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Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

cnbc.com

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Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#111

Post by baybal2 »

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…

> Automotive AI meanwhile is a future and they have to think about future with all the money they have now.

Automotive "AI" is not a future, more than so than the automotive "cloud." It does not even takes one to have a computer science background to figure out that claims of artificial "intelligence" there are a joke.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#112

Post by ksec »

ulfw wrote: post #17
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.

>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.

Autonomous Vehicle, is basically a Giant Mobile iPhone that you can sit in it. There will be lots of custom silicon doing software calculation, LiDAR making 10s to million of input every second, a gigantic battery, and lots of softwares.

Although I still think AV is at least another 5 - 10 years away in real world usage.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#113

Post by jarym »

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’ll add my pet peeve to the list:

Sell me a £1k phone that can’t connect to the £3.5k laptop you sold me because the phone comes with a USB-A cable and the laptop only has USB-C sockets.

This is precisely the sort of garbage Stveve was very much against yet Apple seem to now think ‘it’s ok’.

It’s not ok. To the down voters, the fanaticism only emboldens Apple to become more mediocre. Think about that a moment.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#114

Post by mcintyre1994 »

sterlind wrote: post #81
tiew9Vii wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I read Apple are taking a different approach? Google/Amazon are harvesting massive amounts of data and training against it and Apple are taking a privacy first approach saying you shouldn’t have to harvest lots of data for intelligent AI. Currently the harvesting data for models look to be working better for Google / Amazon with current technology. The question is how will Apple progress long term and given…

Are you suggesting Apple plans to do AI without harvesting data, or with transparent privacy controls on data? There's literally nothing for machine learning to learn besides harvested data. It's like suggesting that a power company is trying the strategy of using no wires for delivering electricity to houses.. I'd be excited if Apple found a way to trustlessly aggregate data and perform homomorphic training of their…

Is this what their differential privacy stuff is about? It's not trustless (not least because 100% of the data comes from a closed source OS they control) but they do seem to be trying to figure out a privacy-friendly way to harvest data to train ML models.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#115

Post by baxtr »

itslennysfault wrote: post #109
baxtr wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“can’t make” - that is a very general statement. I am quite happy with my MBP

Post 2015? Maybe I'm just spoiled, but I can't type on them to save my life. I had a 2006 MBP and every 3 - 5 years since, but after a few months with the latest line I jumped to a Dell XPS running Ubuntu, and I never looked back. Had to find new tools and learn new shortcuts, but after a month or so I adjusted, and I never have to endure that hellish keyboard again. edit: punctuation exists.

Yes, 2018. I have been using MBs since 2004. So I was very skeptical because of all the bad news I had heard. But since it is a company standard I didn’t have great choice. And I have to say: it is really a great product. It is fast, the screen is amazing, it is silent and the keyboard is just great (for me).

EDIT: the worst MB I had was the white one... the case broke open, the color was yellow-ish in the end

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#116

Post by no1youknowz »

chx wrote: post #93

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” au…

This article is a bit sketchy, but serves my point-ish. They say Volvo is going to release a true self-driving car by 2021. But then it goes on to mention level 4.

Let's pull it back a little and say by 2021, they release level 4.

If any automaker is going to do Level 5 in the snow. It's going to be Volvo. Being a Swedish company (albeit owned by a Chinese firm now), they have a particular track record when it comes to prioritising safety in terrible driving conditions.

I'm pretty sure that they are going to work it out.

[0]: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/26/volvo-self-driving-car-sleep...

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#117

Post by C1sc0cat »

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?

Phones are moving towards commodities even apple found this when the X got push back at $1000 per unit.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#118

Post by rightbyte »

nerdbeere wrote: post #72
reindeerer wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very much a focus and resource allocation problem. Double the number of engineers working on the keyboard and it doesn't happen

…and 9 women are known to bear a child in one month

Adding people to a department actually helps if it's understaffed.

But I guess the keyboard design is a managment problem not a engineer problem.

"The mythical man month" should not be interpreted dogmatically.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#119

Post by zaphirplane »

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 is a very profitable company, with massive cash flow. I would love to know why their laptop lagges in hardware. Seriously can’t they hire 200 people to work on it or on iOS and really crush the competition

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#120

Post by C1sc0cat »

cheeze wrote: post #4

It always seems odd that huge tech giants like this lay off certain sectors. Are they dumping them because they don't have anywhere else that they'd be useful to Apple? Surely recruiting is harder than moving someone laterally in the company.

A automotive engineer isn't going to be much help on ios mac and phones.
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