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Apple receives permit in California to test self-driving cars

uk.reuters.com

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Re: Apple receives permit in California to test self-driving cars

#81

Post by jacquesm »

chickenbane wrote: post #37
dcwca wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple has the best DNA to build cars. They know how to manufacture in scale. Something tells me shipping your phones off to be built by other people in China and building your own auto assembly factories from scratch are two completely separate things.

> Something tells me shipping your phones off to be built by other people in China and building your own auto assembly factories from scratch are two completely separate things. This is the question. Indeed, an electric auto is far simpler to manufacture than a legacy auto. Drastically less parts. Similarly, Tesla has demonstrated huge value in software component of the car, from the app, dashboard, OTA updates, not…

If there is any company well placed to make an amazing phone, It's BMW.

Re: Apple receives permit in California to test self-driving cars

#82

Post by old-gregg »

datguacdoh wrote: post #55
abritinthebay wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AppleTV a loser? The only device significantly ahead of it in sales is the Roku (Amazon and Google's sticks are ~the same number of sales as Apple TV). But the market is pretty evenly split in sales and Apple still maintains one of the larger overall install bases for any of them (not the outsized winner it used to be there though of course). "Not being a de-facto monopoly" is hardly a loss.

Articles like http://www.recode.net/platform/amp/2016/6/10/11904942/google... seem to point to Apple TV being easily outsold by Amazon and Google.

During 2015-16 I was given 3 or 4 opportunities to get a free Chromecast, and I got one. It sits barely used now, in one of the rarely visited HDMI inputs on my TV. I wonder how many of those "sold" devices were actually given away and forgotten.

Chromecast cannot possibly be considered usable by most because it follows a weirdo, google-style, controlled-by-the-browser (but only Chrome) model. It is the most absurd way to watch TV ever invented. I use it sometimes, sure, because it's the only Linux-friendly HDMI dongle (Chrome runs on Linux), but can't imagine anyone actually liking it.

Apple TV, in comparison, is tightly integrated into every MacOS and iOS device, i.e. not only into the OS but often into the applications that run on them. And I don't remember anyone offering a free ATV to me... :)

Re: Apple receives permit in California to test self-driving cars

#83

Post by jacquesm »

shouldbworking wrote: post #72
salimmadjd wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take the precision by which apple makes watches, laptops or iPhones. They can scale the size up and with the same precision margins you'll get the car parts. You get BMW or someone else to source you the electric motor. And you just need to manufacture the body the interior part and put in your software. Obviously it's a lot more complex than this. But Apple could easily hire 10-20 people from car industry to fill th…

I think this is a troll comment, but if not I ask you to simply look underneath your car. Any auto made in the last 20 years is incredibly complex. The biggest advancement has been hiding all that complexity. I have swapped engines and welded cars together, so this is coming from experience. Every car has many sensors, sometimes more than 100. All these sensors feed into enormously complex software state machines wri…

> in a verifiably correct manner.

What we've seen so far from the inside of various ECUs is that they are definitely not always operating in a 'verifiably correct manner', in fact, it's hard to say for sure if the mess of code has had any review or QA imposed on it at all. You'd think so but then it would have looked a bit better.

Re: Apple receives permit in California to test self-driving cars

#84

Post by jacquesm »

ziikutv wrote: post #59

Heres a question, I know a lot of companies are investing their time/money into working on self-driving cars.. but from what I see, a lot of the cars use the same sensor. LIDAR and cameras being the main sensors. Of course, we have already seen Tesla perform well with these sensors. However, my question: Is/Was this industry only held back by sensing? edit: Restructure paragraph Regards,

It's a combination of elements: sensor price, progress in ML, available computational power on board of the vehicle, the advent of electric vehicles, lots of available data and the ability to process all that data, the fact that it is a huge market waiting to be unlocked.

All those together account for a good chunk of the reasons why right now there are at least 10 and probably more parties active (parties that have a credible shot at achieving this).

Re: Apple receives permit in California to test self-driving cars

#85

Post by shouldbworking »

yourapostasy wrote: post #66
shouldbworking wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's not really studies on the subject. The need for a human to be in control of machines that carry other humans seems to be an innate human trait from my perspective. Humans have proven themselves to be mentally flexible by, for example, training themselves not to have a fear of snakes which is believed to be an innate fear of primates, speculatively including humans. This means humans could possibly overcome th…

> I think its an open question how nice society will be to participant unable to retaliate. I suspect that the initial implied liability carried by the first batch of commercially sold self-driving vehicles will lead to extensive sensor logs and 360° dash cam recordings. In the event a human driver tries to game a self-driving vehicle and it causes an accident, the extensive data logging will supply far more than tra…

I believe you are right about all of these legal issues, but a very human question remains. If a machine is driving, who decides who dies?

