111–120 of 434 posts
If Apple were truly serious about building self-driving cars, they would buy one of the big 3 US auto manufacturers. It could buy all 3 with cash and still have one of the largest hoards of cash ever accumulated.
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But would a streetcar go past my house? How far do I have to walk to get from my house to a bus stop or train station? Because I own 19 acres and my nearest neighbor is three miles from my house. The nearest town is 20 minutes by car. How would public transport deal with that kind of remoteness? My office is one end of the equation, my home (and the homes of my coworkers) are the other end. It's surprisingly common w…
You are obviously not the median person, and the median solution will therefore not work for you.
So if I don't fit into this world, how do I get around? Obviously we already ruled out self-driving cars, since they'll never work. So I assume I drive my own car? Since I'm already driving my own car, why can't I just drive it to the grocery store? Do I have to drive to the train station and get on a train to get groceries, or are there still parking lots for me? How far am I expected to walk from the train to the grocery store even though I have my own car and could drive right to their door? Or are we assuming self-driving cars work for me but don't work for anyone else? In elementary school I rode the bus for an hour and a half (not even exaggerating) to get from my house to school, am I making that same trip every day to get to and from work? Even though it's 20 minutes by car?
We're talking millions of people across the country here, not an inconsequential number. We're talking about thousands of small towns where trains will NEVER work. Are we just relegating them to second class citizens who have to ride their horses to town? Damn it's so easy for people in big cities to come up with these clever solutions, of course everyone can just take a train or a bus. Except millions of people can't.
But they're just minor outliers, right?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But would a streetcar go past my house? How far do I have to walk to get from my house to a bus stop or train station? Because I own 19 acres and my nearest neighbor is three miles from my house. The nearest town is 20 minutes by car. How would public transport deal with that kind of remoteness? My office is one end of the equation, my home (and the homes of my coworkers) are the other end. It's surprisingly common w…
If government built a road in front of your house, they can build a streetcar line in front of your house as well. This is the cost of living in luxury with your own 19 acres. And if you have your own farmland, you are richer than half the country.
So glad to know that food stamps, welfare, and homemade methamphetamines qualify someone for luxury living.
Jesus fucking Christ this thread is cancer.
How much energy does it take to move one train 500 miles? How much energy does it take to move 10 cars 25 miles each? That's your question. Why do people always frame public transport in the light of "everyone can just take a single train!"? It doesn't work like that. It never works like that. It's a ridiculous argument barely even worthy of a response. 500 people might take one train in LA or NYC, but how about Gree…
You raise good points, but they're specific to American urban design, and the long-term solution is probably to redesign and rebuild our cities to move away from those designs.
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How will it solve anything?
Theoretically you could find someone far away who will drive cheaply. Lot of trust in that individual when they too don’t get killed if the car crashes. Also hope you never have packet loss!!! There’s also that pesky speed of light restrictions on low latency, etc.
Can the "mass production self driving cars are just a couple of years away" meme finally die yet? Are we ready to admit that maybe this is a harder thing to invent than we've been trying to make ourselves believe?
If Apple were truly serious about building self-driving cars, they would buy one of the big 3 US auto manufacturers. It could buy all 3 with cash and still have one of the largest hoards of cash ever accumulated.
Why would a high margin, high ROE, low capital requirements business like Apple invest in a low margin, poor ROE, high capital requirements business like a car maker? Besides being a poor investment that would lock up lots of their capital, it would also create a ton of management distractions. If they are serious about building self-driving cars, they are probably making a huge mistake. Cars have been a poor busines…
PCs and phones are low-margin capital intensive businesses. Apple seems pretty good at commanding high margins in such industries.
As for why Apple doesn't license their tech, well, that's not how Apple operates, because then they lose control over the experience. ROKR and the like.
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I definitely wouldn't call AWS, Echo from Amazon occasional. I think companies come in all shapes and sizes - some focus 90% on their core, some try to spend more time and diverge out to other business segments. Its upto Apple to figure out what to do and what would make it successful.
I think it's more that most don't see Amazon's actual core competence. Amazon is a logistics business, both information and physical. They do logistics for themselves for various front-ends (amazon.com, echo, video, kindle, etc.) but you can view all of those as accessories to their AWS, warehousing, and shipping business which they provide both for their own front ends and for sale to anyone.