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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

#311

Post by soylentcola »

paxys wrote: post #111
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.

> 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.

These are all classes of device where existing options hashed out many of the growing pains before Apple released something more polished or attractive to buyers - the definition of second-mover.

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

#312

Post by xcv123 »

Retr0id wrote: post #266
xcv123 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 o…

People seem to forget that on launch, the iPhone was basically a feature phone.

I owned a Blackberry in 2007 and thought the new iPhone was trash.

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

#313

Post by internetter »

mdhb wrote: post #189
internetter wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For all Apple's flaws, I trust that they could disrupt the AI industry once they enter it. Their decisions are all highly calculated, and they employee vast swaths of researchers. I would not be surprised if they entered the market with a well functioning local LLM

Have you actually used Siri? They are absolutely garbage at anything even remotely resembling the basics of AI/LLM related after spending a decade on it.

Obviously, they haven't invested any money into it (well, apparently they will for iOS 17). When Apple does invest money, however, which they seem to be doing now, there are usually impressive results. Take the M1, for instance.

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

#314

Post by tengbretson »

jakeinspace wrote: post #122
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at the market cap of Ferrari, it's not crazy why Apple was considering this. They could maybe sell 4k cars a year and increase their market cap by $100B (~3.5%). You could potentially have some shop hand build them and not have crazy cap-ex or infrastructure. I don't think Apple was planning to take on Tesla in the mass market - that would've been a pretty strange move, I agree.

I’m guessing that most of Ferrari’s market value comes from the brand compared to future revenue or IP. Apple is just not that elite of a brand, I don’t see how selling million-dollar vehicles would significantly change their brand (assuming an Apple logo hood ornament).

What companies serve the market segments above Apple's offerings in the phone, laptop, tablet and VR categories?

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

#315

Post by smoldesu »

samatman wrote: post #276
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 has built-in hardware for neural networks in every chip they produce. That's a natural advantage. Your post contains a whole lot of what you want to see, rather than an analysis of the available facts.

In a lot of Apple's hardware, the fastest way to inference is to ignore the built-in Neural hardware and use Metal Compute Shaders. Suffice to say that simply shipping dedicated silicon is not equivalent to accelerating everything well, or supporting it upstream.

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

#316

Post by khokhol »

epistasis wrote: post #272
boznz wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I am so happy I live in a place where this doesn't happen.

Interesting, but I can't understand why that makes you happy. What benefit does it bring you?

The benefit of being a part of the actual human world, where real people live. Where not essentially everyone is obsessed with their careers and/or comparative wealth. That sort of thing.

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

#317

Post by ProfessorLayton »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #293
ProfessorLayton wrote: post #168

To be honest, I'm not sure what Apple could've brought to the table in regards to making an electric car. Apple's hardware design philosophies[1] don't really align with what consumers want in a car. Apple being less minimalistic than a Tesla — which is already at an extreme — is a hard sell. [1] Examples of what I mean: - Cars use faux materials all the time for cost and weight purposes, or even just looks (i.e. fak…

>- Apple design in general has lost a lot of it's soul. They used to be more fun and whimsy, just look at iMac designs of the past. The Cyber truck, love it or hate it, is not boring. Everything apple sells is a glass and metal slab, or as close as possible to it. The Cybertruck is also a glass and metal slab.

a fun and whimsical one.

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

#318

Post by samstave »

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…

you're (mostly not) wrong.

If anything of !35 years of cyberpunk input - and output building shit that spies on you:

Apple is Ono-Sendai and your iPhone is your deck. - the real battle is going to be how much agency does a Human Being have over all PII - all their data?

Your jack-in is your screen. Your data is your ID. But, who are YOU?

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

#319

Post by tptacek »

epistasis wrote: post #272
boznz wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I am so happy I live in a place where this doesn't happen.

Interesting, but I can't understand why that makes you happy. What benefit does it bring you?

It can be alienating to move through the world in spaces where your work is everywhere you go. It's a thing I appreciated moving from San Francisco back to the midwest. Every once in awhile, I bump into someone with a Github sticker or whatever, and it's a happy surprise, but for the most part the world I inhabit has nothing to do with my work. Everyone has different things to talk about.

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

#320

Post by ksherlock »

throwaway11460 wrote: post #173
klik99 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I absolutely believe that Apple can bring something to car industry - I remember Elon once said that Teslas hidden strength that no other car manufacturer caught on to was treating the car as technology akin to an iPhone with incremental updates and improvements pushed over the air. I've owned a Model X for a few years and I see that approach but don't think Tesla has perfected it. Apple has the potential to in…

That seems wrong. My brakes work with both batteries disconnected, though I have to push very hard. Audi made in 2014.

With power brakes, there's a brake booster (usually vacuum powered) which applies most of the force. When the engine is off (or if you have a broken brake booster) braking is entirely on you.
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