As shitty as the human race is much of the time, people in life or death situations regularly show a lack of self preservation when given the choice between saving themselves or someone else. Human history is littered with countless real, and imagined, heroes that gave their lives to help the species. How does this relate to self driving cars?

A real situation these cars will deal with is weighing the potential death of their occupant vs another person. Humans regularly swerve off the road to to avoid hitting pedestrians and animals. Sometimes they die doing this. If a machine goes on trial for killing a pedestrian rather than risk a 10% chance of death for its passenger, what do we do? A human in most situations would have risked their life to avoid certain death of another, but it's unethical (and nobody would buy) a machine that could willingly sacrifice its owner under any circumstances.

I believe this dilemma is un-solvable. This and similar situations will quickly result in laws that require a human to always be present, negating most of the advantages of automated driving

Re: Apple receives permit in California to test self-driving cars

#86

Post by APPLthrowaway99 »

uptown wrote: post #61
bsbechtel wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dealing with Apple Store level service for a car that needs regular maintenance isn't going to fly. Imagine waiting 2+ hours for an oil change entry three months.

Surely their vehicle would be electric. Likely some occasional maintenance but you wouldn't be getting your oil changed.

Disclaimer: If it wasn't clear from the username, this is a throwaway. I don't want to endanger my business by associating my rant with my >7 year old HN account :-(

There is a 0% chance that I would ever purchase a car from Apple with their self driving functionality in it.

We recently had issues with a whole bunch of rejections of our app for reasons that are not clearly defined in their guidelines (allegedly they were "new terms" [not documented]... they pointed me to official documents that didn't match what they were telling me). The functionality that they were rejecting our app for initially wasn't new, followed by several rejections for functionality that had been in the app for nearly 2 1/2 years and had approved numerous times over that span.

I've been waiting almost a month for a phone call that they promised me "within 3 business days" to discuss the App Review issues, and have yet to receive it.

While I think that Apple creates some great hardware, and their end user support is likely better than their B2B support (which is IMHO atrocious, unless you're buying more hardware from them), there is no chance I would put my life in the hands of their product or expect them to provide me with safe travel.

Re: Apple receives permit in California to test self-driving cars

#87

Post by megablast »

tehwebguy wrote: post #68
bsbechtel wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dealing with Apple Store level service for a car that needs regular maintenance isn't going to fly. Imagine waiting 2+ hours for an oil change entry three months.

Is Apple Store service not the gold standard?

It is for electronic devices. Why someone would think they would do exactly the same model for a car division is very strange.

Re: Apple receives permit in California to test self-driving cars

#88

Post by jfoster »

jacquesm wrote: post #76
tsomctl wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good thing California requires license plates on the front of vehicles. That way, if the bicyclist was hurt/killed, the video recorded by the self driving car would show your friend was the one liable.

I'm not sure that's correct. The self driving car should have stayed in its lane because an accident between two cars is preferable to an accident between a cyclist and a car, especially if the cyclist is not otherwise involved. Self driving cars should protect the weaker traffic participants, not use their space as a 'get out of the way' option if that space is occupied.

I think you're right about how the car should ideally respond, but I think most courts would find that aggressive or negligent driving that leads to an accident makes that driver responsible, even if another car makes an accidental breach of rules in response to the threat.

Re: Apple receives permit in California to test self-driving cars

#89

Post by tux1968 »

shouldbworking wrote: post #7

Does anyone care that regulatory realities will prevent driverless cars from ever carrying human passengers? Planes and trains have been driving themselves for many years but they still have human pilots. The human need for somebody to blame is stronger than market forces trying to eliminate human drivers

Metro train system here in Vancouver has no human pilots and has been operating for 31 years.

Re: Apple receives permit in California to test self-driving cars

#90

Post by gyc »

pvg wrote: post #63
linkregister wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is the person who sits at the front of the BART train? That isn't the operator?

It is. What they spend most of their time operating are the doors, though.

Although it wasn't that long ago when BART workers went on strike, replacement workers (former BART operators) stepped in to operate the trains, and then promptly ran over and killed two workers performing track maintenance.
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