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Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey

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521–530 of 992 posts

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

#521

I really hope Apple continues its privacy-first ethos and offers an on-device LLM. It would also be great if they could use Handoff-like technology to let my (almost always nearby, almost always plugged-in) laptop do the thinking, instead of depleting the battery of my phone. I'd surely buy a bunch of HomePod minis if I could tie them into a local LLM.

I wish they'd put a huge FPGA on every device.

I hope they put a laser on every shark.

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

#522
> The two executives told staffers that the project will begin winding down and that many employees on the car team — known as the Special Projects Group, or SPG — will be shifted to the artificial intelligence division under executive John Giannandrea. Those employees will focus on generative AI projects, an increasingly key priority for the company.

This line really excited my PR-spin senses. The set of people working on automobile R&D who are good candidates to work on "generative AI projects" is so small that it's hardly worth mentioning. "Many employees" will be moving to jobs within Apple only insomuch as ~5% of 2000 people is arguably "many" (or whatever the size of the autonomous vehicle software team is).

I understand this line as a large layoff announcement that reads more like an internal team reassignment.

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

#523
post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But they're far too late to the game. Not so sure about that. You need battery and 4 x electric motors to wheels. The idea is much simpler than regular combustion engine car. Less parts that wear out. Idea is actually so simple that all the manufactures compete on putting as much nonsense into cars as possible, insted of making easily replaceable battery and car which would last 50 years and accelerate like Ferrari…

If it's so simple why don't we see regional manufacturers popping everywhere?

During the hayday, we saw new companies come up with new cars all the time!!! And then they slowly went belly up. Part of me thinks that the endless number of regulations prohibited new car companies from entering.

You can import a car from china in a crate that fits on the back of a pickup. But it won’t be legal on roads until it gets things like a DOT approved windshield.

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

#524
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not really the point. Apple succeeded because they applied their strengths, product and user interface design, to what is essentially a small computer. Apple have always developed core products that are essentially a computer. Even though cars increasingly look like laptops on wheels, the actual computer bit is relatively minor and the user interface is mostly the wheel and pedals, not so much the screen.

> Even though cars increasingly look like laptops on wheels, the actual computer bit is relatively minor and the user interface is mostly the wheel and pedals, not so much the screen.

Ha, it seems like that to you because you are obviously a car person! For someone like me ideal Apple car would be something without any kind of wheels or pedals. Instead, I should be able to crawl drunk into it, mumble "Siri, take me home" and pass out snoring loudly on the back seat. I guess several years ago when it seemed that (true) self-driving cars are just around the corner Apple had something similar in mind.

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

#525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SMOB (simply matter of bytes) as they say. Will they finally invest in AI software? My take from this announcement is that they will. Dedicated silicon with a dedicated hardware stack shouldn't be so hard for Apple. They can throw considerable resource at the problem.

It would be great to see, if they pull it off. I suspect that Apple's desire for control and curation (as well as limited liability) will prevent them from making an effective "one size fits all" model, though. Considering that local AI isn't a paid service or a system-seller, it makes more sense for Apple to double-down on software support rather than trying to Sherlock the world with their own model. Time will tell…

I think they'll be training-agnostic (will use whomever's hardware gets it done) but will optimize their silicon and hardware stack for running models locally. This is VERY EARLY days of use-facing AI (besides the Nvidia bubble, which is late-days)

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

#526
post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s some Apple fan boy cope.

Nope, just seen it in action over and over. No one thought they would do VR and they did. No one thought they would compete with Netflix and their movies are winning awards now. No one thought they would cannibalize the iPod with a phone and they did. The state of US tech companies is that they will also go into new markets. When Netflix came out, did you really think Amazon and Apple would get into that market? To A…

> No one thought they would do VR and they did

What has this VR achieved? Nothing so far.

Cannibalising your own product isn’t an achievement

They have never shipped a large physical product or anything mechanical in the entire history of the company, this is outright delusional.

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

#527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the way they could compete is by having on-device handle a limit universe of queries, and then use some souped-up Siri for the rest. Currently iPhones can do some Siri commands even when offline, for example.

Hell even the most recent Apple Watch does some Siri commands, including voice to text, on device. Apple is certainly pushing low power on device processing with their own custom chips (S9 on the watch I believe).

Yep, I could totally see them enabling this only on Pro-level iPhones, for example. This would presumably be because Pro devices could have different chips that are designed to handle these specific tasks, as well as having larger batteries.

I expect there will be a lot of iPhone upgrades this fall, as buyers will finally see a difference between their 1-3 year old device and a new iPhone.

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

#528
post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But they're far too late to the game. Not so sure about that. You need battery and 4 x electric motors to wheels. The idea is much simpler than regular combustion engine car. Less parts that wear out. Idea is actually so simple that all the manufactures compete on putting as much nonsense into cars as possible, insted of making easily replaceable battery and car which would last 50 years and accelerate like Ferrari…

If it's so simple why don't we see regional manufacturers popping everywhere?

We do. Rivian(illinois), Fiskar (Los angeles), VINFast (vietnam), 20 chinese brands, Polestar (china), Lucid (saudi arabia), Canoo, Rimac (balkans).

When was the last time a new car company was started, pre-EV?

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

#529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh, this I could also see. Apple hates to partner with others, for the most part, which is why I don’t think that happened. And some of that is for good reason. The awfulness of the Motorola Rokr is what convinced Steve Jobs that Apple had to fully own and control the iPhone. And Apple is showing off parts of Car Play that could be fully integrated by manufacturers in a much deeper way, assuming they want to give up…

They wouldn't have needed to partner; they could have bought a small car manufacturer like Polestar outright.

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

#530
post #29
post #19

I 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.

A connected PDA was always a thing. Palm/3Com made phones. HP/Compaq made iPaq phones. Sharp made their Zaurus. The were OEM phones you could get branded. The Qt guys had their Trolltech phone.

Everyone wanted to see what phone software developed by an actual computer company who knew software would look like. Everyone and their brother wanted to see what an iPod phone would look like.

The Apple phone was perhaps the most anticipated device in years. What surprised people wasn't that they released one, it was that they went all in on a capacitive touch screen, which was novel tech, and that it didn't have real mobile data or native apps. There was this long song and dance about how apps were to be replaced by web pages but people were still skeptical.

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