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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

#751

Post by jletienne »

huytersd wrote: post #646
jletienne wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

has anyone cared about net income in decades? maybe it's about signaling to investors, "we have 100s of people working on [emergent technology]"

Just during every quarterly earning report

just tell investors to look at adjusted net ebitda. you'll be fine, they won't even notice (sarcasm because you need this stuff spelled out for you)

It called the fully adjusted number “community adjusted Ebitda,” by which it subtracted not only interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, but also basic expenses like marketing, general and administrative, and development and design costs. Those earnings were $233 million, WeWork said.

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

#752

Post by semireg »

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…

My long held feeling: A fleet of autonomous busses traveling predetermined inter/intra-city routes. Think, greyhound replacement. They were never going to be operated by humans.

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

#753

Post by jupp0r »

ein0p wrote: post #656

Kinda still wish they’d have made it, or at least shown some pre-production work, just to see what a radical product re-think could look like in this space. Cars of 2024, even in the premium segment, are nearly uniformly garish and tasteless, with tons of half baked features of marginal utility accreted over the years and never perfected. Apple’s take on the category could have been a master class in product design a…

Imho Teslas feel very much like a car that Apple could have designed. Lots of aspects of the whole experience are fundamentally different than other cars. Maybe I'm not thinking radically enough, but then Jony Ive is pursuing other career options, too.

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

#754

Post by kken »

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…

> not going to take on Ford or Mazda or Honda.

Very odd, why would you mention these? These brands neither have the brand recognition Apple would strive for nor the scale they are interested in.

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

#756

Post by jcgrillo »

ezfe wrote: post #625
jcgrillo wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does a computer understanding me make it better? I find that attempts the computer makes to understand me, "delight" me, etc. just end up pissing me off. It's a tool. All I ever want a tool to do is be completely invisible and become an extension of my body, which enables me to get a task done. Computer software which does anything other than exactly what I tell it to fails at this, because it instantly breaks my con…

That's great, and I don't begrudge you, but most people want to be able to tell their computer what to do and not need to understand the discrete steps it took to get there. Taking a completely different type of example, image editing. Let's say you ask your computer to remove a blemish in a photo. A professional could remove it, maybe better even, without AI. They know the tools to use, the keys to press, and effect…

> Regular people don't give a crap about that, they want to circle the item (or otherwise identify it) and click "remove." When the computer removes the selected item they're happy, and generative AI is working on THAT type of solution.

This feels dangerously close to a lack of empathy for the user. I understand that's not your intention, in fact the opposite. But in order to accept the notion that users actually want an intelligent employee instead of a tool I have to believe that everyone truly wants to be a manager instead of an individual contributor. I don't believe it.

Take a simpler case, hammering in a nail. What I want from my hammer is for it to disappear and become an extension of my arm. I just want to hammer in the nail. I don't want to negotiate with the hammer about how it's going to strike the nail, all I want is to hit the nail. There's no amount of "clever" the hammer can be which will help. Cleverness can only hurt my user experience.

In your example, what recourse does the user have if the AI didn't do the job the way they wanted? Removing something from an image implies (probably? or maybe not?) that the void is "backfilled" somehow. What if they're not happy with the backfill job? Do they have to argue with the tool about it? Will the tool take their feedback well or will it become a fight?

I think, generally, giving users tools that scale like hammers is the way to go. A hammer in the hands of a skilled carpenter, blacksmith, or cobbler with 30yr experience is no different than the same hammer in the hands of a 2yo child learning to drive their first nail. But that hammer's utility will scale with that child's skill for their entire lifetime. There's no "beginner" vs "advanced" distinction. What makes us (as computer hammer builders) believe that we can distinguish between "beginner" or "advanced" computer hammers? Or "regular" vs "special" users?

EDIT: or maybe we're not building hammers, instead we're building dishwashers. Dishwasher users aren't supposed to be skilled beyond loading and unloading the dishwasher, and hitting the start button. Do "regular users" really want an appliance, or do they want a tool?

EDIT: another way to phrase it -- are computers "bicycles for the mind" or are they just a bus?

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

#757

Post by dleslie »

jupp0r wrote: post #753
ein0p wrote: post #656

Kinda still wish they’d have made it, or at least shown some pre-production work, just to see what a radical product re-think could look like in this space. Cars of 2024, even in the premium segment, are nearly uniformly garish and tasteless, with tons of half baked features of marginal utility accreted over the years and never perfected. Apple’s take on the category could have been a master class in product design a…

Imho Teslas feel very much like a car that Apple could have designed. Lots of aspects of the whole experience are fundamentally different than other cars. Maybe I'm not thinking radically enough, but then Jony Ive is pursuing other career options, too.

Teslas are the Alienware of automobiles. Flashy, ostentatious, and aimed at enthusiasts with more money than taste.

Apple would likely have made something that evoked elegance. It would have contrasted with Tesla in the same way a Macbook contrasts with an Alienware.

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

#758

Post by LexGray »

beardicus wrote: post #668
iwontberude wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe cars are inherently garish and tasteless.

Yep. Apple dodged a very uncool bullet here. Now make an e-bike, Tim Apple.

There was a gyroscope based motorcycle which I thought was more the Apple Style. I was imagining single person cars just like they make all their devices single user. Get one auto-driving bike for each member of the family and you would ride laying on your back so you could take a nap if you wanted.

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

#759

Post by Fricken »

rezonant wrote: post #716
Fricken wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comments here are all so off-base. People who work on cars don't get moved to gen-AI. People who work on robocars get moved to gen-AI.

All we have on what this car was supposed to be was rumors, but the rumors seemed pretty consistent, that this was going to be a self driving car. I do agree that there's a huge amount of specialization for cars that doesn't overlap with gen AI in any meaningful way.

It's no rumour that Apple was developing vehicle autonomy. Their test vehicles were driving around Cupertino for years.

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

#760

Post by myrandomcomment »

dleslie wrote: post #757
jupp0r wrote: post #753

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imho Teslas feel very much like a car that Apple could have designed. Lots of aspects of the whole experience are fundamentally different than other cars. Maybe I'm not thinking radically enough, but then Jony Ive is pursuing other career options, too.

Teslas are the Alienware of automobiles. Flashy, ostentatious, and aimed at enthusiasts with more money than taste. Apple would likely have made something that evoked elegance. It would have contrasted with Tesla in the same way a Macbook contrasts with an Alienware.

This is a reasonable analogy.
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