desktop SOCs in any case. It's
| basically the same hardware with similar thermal
| constraints.
|
| Plus; say we _did_ include all of the dGPUs that Apple
| officially supports. Not even the W6800X gets more
| performance-per-watt than an Nvidia laptop chip. It only
| highlights the fact that Apple goes out of their way to
| prevent Nvidia from providing GPU support on Mac.
| paul7986 wrote:
| Vision Pro in form factor and experience is just another VR
| headset the population has no interest in. They haven't since
| it first debut in the 90s.
|
| I know their pathway is to shrink it down to glasses size so we
| are basically wearing our iPhones on our face. Yet as Ray Ban
| smart glass enthusiast (use almost daily since Oct '23) im fine
| with vocally asking my glasses what time it is & getting an
| audible response. Some visuals in my face only upon summoning
| them maybe via a ring on my finger or a watch or some natural
| non-intrusive gesture would be helpful.
|
| Now I don't think smart glasses will replace smart phones as
| you cannot take selfies with them.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I don't like these takes of "innovation is stagnating", as a
| lot of this is just a function of what is possible at any given
| moment.
|
| For example, I think the iPhone _was_ a revolutionary,
| innovative device at the time, but the need was obvious: it was
| pretty clear even back then that things like separate mp3
| players, phones, and mobile browsers would converge - Apple was
| just the one that did it best early on.
|
| Even with Apple Watch, while a smart watch form factor was
| pretty obvious, in the early days the "reason for existence"
| wasn't as clear until Apple Watch (and pretty much all smart
| watches) started laser focusing on being fitness trackers and
| providing health monitoring functionality.
|
| So now we're at a point where you have either things like
| Vision Pro, which is an amazing piece of tech but which solves
| problems nobody really has, or you have ideas ("I want a
| robotic housekeeper!") that are eons from being technically
| feasible. So for anyone saying "Apple isn't innovating", I'd
| challenge you to think of areas where it could even begin to
| innovate in the first place (and where people would actually
| pay money for whatever they built). The answer to that question
| isn't as obvious as it was in 2007.
|
| Final thought, I think Apple _has_ been doing a ton of
| innovation. Their chips are now state of the art leaders, and
| take a look at just Airpod revenue _alone_ compared to total
| revenue of other major companies:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/15z558o/oc...
| firesteelrain wrote:
| There are some obvious areas that are not easy but could
| develop into a very good value proposition such as certifying
| a variant of Apple Watch for medical use, more sustainable
| tech (their products are basically throwaway when finished),
| integrate better across ecosystems such as Android, and
| improved battery technology / investment.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I agree that all the examples you've given would be
| welcomed by users, but I highly, highly doubt that the
| crowd that accuses Apple of stagnating when it comes to
| innovation would be impressed with more "sustainable" tech,
| for example. Many of the examples you've given (better
| integration with Android, better batteries) have nothing to
| do with tech but are clearly _deliberate_ business
| decisions by Apple.
| airstrike wrote:
| Robotics is way too hard and they should look elsewhere IMHO.
|
| Software has this beautiful property of being magical: if you can
| imagine it, it can be written, given sufficient effort.
|
| The physical reality puts constraints that you often can't work
| around with decades-long, distributed research... which isn't
| really profitable or timely for a business to do.
|
| There are countless cases of companies trying to "solve" problems
| in the physical world with ingenuity carried over the virtual
| one. Self-driving cars come to mind as one topical and recent
| example, even if I do believe in their success in the long enough
| term.
|
| Sometimes examples are more catastrophic failures, like
| Theranos... which is why I'm generally short on promises of
| "healthcare tech" in general.
|
| And as much as I enjoy my Apple devices and appreciate the
| second-to-none ingenuity of their hardware, I think a lot of
| their value proposition comes from software. They would do well
| to refocus these greenshoot innovation efforts to software
| categories that are dominated by subpar experiences and
| reinventing them from a fresh perspective. Easier wins and no
| shortage of profits to be made near term...
| ghaff wrote:
| Our home appliances (and industrial robots) are very optimized
| specific devices. Don't get me wrong. A washing machine or
| refrigerator is magical relative to the prior art. But there's
| nothing even on the horizon that remotely replaces my
| housekeeper coming every few weeks (and even she requires me
| organizing some things ahead of time).
| massysett wrote:
| Apple's value proposition is marrying hardware with software
| rather than, say, writing software for commodity hardware.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Their REAL proposition is capturing and corraling users
| through software and hardware, and so far it's been working
| too good it's starting to find resistance.
