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Apple Scales Back Its Ambitions for a Self-Driving Car

nytimes.com

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Re: Apple Scales Back Its Ambitions for a Self-Driving Car

#231

Post by lmm »

robertlagrant wrote: post #206
enjo wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Palm OS apps were using swipe to scroll for several years before that. As far back as at least 2002. That doesn't take away from what Apple did. They really took all of the best ideas (and in many cases hired the engineers who made them in the first place) and put them into one incredibly tight and delightful package. Just about every individual feature can be traced to Palm, Symbian, or a host of other systems... bu…

The only new thing was a capacitive touchscreen, which allowed more responsiveness to a touch input. It just came along at the right time.

That wasn't even new, it's just that no other manufacturer dared to put out a phone at $600 (that's with contract, single carrier exclusive).

Re: Apple Scales Back Its Ambitions for a Self-Driving Car

#232

Post by eloisant »

tambourine_man wrote: post #36

“From the beginning, the employees dedicated to Project Titan looked at a wide range of details. That included motorized doors that opened and closed silently. They also studied ways to redesign a car interior without a steering wheel or gas pedals, and they worked on adding virtual or augmented reality into interior displays. The team also worked on a new light and ranging detection sensor, also known as lidar. Lida…

Apple is good at taking something that works but in a clunky way, and make it clean and perfect for consumers. Not to be first to market.

There were smartphones before the iPhone, and there were mp3 players before the iPod.

If Apple is to reproduce the successes they had they will release a driverless car a few years after the competitors but it will finally be the one that "just works", without the clunky design and the necessary tweaking and weird options.

Re: Apple Scales Back Its Ambitions for a Self-Driving Car

#233

Post by LoSboccacc »

tambourine_man wrote: post #36

“From the beginning, the employees dedicated to Project Titan looked at a wide range of details. That included motorized doors that opened and closed silently. They also studied ways to redesign a car interior without a steering wheel or gas pedals, and they worked on adding virtual or augmented reality into interior displays. The team also worked on a new light and ranging detection sensor, also known as lidar. Lida…

> because spherical wheels could allow the car better lateral movement

uhm, looks more like management entered the project without any real goal or metric for success, throwing ideas at walls just for the sake of budgeting.

Re: Apple Scales Back Its Ambitions for a Self-Driving Car

#234

Post by Matt3o12_ »

IBM wrote: post #181
dilemma wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like he didn't confirm anything at all.

>“Shelved” is an accurate word, but I think many people have interpreted it as meaning that Apple has given up on designing its own vehicles. My understanding is that it’s more like “Let’s get the autonomous shit down first, and worry about designing vehicles to put it in after that.” Eat the steak one bite at a time rather than all at once.

I don’t get why Apple would do that. They have enough employees who are capable of doing both in parallel. Furthermore, the talent capable of creating autonomous software are not the kind of people who excel at designing the vehicle itself. Apple could easily be doing both so that they have either one ready at the time of the release (and if one team fails, they could buy the self driving part from another company).

Re: Apple Scales Back Its Ambitions for a Self-Driving Car

#236

Post by Shivetya »

hallmark wrote: post #136
colechristensen wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like they were biting off way more than they could chew. If Apple partnered with an existing car company to apply their design principles on top of an existing car platform (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_Mini_platform ) they could see a lot of success if they weren't too ambitious. They wouldn't win if they tried to reinvent the wheel because there would be far too big of a chance of either taking 10…

We have the iPhone because Apple was so ambitious. Imagine if they had just partnered with existing phone manufacturers rather than trying to build a magic touch slate. Wait, we do know what would have happened - the Motorola ROKR, which everyone should be forgiven for forgetting.

reinventing the wheel and more changes to how current equipment works, in particular viewing aids, would bury this car in regulatory hell. it would take years to get permission for it to be on the road. figure it this way, if it takes many years just to get permission to change headlight technology can you imagine the time it would take to adjust to what Apple was proposing?

phones are dead simple compared to cars because phones NHTSA and Insurance issues to face up to

Re: Apple Scales Back Its Ambitions for a Self-Driving Car

#237

Post by tim333 »

nradov wrote: post #157
tambourine_man wrote: post #36

“From the beginning, the employees dedicated to Project Titan looked at a wide range of details. That included motorized doors that opened and closed silently. They also studied ways to redesign a car interior without a steering wheel or gas pedals, and they worked on adding virtual or augmented reality into interior displays. The team also worked on a new light and ranging detection sensor, also known as lidar. Lida…

Spherical wheels are such a stupid, dangerous idea. The contact patch on regular tires is already tiny. Make them spherical and the contact patch becomes even smaller, which will cause them to lose traction and spin out in any rapid maneuver (like to avoid a collision).

On cars maybe but the Honda Uni Cub is kinda fun https://youtu.be/WCwzaTPARtU?t=20s

Re: Apple Scales Back Its Ambitions for a Self-Driving Car

#239

Post by lmm »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #129
jamestimmins wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a strong case to be made that this isn't a desirable outcome in a lot of areas. Trains and buses are much more efficient at moving people than individual cars, even if they're self-driving. I'm also extremely excited about autonomous cars, but neither desire nor think they will replace mass transit. edit: As a few people have mentioned, my suggestion that "trains are buses are much more efficient" is dubious.…

"Trains and buses are much more efficient at moving people than individual cars, even if they're self-driving." I've said this on here before, but I'll say it again: efficiency is not everything . Individual houses (or even apartments) are less efficient than having everybody living in barracks, hot-bunking the beds in three shifts, and eating some sort of nutrient-balanced kibble in cafeterias. Human beings have goa…

> Individual houses (or even apartments) are less efficient than having everybody living in barracks, hot-bunking the beds in three shifts, and eating some sort of nutrient-balanced kibble in cafeterias.

Efficient at what? The comment you replied to explicitly talked about what's "efficient at moving people".

Of course some people like cars for reasons other than how good they are at getting from A to B, but is that a matter of fundamental human needs, or something more like fashion? Certainly people who commute by car don't seem to actually enjoy doing it.

Re: Apple Scales Back Its Ambitions for a Self-Driving Car

#240

Post by jacquesm »

tambourine_man wrote: post #36

“From the beginning, the employees dedicated to Project Titan looked at a wide range of details. That included motorized doors that opened and closed silently. They also studied ways to redesign a car interior without a steering wheel or gas pedals, and they worked on adding virtual or augmented reality into interior displays. The team also worked on a new light and ranging detection sensor, also known as lidar. Lida…

This so reminds me of the discussion about fire from the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy.

The challenge of a self driving car is to get it to drive by itself, not to try to make it look good and to solve a whole pile of engineering problems that have had everybody in engineering looking at them since as long as we have the profession.

Making gadgets and making a self driving car require a different mind-set. The first is an exercise in consumer packaging, the second is a serious endeavor in engineering something tremendously difficult from the ground up.

What the vehicle looks like is not important at this stage, what is important is whether it can be done at all with sufficient reliability to let it out of the lab and into the mass market.

When someone seriously suggests to 'reinvent the wheel' it is time to re-focus.

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