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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

#371

Post by moooo99 »

bradgessler wrote: post #263
itronitron wrote: post #249

It's shocking/hilarious how much/many people believe that there are any economic prospects in generative AI. By definition, if something is generated by an AI then it's worthless if for no other reason than supply and demand. There's also a reason it's called a singularity, it sucks everything in that touches it but otherwise has very little influence on anything else.

Have you tried talking to Siri? Compare that to ChatGPT and you'll see that it's much better. The predictive nature of LLMs are perfect for voice assistant use cases, which when connected to "plugins" means we'll all have our own personal assistants. That's worth something.

> The predictive nature of LLMs are perfect for voice assistant use cases

But people in general don't seem to be interested in voice assistants in general. They were a huge hype when you basically had to manually uncheck boxes to not accidentially order an Amazon Echo, etc, but as quick as the hype was there it was gone. To my knowledge Amazon has yet to make any kind of substantial revenue with Alexa stuff.

With LLMs I would expect this to be even more of an issue given how costly the inferencing alone is when we're talking about an LLM. And yes, the utility will likely increase substantially with the adoption of LLMs as opposed to previous language processing techniques, but I don't think this will outweigh the disinterest in the overall technology.

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

#372

Post by psygn89 »

sydbarrett74 wrote: post #240
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…

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.

And when it does bear fruit, many big tech companies come to copy or purchase it only to have it wither in some corner of their company.

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

#373

Post by _ea1k »

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…

The problem is that the companies that can do that are rarely also the company's that are willing to do the hard work of productionizing those moonshots. Lots of people have nice salaries and jobs that depend on pumping out ideas and PoCs, but few have a clear dependence on getting it to market.

But the really big stuff all requires working like your future depends on it. They can't do that, so they usually just end up with laundry lists of fancy PoCs.

Even when they work, the rollouts can be glacial at best (eg, Waymo).

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

#374

Post by numpad0 »

gambiting wrote: post #181
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…

The only way it could possibly work was always as an apple branded model under the umbrella of another manufacturer, with their support and dealership network. Think polestar being its own brand but using Volvo workshops for servicing and support, as well as using a lot of Volvo parts internally. I can imagine an Apple car that's just a really fancy version of an existing car, with their own infotainment.

I suspect Ioniq 5 and 6 were supposed to be those models, up until Hyundai exec leaked negotiations to media presumably thinking it'll somehow give them advantages. Timelines match up.

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

#375

Post by __loam »

itronitron wrote: post #249

It's shocking/hilarious how much/many people believe that there are any economic prospects in generative AI. By definition, if something is generated by an AI then it's worthless if for no other reason than supply and demand. There's also a reason it's called a singularity, it sucks everything in that touches it but otherwise has very little influence on anything else.

Could not have said it better myself.

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

#377

Post by complianceowl »

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…

> Time will only tell.

Tim will only tell.

...I'll walk myself out now.

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

#378

Post by vikramkr »

rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #357
tippytippytango wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Healthcare is still on the table.

Healthcare is even more heavily regulated than the auto industry. Generally, the closer you are to "people will die if this code has a bug," the more regulated the industry. People that don't work in a heavily regulated space vastly underestimate the constraints. It's hard enough to create a product that's beautiful and works well at a price point that the market will bear, but it's often near-impossible to do all th…

And apple successfully got wearable health monitoring in their watch to be a thing and got 510(k) clearance as a class 2 medical device etc. They're already big players in health even if not marketed that way.

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

#379

Post by starluz »

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…

If jobs was still around I’d be as curious as you. Under cook I have no faith

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

#380

Post by 015a »

itronitron wrote: post #249

It's shocking/hilarious how much/many people believe that there are any economic prospects in generative AI. By definition, if something is generated by an AI then it's worthless if for no other reason than supply and demand. There's also a reason it's called a singularity, it sucks everything in that touches it but otherwise has very little influence on anything else.

Sure the AI input/output itself doesn't have a ton of value. Tell that to Microsoft and Google, who seem to be obsessed with chat interfaces while lacking any creativity as to where else the technology can be deployed.

Apple's key strength is Integration. If their AI play is different and better, this is why it will be so. When Samsung puts AI in their phones, its a sparkles-and-magic button in an action bar that pops up a list of actions that might as well be chat prompts. Microsoft releases 365 Copilot and its a chat sidebar to the normal Office apps. There's real opportunity to integrate AI more deeply into the OS and the actions users take when using the OS.

I don't know what form that takes; that's Apple's job to figure out. I think WWDC this year is when we'll be presented their vision (ha) on how it fits together. I think: If it looks a lot like the Galaxy AI event, then your take is right and I immediately become bearish on AI and honestly bearish on Apple's future among the ultra-high-value companies of the US. But, I'm leaning toward feeling that they're going to surprise us, and I'd put money on the outcome that WWDC represents an "iPhone Moment" for AI, leaving a lot of organizations scrambling to understand how their product fits into Apple's world and not the other way around. But, we'll see.

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