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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

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

Inebriated on that Apple kool-aid I see. I think 90% of the stuff me and my friends play on the Chromecast is initiated by the Netflix or YouTube app, where all I have to do is tap a button. You know what else is great? If we're chilling with multiple people, I don't exclude 80% of them from controlling or playing anything by having an Apple TV. Fancy that, the Chromecast is actually a simpeler, more useable product than what Apple created.

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

#92
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.

Not entirely sure, but my point was that the accelerating and sudden deacceleration was a dick move.

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

#93

In some markets, it is more about getting it right than getting in at the right time. We've seen many carcasses of products that were ahead of their time, not because they were bad ideas but because they were not formulated for mass adoption. Apple's own Newton is one example. It took the iPhone formulation to make the product features successful in the market. A more recent example is the telepresence robot. Many en…

> "There aren't many really big tech markets left"

I've heard this repeatedly over the years. There are ALWAYS new markets. You just have to look in the right places, or wait for new pareto frontiers to open up.

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

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

ECU's probably not honestly, but I was thinking about ABS/airbag controllers when I wrote that :).

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

#95
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

Inebriated on that Apple kool-aid I see. I think 90% of the stuff me and my friends play on the Chromecast is initiated by the Netflix or YouTube app, where all I have to do is tap a button. You know what else is great? If we're chilling with multiple people, I don't exclude 80% of them from controlling or playing anything by having an Apple TV. Fancy that, the Chromecast is actually a simpeler, more useable product…

Hold on, how do you let 80% of people to control Chromecast? If anything's it's not controllable by anyone by default because nobody happens to lug around a laptop with a pre-installed chrome extension. I haven't used Android for a while, but on my last Nexus phone Chromecast wasn't useful for anything other than Youtube.

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

#96
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You . . . argue that you wouldn't trust an apple car on the basis that they make good hardware, but you have a software dispute with apple?

I'm sure you are very frustrated, but this comment really doesn't make sense to me.

I would tend to think of an apple car as hardware, which you admit is good. And it's probably being driven by apple software, which is sometimes iffy and buggy and downright crappy. I can't imagine a world where your argument makes sense because 3rd party/app story complaints really have nothing to do with this.

It feels like a total non sequitur to me. I'm not going to flag you, but I am going to downvote.

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

#97
post #93

In some markets, it is more about getting it right than getting in at the right time. We've seen many carcasses of products that were ahead of their time, not because they were bad ideas but because they were not formulated for mass adoption. Apple's own Newton is one example. It took the iPhone formulation to make the product features successful in the market. A more recent example is the telepresence robot. Many en…

> "There aren't many really big tech markets left" I've heard this repeatedly over the years. There are ALWAYS new markets. You just have to look in the right places, or wait for new pareto frontiers to open up.

So true. There are always opportunities to create wealth because people never ever happy with what they have and someone else with free time can solve that problem. A company of Apple's size is well poised to make some real great strides in exceptional areas such as self driving cars.

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

#98

In some markets, it is more about getting it right than getting in at the right time. We've seen many carcasses of products that were ahead of their time, not because they were bad ideas but because they were not formulated for mass adoption. Apple's own Newton is one example. It took the iPhone formulation to make the product features successful in the market. A more recent example is the telepresence robot. Many en…

"There aren't many really big tech markets left."

You know of course that this statement has been uttered for a couple thousand years.

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

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's tempting to strap random hardware to your roof to make other drivers fear you and give you more space.

It may result in the opposite effect though: pedestrians more willing to cross the street in front of you, and other cars trying to mess with you. (A friend of mine was telling me how he tried going really fast then braking hard behind a self driving car in front of him). The car swerved into the bike lane and almost hit a bicyclist before the driver regained manual control of the car)

I don't know what it's like in the bay area, but in NYC, everyone is an enemy to cyclists. Granted, it's not all our fault. We have our fair share of wannabe lance armstrongs. But most of us are just trying to get to/from work in a healthy way. People who drive hate us, and people who walk hate us too.

It's a shitty situation here.

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