|
| Any practical robot they manage to make will be surely
| tightly tied to their other hardware, software, and new
| suscription tiers.
| tpmoney wrote:
| >Robotics is way too hard and they should look elsewhere IMHO.
|
| >Software has this beautiful property of being magical: if you
| can imagine it, it can be written, given sufficient effort.
|
| >The physical reality puts constraints that you often can't
| work around with decades-long, distributed research... which
| isn't really profitable or timely for a business to do.
|
| I imagine plenty of people thought and said that about phones
| when Apple was rumored to be getting into that space. Certainly
| the Motorola ROKR partnership probably put most people off the
| idea of Apple and the phone space. Obviously prior success
| doesn't indicate future success, but at the same time Apple's
| biggest successes have often been in the space of building
| hardware that breaks though those physical constraints of
| reality in a way that is finally sufficient to push it towards
| mass market appeal.
| airstrike wrote:
| No, because a phone is a pretty limited "physical reality".
| It exists in a little box. It doesn't really interact with
| the outside world. It's just a transporter of software in the
| physical reality, but it doesn't interact with it other than
| through light and sound.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Apple needs to create more iPod nano type fun products. Instead
| they are trying to create category defining products like vision
| pro because I think apple too has fallen for the MBAs running the
| show instead of the pirates. They need more risk, more fun,
| smaller bets to figure out the next wave.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm sure Apple is fiddling around with things in their labs.
| But I still remember something that someone at IBM told me once
| about some initiative. Don't focus on the specific number but
| basically if it isn't a billion dollar opportunity, it's too
| big a distraction up and down the line to bother with.
|
| You may hate on MBAs but focus is actually something that Apple
| has been very very good at over the years even before the
| current management.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| The MBAs wont let them. They already cancelled the iphone mini
| because it was selling but not selling enough.
| LordKeren wrote:
| As someone who likes the smaller phone form factor, it was a
| real bummer that they're discontinuing this size. But on the
| other hand, as someone who needs to accommodate mobile UI,
| the mini was a bit of a thorn in my side. Conflicted
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Such is life of the mobile developer though, or really any
| other developer. You have to accomodate multiple view port
| sizes or just write your code in a way that scales
| correctly. For example it used to be common for mobile apps
| to use the off the shelf ui tooling from the os vendor and
| use stuff like html for their pages within the app of
| whatever else. That stuff has always scaled perfectly. Its
| the new sexy stuff that has trouble but its not necessary
| to write code like that.
| layer8 wrote:
| The mini has the same logical resolution as the 11 Pro, and
| the current SE3 has a significantly smaller screen. Not
| sure I see your point.
| achow wrote:
| _There are many technical problems to overcome, including having
| hardware that can successfully roam through cluttered spaces and
| navigate buildings with multiple floors..._
|
| _...For now, the technology is going to be incredibly expensive
| for both Apple to build and for consumers to buy. The company is
| also going to need more talent, including many more engineers, to
| bring something truly meaningful to market._
|
| Why can't Apple acquire Boston Dynamics? BD may have solved lot
| of these problems already, and to boot would have lot of patents,
| which Apple would be glad to have. BD in 2020 was acquired by
| Hyundai for $1.1B.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| What I would do for a robotic pack mule I could take camping or
| to the grocery store
| r00fus wrote:
| The dog has a runtime of 4hr unburdened. Great for walks to
| the grocery store but not as great for long hikes.
| api wrote:
| I don't personally understand some of these tech companies with
| such enormous hoards of cash. Apple could go on a massive
| acquisition spree in the space and buy Boston Dynamics, iRobot,
| all kinds of stuff and become a gigantic brand in home robotic
| automation with their well-functioning interoperable ecosystem.
| Are they afraid of antitrust?
| ec109685 wrote:
| These companies lose money, so it would hurt their ongoing
| margins.
| ghaff wrote:
| None of that stuff seems useful to me in anything like its
| current form and I'm sort of an early adopter of a lot of
| things.
|
| My brother has a (newly built) house that's more or less
| optimal for a Roomba-type thing. It's very single level. They
| also have dogs. I looked at and a _much_ better solution was
| a Dyson stick vac I could spend a few minutes running now and
| then.
|
| I'm just not sure where the big home automation wins are. Not
| sure the last time I've even heard Nest thermostats mentioned
| in print.
| hollerith wrote:
| Grandparent said, "BD in 2020 was acquired by Hyundai for
| $1.1B."
