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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

#631

Post by asadotzler »

chucke1992 wrote: post #262
stonogo wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They absolutely did. Microsoft was late to web and now we have O365, Azure, etc. I'd say, however, that this is less FOMO and more employee-retention. A team shifting from electric cars to generative AI sounds more like a directionless hype squad where you park flight risks who can still add value to other departments while they play with the newest shiny.

The issue with MSFT is they missed a lot during the era when they had to deal with regulators. It took away basically their whole decade starting from early 2000s.

It was because they were breaking the law, got found guilty, and settled with the DOJ agreeing to that decade of dealing with regulators enforcing a Microsoft authored consent decree.

And thank god their hands were tied for decade so others could come up and we weren't all stuck with MS for another decade or longer.

Can we do that to Google and Apple now?

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

#632

Post by microtherion »

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #317
lotsofpulp wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>- 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.

To me, it looks edgy for edginess' sake. In comparison, the Canoo vehicles look like they were actually designed with purpose.

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

#633

Post by johnnyanmac »

concinds wrote: post #591
dartos wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s some Apple fan boy cope.

It's more "fuzzy thinking" than fanboy cope. Despite all the glittery rhetoric that "a car is just a computer on wheels", this always seemed like a bizarre move for Apple and I've never seen anyone explain what the strategic vision was supposed to be. Even with full lv5 autonomy, what's Apple's unique twist? Big monitors for watching TV+ in the car? That wouldn't have been remotely enough. I wish we could read the in…

>Even with full lv5 autonomy, what's Apple's unique twist?

Same as the rest of apples brand: "it just works". The seemless, polished integration of their products gave them a devoted fanbase that pays a huge premium over competition.

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

#634

Post by microtherion »

Raptor22 wrote: post #539
andrewia wrote: post #267

I know somebody on the project. The cancellation makes sense, they were years from release and every new VP pivoted the project and lost progress. If they had committed to their original project (a bus) or the first revision (a very high-end car) they could have released on a timely schedule. But they're far too late to the game.

> original project (a bus) This is actually insane to me. Like bonkers, even. The MBA types are surely the source of that idea. From a brand perspective, the only car that ever truly made sense for Apple to make was something at least resembling a supercar. They could have made do with a Telsa Model S kind of car perhaps, but I'm shocked that a brand-conscious company like Apple thought a bus was the best bet as an i…

For Apple to make a bus would have been extremely poetic, given that Steve Jobs sold his VW Bus to get the funds to start Apple in the first place: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/steve-jobs-sold-volkswagen-bu...

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

#635

Post by bcherry »

maxerickson wrote: post #561
pquki4 wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is: does Apple actually need so many people working on GenAI? Would a team with 300 people be twice as good as a team with 150 people for what Apple is going to release as products? I wouldn't be surprised if Apple is going to lay off most of them.

It doesn't need to be twice as good, it needs to generate more net income.

"net income" may be a bit simplistic for the moment, but agreed that it doesn't need to be twice as good. it simply needs to be the best. just because the marginal value of adding people goes down, doesn't mean you shouldn't keep adding them.

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

#636

Post by asadotzler »

hprotagonist wrote: post #192
skmurphy wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a highly regulated product, something they have no experience with.

they're growing experience with regulated markets -- but with a privacy/medtech slant. Of the two, I'd probably rather fight with the FDA versus the NTSB, though.

the thing about regulation is you don't get good at it. You get good at a specific area of regulation but that rarely transfers to some entirely different set of regulations from different authorities in different places.

Saying "they're getting good at regulation" is like saying a paleontologist is "getting good at science". Sure some concepts cross, but actual understanding and competence needed to do the new job at hand don't.

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

#637

Post by type0 »

xorcist wrote: post #530
eli wrote: 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.

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…

> There was this long song and dance about how apps were to be replaced by web pages

Yeah and the first iPhones were terrible if you didn't jailbreak them

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

#638

Post by dang »

AeroNotix wrote: post #67
MBCook wrote: 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…

[flagged]

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

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

#639

Post by type0 »

mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #407
eli wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that a car is on a different scale, but I think it's only in hindsight that a phone is obviously just a computer and that the user interface is important part.

Do you really not see how a car is a much greater departure from their core expertise than the iphone? They were already making handheld electronic devices well before the iPhone. And they were making computers pretty much for the whole history of the company. Ipod touch was a natural evolution of the ipod and the iphone was basically just an incremental improvement on the ipod touch. The closest thing they've made t…

> wheels for the mac pro

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MX572ZM/A/apple-mac-pro-w...

700 bucks, now just imagine what one would have to pay for the wheels on your shiny new applecar

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

#640

Post by mercutio2 »

margalabargala wrote: post #495
sneak wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Apple Car R&D project is (or, I suppose, was) absolutely confidential. I am sure Apple has reprimanded or fired people for less.

Fired people for less than what? What part of it is confidential? Its existence? Obviously not. The fact that it uses SLAM? Not confidential, of course it does. That a person was transferred from that to the Vision Pro? Probably also on their linkedin page. Nothing that OP described this person as saying sounds "stupid" or confidential. Sure, maybe they also said something that was confidential in addition to what wa…

Apple employees most certainly cannot talk publicly about unreleased products. Including loudly discussing their roles in restaurants.
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