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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

#91

Post by michelb »

bonestamp2 wrote: post #14
nostrademons wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The same amount of hell as for the issues that were happing when he had the reigns? And that we then still had to endure because they got ignored or not fixed in time?

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#92

Post by collyw »

nuthje wrote: post #88
paxys wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is far behind its competitors in pretty much every area except hardware. They are still terrible at running stable web services. There is a new critical bug or security hole in their OS every month. And all of their non-hardware offerings - Apple Maps, Apple Music, iCloud, iTunes, Siri etc. - range from very bad to average. IMO they need to be investing a LOT more on the software side of things if they intend t…

The major differentiator of Apple hardware is the software that runs on it. iOS and MacOS are basically unmatched by other offerings.

In what meaningful way are they "unmatched"?

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#93

Post by chx »

Maybe Apple doesn't want to pursue a dream which, as far as we know, can only have a limited outcome? They don't really like such compromises in products. Check this:

https://medium.com/s/story/self-driving-cars-will-always-be-...

> Waymo’s CEO, John Krafcik, has admitted that a self-driving car that can drive in any condition, on any road, without ever needing a human to take control—usually called a “level five” autonomous vehicle—will basically never exist. At the Wall Street Journal’s D.Live conference, Krafcik said that “autonomy will always have constraints.” It will take decades for self-driving cars to become common on roads. Even then, they will not be able to drive at certain times of the year or in all weather conditions. In short, sensors on autonomous vehicles don’t work well in snow or rain—and that may never change.

Or read https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/07/the-dream-of-driverless-... or any number of "sobering up" articles from last year.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#94

Post by Tepix »

usaphp wrote: post #36
ulfw wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They stopped making routers and monitors not because they are non “core” products, they stopped making them because there is not much money in it. You buy routers ones every 10 years probably, and margin is limited, but supporting them throughout this period is quite expensive. As for monitors, there is so many competitors right now, that it’s hard to make it worth building your own monitor, Especially if you want to…

If Apple truly cares about the user experience they would have kept the wireless routers in their portfolio. A great opportunity missed to have a product that is more user friendly than the competition.

I'd argue the wholesome user experience will prove be more important for Apple in the long run than having a big profit margin on every product.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#95

Post by zuppy »

abalone wrote: post #86
neya wrote: post #61

I don't think Apple has advancements in machine learning tech as much as its competitors. For example, take a look at how primitive Siri is. It struggles a lot in comparison to its competitors even for some basic commands. Or, take a look at Apple Music's recommendation system in comparison to Spotify's discover weekly. Now, take a look at Amazon and Google. They both have their own cloud infrastructure (which ironic…

This is totally unfounded. Their market-leading bokeh camera effect is powered by a “state of the art image recognition system” including custom silicon (the “neural engine”). Siri has gotten a lot better especially at natural language recognition.[1] The HomePod for example is exceptionally good at detecting Hey Siri commands while loud music is playing. That’s all local machine learning processing coupled with a gr…

I keep hearing that people noticed Siri getting better, but my experience is totaly different.

For example, how can it screw up something as simple as enabling alarms: https://ibb.co/vkYpGcq (this has happened multiple times to me).

Why most of the questions are answered with a google search link? Why it keeps randomly forgetting context (example: I tell her to wake me up at 1pm, then repeat just 1:01pm, and so on to add more alarms. Most of the times, it works, but sometimes it stops understanding what I want, even though the speech recognition is right and I’m saying the request in the same format as my previous requests, just with an incremented time).

I’m not saying other Apple products can’t use AI, just that Siri seems to be very low on their priority list (and I don’t blame engineering, this is something that comes from management).

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#96

Post by mrkstu »

abalone wrote: post #86
neya wrote: post #61

I don't think Apple has advancements in machine learning tech as much as its competitors. For example, take a look at how primitive Siri is. It struggles a lot in comparison to its competitors even for some basic commands. Or, take a look at Apple Music's recommendation system in comparison to Spotify's discover weekly. Now, take a look at Amazon and Google. They both have their own cloud infrastructure (which ironic…

This is totally unfounded. Their market-leading bokeh camera effect is powered by a “state of the art image recognition system” including custom silicon (the “neural engine”). Siri has gotten a lot better especially at natural language recognition.[1] The HomePod for example is exceptionally good at detecting Hey Siri commands while loud music is playing. That’s all local machine learning processing coupled with a gr…

I'd add that Apple News has had a much better hit rate than Google News. It consistently has added new suggested categories based on my observed preferences.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#98

Post by paxys »

simonh wrote: post #90
paxys wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is far behind its competitors in pretty much every area except hardware. They are still terrible at running stable web services. There is a new critical bug or security hole in their OS every month. And all of their non-hardware offerings - Apple Maps, Apple Music, iCloud, iTunes, Siri etc. - range from very bad to average. IMO they need to be investing a LOT more on the software side of things if they intend t…

Sales levelling off != drying up. Apple has always had problems with their online services, but iOS security is a problem? Compared to what, the dumpster fire over in Android?

I was referring to macOS in that line.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#99

Post by saagarjha »

shalmanese wrote: post #58
leesec wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

People fail to appreciate the fundamental differences between functional and divisional orgs and how that constrains Apple. At Microsoft, the head of Xbox marketing reports to the head of Xbox and the head of Azure marketing reports to the head of Azure. At Apple, there is no divisions, every Apple marketer is responsible for the success of every Apple product and reports to the head of Apple marketing. But the only…

> But the only way this is possible is if every single Apple employee is able to hold every single Apple product line in their head at the same time.

Just to clarify: every public product line. If Apple is working on autonomous vehicles, there's no way that every (or even most) employees at Apple know about it.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#100

Post by zapita »

collyw wrote: post #92
nuthje wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The major differentiator of Apple hardware is the software that runs on it. iOS and MacOS are basically unmatched by other offerings.

In what meaningful way are they "unmatched"?

Speaking for myself: a combination of ease of use, features, quality and a mature ecosystem. They certainly don't have a perfect track record in any of these, QA being a well-documented example in the last few years. And the alternatives have gotten better, but they're still not good enough to convince me to switch.
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