Surely this must be a hardware focused move? I can't see generative AI benefiting Apples core software. Rather I'd be interested to see what I can do with some specialized, custom hardware on their platform.
Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey
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Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
But what's it for? I can tell what an electric car is for, can you tell me what "generative AI" is for? A car can transport goods and people, really good non-deterministic typeahead is just.. well, I don't know what I'd use it for, do you? EDIT: what I really mean is what makes people think this is a commercially viable thing to spend time and money on? Like, say one of these companies hits some magic jackpot and dis…
> can you tell me what "generative AI" is for? Better keyboard text prediction and power management. A competent Siri.
Even if all it did was improve Siri’s capability to understand requests and add the ability to ask clarifying questions with no other functional improvements, it’d make Siri vastly more useful.
Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey
#53I was always rather puzzled by the car. I can’t see them ever competing even with the small makers like Jaguar or Polestar or Lamborghini. They’re certainly not going to take on Ford or Mazda or Honda. The idea of making the infotainment guts is interesting but I can’t see any carmaker giving up that much control. If they don’t like CarPlay they’d never like full Apple infotainment. Sure Apple could do ADAS stuff, bu…
I’m interested about the Sony/Honda joint venture car (Afeela), and I’d buy an Apple/Toyota joint venture car in a heartbeat.
Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey
#54I wonder if this is connected to the Vision Pro release. That’s another giant hardware fishing project that failed to meet the “vision” of an all-day wearable iPhone. Perhaps it became obvious that the car was in even murkier waters. And to dump some of the employees on image and text generators off whatever self driving computer vision work they were presumably doing before? Interesting choice.
AVP has not failed yet. Saying so today would be akin to stating that the iPhone failed in the fall of 2007. Some did, Steve Ballmer laughed his butt off, convinced that no one sane will ever buy a $500 phone.
I mean the hype around the iPhone was huge. There was obvious need for a phone that "runs OS X" and was part of the already massive iPod ecosystem. It sold itself.
I still don't get the case for a screen you can wear. My phone screen is big enough for most use cases (like posting this comment). If I need to get work done, my laptop is realistically not much larger than the keyboard I'd need to use anyway. The laptop is also cheaper, and I can show what I'm working on to other people without jumping through hoops.
Classic solution in search of a problem.
Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey
#55Can you imagine how expensive that car would've been? Carplay is enough for me, thanks.
Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
But what's it for? I can tell what an electric car is for, can you tell me what "generative AI" is for? A car can transport goods and people, really good non-deterministic typeahead is just.. well, I don't know what I'd use it for, do you? EDIT: what I really mean is what makes people think this is a commercially viable thing to spend time and money on? Like, say one of these companies hits some magic jackpot and dis…
> can you tell me what "generative AI" is for? Better keyboard text prediction and power management. A competent Siri.
Apple already has transformer based text prediction and a model for power management.
How does "generative AI" help ?
Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey
#57Good. This was an idea that never made any sense to me. It’s high overhead/low-margin and requires infrastructure, sales and after-sales support that just aren’t aligned with how Apple does business. It’s one thing to create a new car company (even tho those attempts usually fail), it’s another to purposefully take it on as a business line when your existing business groups prints money and have 40%+ margins. Especia…
> requires infrastructure, sales and after-sales support that just aren’t aligned with how Apple does business
I always thought Apple was far and away the best consumer electronics brand at this part at least. I'm not saying it would directly translate to a car business, but they do have some real retail skill.
Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey
#58I wonder if this is connected to the Vision Pro release. That’s another giant hardware fishing project that failed to meet the “vision” of an all-day wearable iPhone. Perhaps it became obvious that the car was in even murkier waters. And to dump some of the employees on image and text generators off whatever self driving computer vision work they were presumably doing before? Interesting choice.
AVP has not failed yet. Saying so today would be akin to stating that the iPhone failed in the fall of 2007. Some did, Steve Ballmer laughed his butt off, convinced that no one sane will ever buy a $500 phone.
Not that it failed per se, but there were lots of reports that they ended up at a very bulky and compromised headset that was not much different than what Meta was selling when they really wanted AR glasses. Reports also said the executives were unhappy with the final design and that there was political debate if they should launch or fold.
Maybe in a few versions they will have something that could sell a billion units, but they have a lot of work to do to get there.
Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey
#59I was always rather puzzled by the car. I can’t see them ever competing even with the small makers like Jaguar or Polestar or Lamborghini. They’re certainly not going to take on Ford or Mazda or Honda. The idea of making the infotainment guts is interesting but I can’t see any carmaker giving up that much control. If they don’t like CarPlay they’d never like full Apple infotainment. Sure Apple could do ADAS stuff, bu…
To be fair, that was what a lot of people thought about Apple making a cell phone. That they'd never compete with Nokia or Motorola and that US carriers would never give them enough control.
The phone made sense to me because by that point Apple had clearly proven themselves as a consumer electronics company. It’s wasn’t as big a jump and cell phone software was largely junk.
The carrier thing was true, but they could have launched outside the US. Instead they found a carrier desperate enough.
But they’ve never done safety critical stuff like a car. Of highly mechanical stuff like a car. Or things that need something of a dealer network the way a car does (existing Apple stores wouldn’t cut it). And really I’m not sure how much they could add a special “Apple touch” outside infotainment/interior controls compared to luxury automakers.
If they a fully self driving car by 2018 and beat everyone by 7 years maybe. But as time went on it went from little to almost no sense.
I enjoyed following it for that reason. But I never thought it would happen.
Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey
#60I really wonder if Lucid was positioned to be bought by Apple.