Sounds like Apple is in panic mode and FOMO because they are late to the GPT game.
Similar cases didn't work out for MS
Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey
201–210 of 992 posts
Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ferrari's value is driven more by merchandising than by car sales. Even if a hypothetical Apple car did well, that wouldn't drive billions in sales of Apple branded jackets, hats, luggage, shot glasses, etc.
Ironically this was something Apple used to be good at but they killed off all the fun things with apple branding on them, now all you get is two campus exclusive shirt designs. I'd love some retro apple "lifestyle" gear, throwback porsche racing jacket would be clutch right now with the yoots
I never understood why each of the flagship Apple stores don’t have custom merch.
I’ll admit that I’ve stopped at plenty of Apple stores while traveling, simply because they’re nearby. They’re usually in very nice locations for tourists (5th av, grand central station, etc) and I can totally see them dramatically improving brand appeal and catering to fanboys with localized tee shirts or Apple Watch bands or polishing cloths or any number of other gimmicks.
Oh and their retro stuff would sell out in an instant. Their 80s stuff was cool.
Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey
#203"I drive an Apple" sounds so odd.
Richard Scarry's Lowly Worm character drives one. He was ahead of his time.
Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey
#204Tesla is already the Apple of cars. Designed in California. Capacitive touchscreen instead of buttons. Vertical integration. Minimalist hardware design. Focus on software. Over the air updates. Custom SoC. When Apple did all this in phones it was unique. There was no Tesla of phones. But there is a Tesla of cars and it's tough to imagine what unique thing Apple could bring to the market.
Imagine driving a Tesla and then saying they have Apple-like focus on software.
Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
An Apple that doesn't attempt something because it's hard is an Apple that is going to fade. There aren't many trillion dollar markets; I think attempting to break into cars was probably the most accessible of the trillion dollar markets to Apple. What were the alternatives? Oil? Real Estate? ...?
A self-driving car is not something that Apple has any relevant expertise at building. They can't even make siri work well. They had zero hope to make a self-driving car.
That's far from true. They have world class expertise in design and supply chain management. That would transfer over to the car market a lot easier than it would to pretty much any other trillion dollar market.
Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey
#206I wish they would get into medical devices, especially for consumers. Apple is really good at making interfaces for technology. Imagine an Apple version of a CPAP or a diabetes sugar monitor/artificial pancreas. Hopefully some of the SPG group was/is/will be working on this.
Same here. I think Apple Watch is their best product, and it has a lot of potential as a biomarker monitor, e.g. to measure insulin.
Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>> Good. 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. Apple, in a twist of fate, is in the same position that AT&T was when it started Bell Labs, and in the same place as Xerox was when it started Parc. The history of Parc and Apple is well known, the early history of u…
Embarrassingly, I was eves dropping on a (loud) woman in a coffee shop who worked on the Apple Car project. She did SLAM work. I was evesdropping because that was a core part of my thesis and I was curious. She told her dining partner she was moved to the Vision Pro team to build the inside-out tracking. Research for the sake of research sometimes pays off. Who knows if this product will recoup the billions spent on…
There was a recent YC podcast about Vision Pro where SLAM and the overlap with autonomous vehicles was explained.
Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey
#208Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
I was going to say. If anyone knows how to quickly create and expand a network of dealerships and post-sales support, it's Apple. They literally wrote the book on this with computers and phones and all their accessories.
They didn’t though. They piggybacked off of the existing network of phone carriers. They did slowly build out Apple Stores. But they aren’t nearly as ubiquitous as resellers and carriers for selling devices
Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a current owner of a BMW 5 series, buying anything non-electric for the price of an EV sounds ludicrous to me. The moment your warranty expires, BMW takes ownership of your wallet and never lets go, and there’s _a lot_ of expensive maintenance and repairs you need to do. I know they also make EVs, but just based on my current experience with their dealers buying anything from BMW would be insanity. Whoever overhau…
A friend used to drive an M3, so I’ve heard plenty about their pricing and how often parts had to be air-shipped. My point was simply that I don’t think an Apple car would sell for a notably different price than other premium brands.
Agree, repairing a recent-gen out of warranty MacBook at Apple is nearly as expensive as servicing a car. Why wouldn't Apple want those margins from premium cars as well?