|
| Well, there is your answer: BD's market prospects are too
| meager for it to be worth Apple's management team's ongoing
| attention. (Apple's current market prospects are valuable
| enough that Apple has a current market cap of $3.45
| trillion.)
|
| (Also, Hyundai might not want to sell it.)
| tpmoney wrote:
| I imagine at least some part of it is that acquisitions are
| difficult, time consuming and rarely work 100%. There are
| almost always seams after the fact and problems with culture
| integration. Cash on hand also gives you the option to
| respond to market swings and changes. It allows you to invest
| in new opportunities, and to build a space organically from
| your own internal visions. Would the iPhone been what it was
| if Apple had just bought Nokia, or Ericson or any other phone
| vendor at the time? Maybe, but I strongly suspect not. And at
| least for Apple especially, the point isn't just to have the
| product, it's to have a well and tightly integrated product,
| and existing product lines might need to be so heavily re-
| worked any value in buying it as is would be lost in having
| to scrap so much of what's where.
| r00fus wrote:
| The Chinese guys are way beyond Boston Dynamics.
|
| https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/unitrees-robot...
| resist_futility wrote:
| What exactly are they ahead in? only thing that stood out was
| price
| fragmede wrote:
| What's the going price for an BD Atlas robot?
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| They've got brand new demos that I remember seeing 10+ years
| ago from Boston dynamics. I mean, that's no small feat, but
| they don't have an edge yet.
| 19f191ty wrote:
| With what happened when Google bought them, I doubt if Apple
| can handle thenlm. Hyundai feels like a much better fit.
| Japanese companies have had a longer history with robotics and
| less insistence on short term profitability.
| complaintdept wrote:
| Hyundai is Korean
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| It's such a gamble for Apple to move out of the safe space they
| are in. They have such total ecosystem control, such ability to
| set the terms of use however they want with digital technology.
| But as soon as they start building more mechanical physical
| systems that exist int eh real world, there's far less ability to
| maintain that pristine veneer.
|
| Whether Apple can find a path to being a less perfectionist
| company is a big question in my mind, that bounds all their
| ambitions.
| est31 wrote:
| Yeah it's the startup vs established company dilemma. An AI
| company can publish a tool that makes mistakes. If Google
| publishes a version of that tool, maybe making it respond a
| little bit faster so that it can be shown next to search
| results, but at the expense of accuracy, people suddenly
| ridicule them.
|
| Same goes for other products. New product categories require a
| lot of risk taking and established companies have a lot to
| lose, they don't want to take risks, they want to minimize it
| and for that they have entire departments with hundreds and
| thousands of employees that crunch every idea to death.
| poisonborz wrote:
| Smart speaker, car, VR, and now robots... it's crazy how much
| money can be burned when a few of your other products are
| successful and mature, while those mostly just receive
| incremental updates.
| dumbo-octopus wrote:
| HomePod would be a fantastic device if it didn't have Siri and
| was just a decent speaker with AirPlay... as is it sits
| unplugged somewhere in my garage because I got sick of it
| butting in to every conversation where anyone said anything
| like "see ree".
| lowkj wrote:
| Siri can be disabled on the HomePod.
| floydnoel wrote:
| all of my homepods have that feature turned off. it is a
| simple toggle and you never have to worry about it again
| lowkj wrote:
| I'm not sure that the homepod belongs in this list as by most
| accounts it's a financial success. Nothing will be as
| profitable as the iPhone but the homepod enhances the Apple
| eco-system. Of all the devices I absolutely would not trust
| Google/Amazon with, it's a smart speaker. With homepods all
| over the house, it just makes it that much harder to switch to
| a non-iphone.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Of all the devices I absolutely would not trust Google
| /Amazon with, it's a smart speaker._
|
| Not just you. My company's work from home policy requires any
| Amazon or Google speaker on the same floor as a home office
| to not be just software disabled, but actually unplugged from
| the wall. HomePods, on the other hand, are allowed to just
| have the Siri diagnostics feature turned off.
|
| My company ($1B+) is not exactly known for its technical
| agility, so I don't think these rules came from in-house
| testing. Because we're in healthcare, my guess is they are
| recommendations from a federal agency.
| pj_mukh wrote:
| "The master has failed more times than a novice has tried"
| rings true here.
|
| I'm glad there's companies out there trying things as opposed
| to doubling down on rent seeking (which apple also has a
| tendency to do)
| jasonsb wrote:
| Apple is desperate to stay relevant, just like Sony was a few
| decades ago when they were launching robot dogs (AIBO) and other
| useless gadgets.
