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Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

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Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#11

Post by pentae »

culturestate wrote: post #10
pentae wrote: post #6

When you can't make a laptop with reliable screens or keyboards, or an iMac lineup that has CPU's 2 generations behind.. Maybe it's time to shut down the stupid vanity projects and focus on your core business instead?

Apple makes the products Apple wants to make; that those product choices might not align with everyone's preferences (I'm pretty happy with my 2018 MBP, for instance) doesn't mean the company can't walk and chew gum at the same time. Particularly when they make $200 billion per year in revenue.

Well thats my point - it seems that they can't chew gum and walk at the same time. If they could, we'd have Macs that are updated to the latest gen hardware in a reasonable amount of time, and issues like the faulty keyboard would have been fixed by now after 3 years.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#12

Post by nostrademons »

pentae wrote: post #6

When you can't make a laptop with reliable screens or keyboards, or an iMac lineup that has CPU's 2 generations behind.. Maybe it's time to shut down the stupid vanity projects and focus on your core business instead?

It reminds me of the Apple of the early 1990s. So many stupid vanity projects, some of which were actually pretty cool: Newton, Dylan, Copland, Taligent, OpenDoc, etc. And yet they couldn't succeed at their bread and butter of selling computers. There's no Steve Jobs to bring them back from the brink this time.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#13

Post by traek »

pentae wrote: post #11
culturestate wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple makes the products Apple wants to make; that those product choices might not align with everyone's preferences (I'm pretty happy with my 2018 MBP, for instance) doesn't mean the company can't walk and chew gum at the same time. Particularly when they make $200 billion per year in revenue.

Well thats my point - it seems that they can't chew gum and walk at the same time. If they could, we'd have Macs that are updated to the latest gen hardware in a reasonable amount of time, and issues like the faulty keyboard would have been fixed by now after 3 years.

What makes you believe the autonomous car project comes at the expense of Mac improvements, rather than being unrelated?

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#14

Post by bonestamp2 »

nostrademons wrote: post #12
pentae wrote: post #6

When you can't make a laptop with reliable screens or keyboards, or an iMac lineup that has CPU's 2 generations behind.. Maybe it's time to shut down the stupid vanity projects and focus on your core business instead?

It reminds me of the Apple of the early 1990s. So many stupid vanity projects, some of which were actually pretty cool: Newton, Dylan, Copland, Taligent, OpenDoc, etc. And yet they couldn't succeed at their bread and butter of selling computers. There's no Steve Jobs to bring them back from the brink this time.

Could you imagine what hell Steve would raise about 3 years of faulty keyboards?

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#15

Post by Theodores »

I wonder if this autonomous driving thing has gone off the boil across the industry. Years ago fully autonomous was only just around the corner - as in five years away - but now nobody is talking of much more than improved lane keeping assist grade safety features, stopping if someone walks in front of the car rather than navigating a whole city including small streets.

The scale of autonomous has been misleading. Either something is autonomous or it isn't. 'Level x' autonomy is marketing speak.

I am quite happy with incremental improvements in driving aids, e.g. how Intel MobilEye is advertised. Spaceboy Elon sold it all to us as an impossible future. I reckon that Apple probably got on board the electric autonomous driving bandwagon but can't perform the required magic. You can hire all the engineers you want to build magic things but after a while there is no point paying them if the magic is not going to happen. They may well have pivoted to a car type of thing that has great UX instead of 'magic'.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#16

Post by rgovostes »

pentae wrote: post #11
culturestate wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple makes the products Apple wants to make; that those product choices might not align with everyone's preferences (I'm pretty happy with my 2018 MBP, for instance) doesn't mean the company can't walk and chew gum at the same time. Particularly when they make $200 billion per year in revenue.

Well thats my point - it seems that they can't chew gum and walk at the same time. If they could, we'd have Macs that are updated to the latest gen hardware in a reasonable amount of time, and issues like the faulty keyboard would have been fixed by now after 3 years.

I don't think this viewpoint is shared by the vast majority of people who buy personal computers. Gigahertz, number of CPU cores, Intel processor families, etc. mean nothing.

I think the reason why they don't rev their hardware as frequently as they could is because it doesn't pay to. The number of people choosing between a Mac and a Dell who go for the one with the newest processor has to be vanishingly insignificant.

In my view, people have a clearer picture of how much disk storage they want--the usage meters on their phones help drive that home. Other than that, they are confident that the machine they get today will be faster than the one they bought 4 years ago. But I suspect usage patterns have changed (e.g., more time in the browser; games are played on phones; etc.) so that speed bumps aren't the primary reason why people upgrade, anyway.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#17

Post by ulfw »

pentae wrote: post #6

When you can't make a laptop with reliable screens or keyboards, or an iMac lineup that has CPU's 2 generations behind.. Maybe it's time to shut down the stupid vanity projects and focus on your core business instead?

I have no idea why you're getting downvoted.

If a company decides not to produce wireless routers (which were class leading) or monitors etc anymore, all because they're non "core" to a computer/mobile hardware company then I don't see how building automotive AI is core to a computer/mobile hardware computer company that has zero core competency in either car manufacturing or AI.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#18

Post by daveFNbuck »

leesec wrote: post #9
pentae wrote: post #6

When you can't make a laptop with reliable screens or keyboards, or an iMac lineup that has CPU's 2 generations behind.. Maybe it's time to shut down the stupid vanity projects and focus on your core business instead?

Apple has 250 billion dollars at their disposal. They can obviously have multiple efforts running in parallel.

This would be more obvious if I weren't reading it on a brand new faulty MacBook Pro screen.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#19

Post by iagooar »

leesec wrote: post #9
pentae wrote: post #6

When you can't make a laptop with reliable screens or keyboards, or an iMac lineup that has CPU's 2 generations behind.. Maybe it's time to shut down the stupid vanity projects and focus on your core business instead?

Apple has 250 billion dollars at their disposal. They can obviously have multiple efforts running in parallel.

They have the money - but do they have enough high-profile people to run all those efforts?

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#20

Post by Fricken »

PaulBGD_ wrote: post #2

Any stats on how many employees they had to start with? If it was a team of 500 vs 2500 that changes how I'd view this heavily.

Apple accused a Project Titan ex-employee of trade secrets theft, and it was disclosed that there 5,000 employees "Disclosed" on Project Titan.

https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-self-driving-car-proje...

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