"(nearly)"
Apple Car: Bad Idea After All
21–30 of 407 posts
Re: Apple Car: Bad Idea After All
#22A full Apple Car has always seemed unrealistic to me. Cars are a fundamentally different industry then consumer electronics and software. Apple would be starting from scratch, and facing a lot of entrenched competition with huge budgets and infrastructure. And for what? What could Apple do that GM, Toyota, or Tesla couldn't? Maybe a better UX for the dashboard. And while many car UXs are absolutely terrible, improvin…
They already showed off giant carplay updates at WWDC this year. They showed a car where the entire dash was a giant wide screen, where it even handled the speedometer, odometer, fuel level, etc
https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/06/09/apples-2023-carpl...
Re: Apple Car: Bad Idea After All
#23Given the number of times I've seen a reported, verified bug in OS X be "fixed" by hiding the bug from the public tracker and marking it "will not fix," I would have a hard time ever trusting a car made by Apple.
Apple also makes their products to be disposable, seemingly as part of the culture, while a well-made electric car can run to a million miles over 50+ years. That's a very different build philosophy.
The key to me is that Apple presents the image of perfect fit and finish--beyond that their products are not problematic in a lot of ways (ability to modify them, or expand them, or extend them in ways that Apple doesn't approve of...). Some of their tech is cool, don't get me wrong. But it's far from perfect.
I would imagine an Apple car that only supports Apple Maps, Apple Music/Podcasts, and Siri and will only connect to iOS devices...and that costs twice as much as the Tesla for the base model, and more if you want a reasonable range. Pandora? Spotify? Waze? Meh. Sorry. Oh, and don't forget monthly fees for navigation; probably more like the $36/month of the Audi EV than the free navigation for the Tesla.
I'm sure there's a market for it. There are a lot of people who love Apple and who have money.
Re: Apple Car: Bad Idea After All
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Once autonomous technology becomes mainstream, UX becomes the differentiating factor. I think Apple would have a lot to offer.
The winds don't seem to be blowing in the direction of true autonomous driving through. The hype cycle seems to have died down and the sense of reality is setting in.
Capitulation on “full self driving” is here. Most manufacturers will be lucky to get level 3 automation by the end of the decade
Re: Apple Car: Bad Idea After All
#25I don't even think about buying cars less than 10 years old or so. I have actually had better luck doing this than when I used to buy cars new or nearly-new. It weeds out the lemons and the owners who don't take care of their cars.
Let someone else take the depreciation and find out how they hold up in the long term. Does Apple have any history of supporting its hardware for that long?
Re: Apple Car: Bad Idea After All
#26So I've always wondered if Apple actually building a 'car' was ever really the goal. It seems like a skunkworks where they try crazy things and then incorporate into Carplay.
Future seems to be ever expanding Carplay support. I use it and probably would not buy another car that did not have it integrated. I imagine car manufacturers are somewhat tired of always building HUDs and in vehicle control systems. So gradually standardizing on a way to take all the displays/touchscreens in a vehicle and let them be run by Carplay seems like the future. Eventually, they can start handing more and more of the software side (not their specialty) off to people cellphones via some interface, particularly around media.
As the ubiquiti of the M1/M2 type chip is found in all of our pockets (embedded ML silicon), the car companies will no longer have to actually embed it in a vehicle as an add on. Plugging in your phone with an M1/M2 type chip will unlock Siri or similar AI functionality in the vehicle. Sure it will drive without it, just like it does now, but it wont be 'cool' and have all the assist, nav, and media functionality everyone wants.
Re: Apple Car: Bad Idea After All
#27The competitive advantages of Apple are a strong brand, a huge stack of cash, world-class software and silicon engineers and second-to-none operations to build and sell millions of high-tech devices.
They can make a car if they want to make a car. They could also make nice planes and boats...
The question is, how competitive can they be in this market?
I think they are too fat.
Re: Apple Car: Bad Idea After All
#28A suggestion for Apple.
1. Apple is worth $2.44 trillion USD; pay off the whole $240 billion USD debt owed by the Philippines.
2. Establish Apple HQ facilities in the Philippines and employ the vast majority of the country's talented software engineers there.
3. Take advantage of the cheap labour, low costs, and high standard of living to ride the wave of unending profit.
This is how you turn things around and switch the lightbulb.
Re: Apple Car: Bad Idea After All
#29Given the number of times I've seen a reported, verified bug in OS X be "fixed" by hiding the bug from the public tracker and marking it "will not fix," I would have a hard time ever trusting a car made by Apple. Apple also makes their products to be disposable, seemingly as part of the culture, while a well-made electric car can run to a million miles over 50+ years. That's a very different build philosophy. The key…
The latest iPhone reversed course on the disposability piece a little bit, making it arguably the most repairable iPhone ever.
Re: Apple Car: Bad Idea After All
#30So I've always wondered if Apple actually building a 'car' was ever really the goal. It seems like a skunkworks where they try crazy things and then incorporate into Carplay. Future seems to be ever expanding Carplay support. I use it and probably would not buy another car that did not have it integrated. I imagine car manufacturers are somewhat tired of always building HUDs and in vehicle control systems. So gradual…
Seeing how boring Carplay has been so far I’d have my doubts about skunkworks. That said it makes sense they might be working on exclusive operating system of sorts. The way car systems (100s of suppliers and their implementation) work nowadays is insane.