| wslh wrote:
| I don't agree with both of your two points. The AIBO was more
| like an experiment, Sony didn't go bankrupt because of it as
| much as Microsoft, Google, Meta are not going bankrupt from
| failed projects. Fail is in their playbook and not as risky as
| you think. For example, for a startup it could mean their
| closing.
|
| Regarding Apple, they are completely relevant in the market.
| They have business challenges and good competitors (e.g.
| Samsung). Most probably when we read about Apple exploring
| robotics is because there are many projects we don't know about
| because of their known secrecy.
| jasonsb wrote:
| You are right, Sony didn't go bankrupt because of AIBO or any
| other failed new product, but Sony never launched another
| successful product after PlayStation. Sony will probably
| never go bankrupt, no matter how many failed projects they
| launch, but Sony is just a legacy company at this point.
|
| Apple, Meta, Tesla, Google, they're all desperate to find the
| next big thing that will help them grow like stockholders
| speculate they will. Nobody wants to be the next Sony. Sony
| is the equivalent of stagnation and lack of (successful)
| innovation.
| wslh wrote:
| With all due respect what you said about Apple, etc could
| be applied to anyone on the top of the market cliff: if you
| are a huge hedge fund it is difficult, if no impossible to
| find a new opportunity in that scale, at least to "time the
| opportunity". AI, for example escaped all of them even when
| Google was the real innovator behind transformers. They
| will catch up for sure.
|
| Regarding Sony, I really haven't studied them well. I know
| I have used many many Sony products since I was born and
| that the only product that I now use is the PS5. I also
| think culture plays its part there, thinking also about
| Nintendo. I don't know how desperate Sony really is to
| innovate now. They also produce movies and series though.
| dtx1 wrote:
| iPad OS/MacOS Notebook like a Microsoft Surface but with an
| actually usable User Interface would be the obvious next step to
| me.
| layer8 wrote:
| We have yet to see a user interface that works equally well for
| laptop/desktop and tablet use, and that isn't a downgrade for
| either. It's not entirely impossible, but it might as well be.
| lostdog wrote:
| Here's the secret ingredients for successful robotics products:
|
| 1. Does it do something useful? Useful enough to pay for? 2. If
| it's solving something hard, are you going to invest enough to
| solve the problem?
|
| The article is like a perfect clock. In 3-5 years you'll read the
| headline "Apple cancels robotics projects," and be totally
| unsurprised.
| mike_hearn wrote:
| The odd thing is that there's plenty of growth left in their
| existing markets, should they want it. They could compete much
| harder against Microsoft in the business computing sector, they
| could compete much harder against Google in the education sector,
| they could compete harder in the Pro sector, etc.
|
| Pro computing in general is pretty stagnant and there seems to be
| little R&D on the core. Apple Intelligence is good, but very much
| reacting to changes driven by others. They could easily invest
| money in researching "life after NeXTStep". That's probably
| easier and more in their wheelhouse than trying to break into
| totally new markets.
| recursivegirth wrote:
| You just know a PA is going to slip this comment into some
| C-suites memo tomorrow morning.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Very few companies survive Robotics projects, as the public has
| decades of unrealistic expectations from entertainment media.
|
| If the plan is an unconstrained general purpose use-case design,
| than the reality of the processing power needed to do simple
| tasks will quickly hit the product.
|
| If the board is serious, than just purchase the universal-
| robots.com company. Then add whatever branding and software you
| thought was useful on top of the existing platform.
|
| Making a profitable Robotics company is hard, as they are not
| generally a consumer product.
|
| I'd try Apple branded appliances, and you know people would buy a
| talking toaster: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRq_SAuQDec
|
| Best of luck =)
| crooked-v wrote:
| I still find myself wondering if this is actually "robotics" as
| most people would think of it, or if it's just an iPad on the
| Belkin auto-tracking stand [1], which already does full rotation
| and 90-degree tilt.
|
| [1]: https://www.belkin.com/p/auto-tracking-stand-pro-with-
| dockki...
| chfritz wrote:
| It's _not_ robotics, because it doesn 't "plan". A robot is an
| embodied cognitive agent. Embodies = has a body and is acting
| in physical space. Cognitive agent = it uses a sense-plan-act
| loop. This thing may sense and act, but its controls are too
| primitive to call it "planning". In particular it doesn't plan
| multiple actions into the future. It's doing something folks in
| the AI literature would call "reactive control".
| wg0 wrote:
| Apple should buy ARM while it has cash. And then software stack
| such as Qt. And then start industrial automation division (or
| subsidiary) could be one possible way that supplies whole stack
| (the chip, the software stack on top) that the industrial
| machinery works well with iOS/iPhones/iPads.
