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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

#691

Post by ericlewis »

rezonant wrote: post #679
MBCook wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The phone made sense to me because by that point Apple had clearly proven themselves as a consumer electronics company. It’s wasn’t as big a jump and cell phone software was largely junk. The carrier thing was true, but they could have launched outside the US. Instead they found a carrier desperate enough. But they’ve never done safety critical stuff like a car. Of highly mechanical stuff like a car. Or things that n…

> The carrier thing was true, but they could have launched outside the US. Instead they found a carrier desperate enough. The carrier the iPhone launched with in the US was AT&T. While they were neck in neck with Verizon at the time, AT&T had the technical majority of the market. How were they desperate?

Actually, it was Cingular, which got purchased by ATT (I think)

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

#692

Post by rezonant »

vel0city wrote: post #574
theturtletalks wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does Apple‘s walled garden have to do with bluetooth headphones? Now, look at AirPods, simple bluetooth headphones, with tight integration with iOS. I was the one ridiculing Apple for even entering this market and I thought they looked dumb. Sony XMs looked way better. Now headphones are a sizable market for Apple. So many of my friends are awaiting the refreshed AirPods Max. The same people that said they would…

> simple bluetooth headphones That's the thing. With other Apple devices, they're not simple bluetooth headphones. They have added features and functionality that only really work with other Apple products due to their proprietary protocols on top of regular Bluetooth. _No_ other Bluetooth headphones can work quite like Airpods do, because of the walled garden. So, you have your expensive Apple headphones that only r…

> Are there really features that Apple is going to bake into their cars to ensure it only really gets those features for Apple users?

Uh yes, of course. I would be highly surprised if there weren't. That's Apple's MO.

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

#693

Post by skullone »

crazygringo wrote: post #688
skullone wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They only have like 2% of the PC/laptop market, so not many people think they're that attractive. I like my M1 MacBook itself, but hate the aluminum chassis. I find it brutally garish, sharp and uncomfortable (hurts to type on, hurts my wrists where they rest on a sharp edge, so it's basically a desktop with an attached keyboard and mouse)

It's fine that you don't like it, but it's not garish. That's just not what the word means. MacBooks are literally the opposite of that: adjective gar· ish | \ ˈger-ish \ Definition 1 : clothed in vivid colors //a garish clown 2 a : excessively or disturbingly vivid //garish colors //garish imagery b : offensively or distressingly bright : GLARING 3 : tastelessly showy : FLASHY //garish neon signs https://www.merriam…

Apologies then, I understood it to mean tasteless, not necesarrily bright or colorful.

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

#694

Post by cgh »

imoverclocked wrote: post #669
ein0p wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doubt it. I think good ones can be made, it’s just that nobody gives a shit, including most of the buyers.

“Good” is subjective. My idea of a good car is something that can get me from A-B, can hold dogs and be cleaned up easily, can tow a few thousand pounds in a pinch, doesn’t get stuck in the steep and muddy hills around my house, doesn’t break the bank, and it would be nice if it didn’t spy on me and have a giant shiny console in my field of view.

2010 Subaru Forester or equivalent.

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

#695

Post by stephen_g »

skullone wrote: post #689
truculent wrote: post #681

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Memoji are, what, 6 years old now?

My point exactly. It is such a locked down platform, that I cannot for the life of me understand why people fawn over iphones. They were first to market, but market mover advantage is gone, Apple has not made a good iphone value proposition in years. Especially if you hold it wrong.

“Hold it wrong” was an antenna issue on the iPhone 4, released in 2010 and discontinued more than 10 years ago in 2013. Might be time to move on from that one…

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

#696

Post by nemothekid »

skullone wrote: post #689
truculent wrote: post #681

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Memoji are, what, 6 years old now?

My point exactly. It is such a locked down platform, that I cannot for the life of me understand why people fawn over iphones. They were first to market, but market mover advantage is gone, Apple has not made a good iphone value proposition in years. Especially if you hold it wrong.

Apple was first to which market? There used to be a time when it was the Apple fanboys that claimed Apple was first to market.

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

#697

Post by [deleted] »

evan_ wrote: post #490

If I were running a successful company I would stay as far away from selling cars as possible- it can't imagine how bad it is for PR (not to mention your psyche) to suddenly have "Family killed by drunk driver" headlines with a giant color picture of your flagship product, blood-stained and mangled below it.

[deleted]

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

#698

Post by Johnny555 »

skullone wrote: post #677
willbw wrote: post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone accuse anything Apple made of being garish.

They only have like 2% of the PC/laptop market, so not many people think they're that attractive. I like my M1 MacBook itself, but hate the aluminum chassis. I find it brutally garish, sharp and uncomfortable (hurts to type on, hurts my wrists where they rest on a sharp edge, so it's basically a desktop with an attached keyboard and mouse)

so not many people think they're that attractive

Do most people buy a laptop based mainly on appearance? I always thought that most people buy a Windows laptop because that's what they need for work/school (or what they are most familiar with from work/school).

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

#699

Post by rezonant »

MBCook wrote: post #560
borski wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The carrier thing was true, but they could have launched outside the US. Instead they found a carrier desperate enough. That’s not quite how that happened. They were turned down and laughed out of the room by nearly every carrier they approached. The only one that didn’t was AT&T; but they definitely weren’t “desperate” at the time. They had lots of leverage, which is how they got exclusivity.

Sorry I meant the carrier was desperate, not Apple. That was the case with AT&T (Cingular when the deal went down). They wanted customers so bad they were willing to give up everything for a possible hit phone. And it worked out. You’re right Apple was riding high on the iPod, they weren’t in any danger of going under. They could have waited longer. I think it would have been funny if they released it in Europe or so…

I'm not sure if the GP here was edited to be substantially different, because your response doesn't match what they are saying.

AT&T wasn't desperate, and I'm sure Jobs would have preferred to skip on exclusivity, since that really didn't serve iPhone.

"Desperate for more customers"? Well sure, but I'm sure Verizon was even more desperate for more customers considering they were so close to being number one (AT&T was number one at the time, by a slim margin). After all, Pepsi literally bought restaurants and forced them to serve Pepsi in order to force consumers to drink their sodas from the runner up spot.

I don't have any reference for this, but just on its face it would make sense that if Apple needed to sweeten the pot for a carrier to allow it, exclusivity was a way to do it, and it would have been in Apple's best interest to pick the carrier with the biggest market share at the time, which was AT&T.

EDIT: Others corrected me that at the time the deal was signed in 2005 and during the famous 2007 keynote, the partner was Cingular. Through a series of M&A Cingular became what we know of as AT&T, and by the time the phone launched in July 2007, it was AT&T who held the deal.

Interestingly,

> Cingular chief executive Stan Sigman signed a secretive deal with Apple in 2005 before seeing any designs or prototypes of the phone. Other carriers had been scared off by Apple's reputation for controlling every aspect of its products. But Cingular and AT&T leadership saw the partnership's promise.

In Jobs' keynote he referred to Cingular as the #1 carrier with 58 million subscribers. I think the logic above still makes sense given that.

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

#700

Post by Tiktaalik »

KerrAvon wrote: post #24
baggy_trough wrote: post #9

The demand for expensive EVs is not unlimited, despite the ardent desires of California and federal politicians.

There's plenty of latent demand; there isn't currently a viable charging network and NACS doesn't take over until 2025.

And there'd be a hell of a lot more demand if we priced the negative externality of the CO2 emitted and damage ICE vehicles do to the environment but sadly we don't.
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