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Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey

bloomberg.com

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Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey

#231

Post by xcv123 »

chx wrote: post #212
paxys wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple is a best-in-class second mover. Apple's biggest successes have come from being the first mover in a brand new space. Apple II, Macintosh, iPod, iPhone, iPad, Airpods, Watch were all category defining rather than "me too" products. In fact Apple is terrible at throwing its hat into an already crowded space, and doubly so when it comes to software.

Really? really ? you think when the iPhone came out the space was not crowded? You think they defined the category? Jobs himself have put up a number of smartphones in his 2007 presentation. Yes, the iPhone was far, very far better but it was definitely not a first. Same thing with the iPod vs Diamond Rio MP3 layers. As for the Watch, gosh, I do not even know where to start. Pebble Kickstarter two years before that?…

> the iPhone was far, very far better

It wasn't that far ahead when it first launched. Very basic functionality. But a few versions later it was the end of Nokia and Blackberry.

https://www.mobilegazette.com/2007-review-07x12x12.htm

"No handset polarised opinions during 2007 more than the Apple iPhone. Although it has many good points, the list of bad points is equally impressive. The iPhone lacks 3G, the camera is only two megapixels and lacks autofocus and flash, you cannot send MMS messages, third party applications are not allowed, the battery is not replaceable and it is absurdly expensive."

Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey

#232

Post by RealityVoid »

vineyardmike wrote: post #174
zer00eyz wrote: post #109

Earlier 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…

I am incredibly jealous of you guys living in a place where you just bump into random people at coffeeshops that happen to work on incredibly interesting things. The density of talent must be amazing.

Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey

#233

Post by chucke1992 »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #185
dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #147

So Apple pivots from one thing that it doesn't have a natural advantage with to another. Apple has gone from leading the industry to increasingly desperate and huge "me too" developments that they've failed at. AI, generative or otherwise, is going to be their next failure. To say AI moves fast is a serious understatement. I predict that which is white hot now (LLMs) will be a blind alley long left behind in a year o…

Apple had a huge lead on this with Siri, and then let it stagnate - actually devolve - instead of throwing money at it to develop it further. My guess is they'll try to turn VisionPro into some kind of generative gaming system. Text/image is close to being a solved problem, video is on its way but still not great. Both will be impossible to beat from a cold-ish start. I'm not convinced Apple has the hire-power to att…

The problem with Siri (and with Alexa) is that Apple was not able to provide enough value for people to make it mainstream. Alexa at least worked for home appliances but using Siri for Macbook or iPhone? Why? Not to mention Apple was not able to monetize it.

Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey

#234

Post by thefourthchime »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #185
dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #147

So Apple pivots from one thing that it doesn't have a natural advantage with to another. Apple has gone from leading the industry to increasingly desperate and huge "me too" developments that they've failed at. AI, generative or otherwise, is going to be their next failure. To say AI moves fast is a serious understatement. I predict that which is white hot now (LLMs) will be a blind alley long left behind in a year o…

Apple had a huge lead on this with Siri, and then let it stagnate - actually devolve - instead of throwing money at it to develop it further. My guess is they'll try to turn VisionPro into some kind of generative gaming system. Text/image is close to being a solved problem, video is on its way but still not great. Both will be impossible to beat from a cold-ish start. I'm not convinced Apple has the hire-power to att…

Siri being terrible is thrown around thoughtlessly, you should try it. It's actually pretty good these days. It's shocking how many things it can respond with actual answers.

Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey

#235

Post by tippytippytango »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #193
filmgirlcw wrote: post #18

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. 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…

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? ...?

Healthcare is still on the table.

Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey

#236

Post by MBCook »

nradov wrote: post #137
closewith wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Car manufacturers must be coming around on CarPlay. I made a purchasing decision largely because one of the car suitable cars supported wireless CarPlay.

Tesla has never supported Apple CarPlay and their sales keep rising. GM recently dropped CarPlay from new models so we'll see how that impacts sales. https://www.motortrend.com/news/general-motors-removing-appl...

In my mind Tesla is sort of special because they offered something no one else did. For a long time the only other electric cars were the volt/bolt and the leaf. None of those are performance cars in the slightest.

As other brands get more and more popular in the US I wonder if the CarPlay issue will really start to hurt them. But we won’t know for a while.

I’m certainly very curious to see what happens since GM was dumb enough to remove CarPlay. I expect that’s gonna hurt. But maybe I’m wrong.

Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey

#237

Post by legitster »

> Apple cancels work on electric car

Phew. Probably a good idea.

>... shifts team to generative AI

Actually, I think I would rather them work on an electric car.

I know a car was not a realistic idea, but I'll say it: Apple's software stinks. They used to take bold risks with hardware, but this is going to be another dollar-store ripoff of another popular product.

Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey

#238

Post by [deleted] »

vineyardmike wrote: post #174
zer00eyz wrote: post #109

Earlier 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…

[deleted]

Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey

#239

Post by chucke1992 »

init2null wrote: post #68
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple seems so far behind in generative AI Apple is a best-in-class second mover. With the clusterfuck that has been generative AI (from OpenAI’s corporate drama to Google renaming and reörganizing their products every fifteen minutes) this seems prescient, with the only savvy player so far being Microsoft.

I feel Microsoft's desperation to put LLM's into every product suggests mismanagement. Same as Microsoft's past efforts to Bing everything. Adobe seems to be the only one with an empowered product team that's consistently finding sensible and profitable uses for machine learning.

It is hilarious that people are trying to portray MSFT's moves in AI as "desperate" lol

Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey

#240

Post by sydbarrett74 »

zer00eyz wrote: post #109
filmgirlcw wrote: post #18

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. 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…

>>> 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…

When Ma Bell existed, Wall Street wasn't as myopic and short-termist. The stock market tolerated private-sector R&D because it mostly consisted of investors rather than speculators. These days, if something doesn't bear immediate fruit, the Masters of the Universe want no part of it.
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