|
| This shall fuel the iPhone and iPad sales as well.
|
| It is far cheaper bet then a robotics division.
| tjoff wrote:
| They already have everything Qt has? And the killer feature of
| Qt being multiplatform will cause an allergic reaction so I'm
| not sure I see the value (for apple) there.
| wtallis wrote:
| > that the industrial machinery works well with
| iOS/iPhones/iPads.
|
| > This shall fuel the iPhone and iPad sales as well.
|
| Even if all the industrial machines that go for $100k+ started
| bundling two iPad Pros to use as their control interfaces, I
| don't see how that could make a noticeable difference to iPad
| sales volumes. It definitely wouldn't justify spending tens of
| billions on acquisitions as part of a strategy that would be
| heavily opposed by antitrust regulators.
| nomius10 wrote:
| Apple is renowned for their seamless interoperation between
| their devices, yes, but there is also another angle - Apple
| always searches for the largest common denominator (amongst
| what ordinary people do) and refines that experience. Everyone
| needs to be able to share a photo, record a video, lookup a
| song, etc. The addressable market for iphone users that operate
| industrial equipment is minuscule. They wouldn't bother.
| layer8 wrote:
| Ah, yes, even more big-tech concentration is exactly what we
| need.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > Apple should buy ARM while it has cash.
|
| No.
|
| > And then start industrial automation division (or subsidiary)
|
| As someone who works in this sector - HARD NO. Machinery can
| and should last decades, even outlasting their users or their
| manufactures. Apple is not interested in providing this kind of
| support just like MS. They make money selling you new shiny
| things that do nothing for a fixed function machine.
|
| I have to deal with machines with RTOS run-times, software and
| drivers anchored to Windows 2k/XP, 7 and 10. There is ZERO need
| to update outside of the fact that I'm a prisoner of their
| upgrade treadmill. I then have to resort to eBay for hardware
| and the good grace of 3rd party service techs to obtain
| obsolete software they happen to have a copy of. The controls
| OEM does not give a single fuck your machine and therefor your
| business is down and tells you to buy all new hardware and
| software as if that is a solution to lost business.
| xyst wrote:
| Just another future dead project like Apple Car. VR is also
| already nearing its death knell as well ($5K+ paper weight, at
| best).
|
| Apple is way behind the curve and has been playing catch up since
| change in leadership from Jobs to Cook. Historically, iPhone
| innovation has slowed to a crawl. There has been some life with
| Apple Silicon, but unfortunately like everything with Apple it's
| locked off behind the wall. Trying to use it without macOS is an
| absolute pain in the ass (yes, I have tried asahi but there's a
| massive feature parity, and endlessly waiting for upstream
| support sucks).
| wtallis wrote:
| > ($5K+ paper weight, at best).
|
| You know the price of the Vision Pro is public, readily-
| available information, right? What do you hope to accomplish by
| lying about its price?
| Animats wrote:
| The idea of a screen that follows you around is somewhere between
| creepy and useless. Remember the Amazon home drone, the Ring
| Always Home Cam?[1]
|
| Robots have to _do_ something useful. For homes, that 's mostly
| clean, cook, or launder. Those are hard, unstructured tasks.
| Robot vacuums are at last semi-useful, though expensive.
|
| Automated laundry machinery exists, but the amount of machinery
| you need is way too much for the home. Robotic soiled-side
| sorting.[2] Robotic wash and dry, including load and unload [3].
| Robotic clean-side sorting and folding.[4] Hospitals and hotels
| buy such systems. There were Foldimate and Laundroid for the
| home, but they cost too much.
|
| Robotics woks are a thing in China. They add ingredients at
| specified points in the cycle. There's a home version that takes
| a plastic container with multiple compartments and a bar code
| with the instructions. But they're just another kitchen
| appliance.
|
| [1] https://ring.com/always-home-cam-flying-camera
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-03OAHvn54
|
| [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9s4HiaRDaA
|
| [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpTuwKu5fY0
| MisterTea wrote:
| Isn't this what the Apple Vision Pro was supposed to be?
| chfritz wrote:
| It doesn't sound like a robot at all, because it doesn't "plan".
| A robot is an embodied cognitive agent. Embodied = has a body and
| is acting in physical space. Cognitive agent = it uses a sense-
| plan-act loop. This thing may sense and act, but its controls are
| too primitive to call it "planning". In particular it doesn't
| plan multiple actions into the future. It's doing something folks
| in the AI literature would call "reactive control".
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