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Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

cnbc.com

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Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#131

Post by skohan »

C1sc0cat wrote: post #117
simonh wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sales levelling off != drying up. Apple has always had problems with their online services, but iOS security is a problem? Compared to what, the dumpster fire over in Android?

Phones are moving towards commodities even apple found this when the X got push back at $1000 per unit.

I think the price is a mistake, but I don't think it's "failure" reflects a weakening Apple's of brand competitiveness as much as it is a sign of the relative maturity of smartphone hardware.

In other words, people are buying phones less often, because phones for 3-4 years ago are still quite capable of meeting the needs of most users, so people are naturally going to start buying phones less often.

I suspect Apple was very aware of this trend, and the price increase was an effort to increase margins to make up for an expected decrease in unit sales. After all, Samsung also indicated lower guidance on their Smartphone numbers for this year, so Apple is not the only company affected by this trend.

Maybe they missed the mark a bit, and a significant number of potential customers chose not to upgrade this year, but I seriously doubt those customers turned around and bought an Android instead. I suspect they will just get plan to get another year out of their 6S and wait for what comes out this year.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#132

Post by thirdsun »

GuardianCaveman wrote: post #127
jarym wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ll add my pet peeve to the list: Sell me a £1k phone that can’t connect to the £3.5k laptop you sold me because the phone comes with a USB-A cable and the laptop only has USB-C sockets. This is precisely the sort of garbage Stveve was very much against yet Apple seem to now think ‘it’s ok’. It’s not ok. To the down voters, the fanaticism only emboldens Apple to become more mediocre. Think about that a moment.

Besides the connections the software doesn’t work between those two out of the box. My mom bought 2k MacBook Pro from the Apple store and a 1100 Iphone xs and we got home and plugged it in to back up her saved backup and iTunes wouldn’t let us. I can’t recall the exact problem but the solution was downloading the latest software for both devices. Several hours later it was working but out of the box? So disappointing…

That seems like a negligible issue. It's really not unusual that both device and software need to be on the same or latest version to work as intended.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#133

Post by statictype »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #77
reindeerer wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very much a focus and resource allocation problem. Double the number of engineers working on the keyboard and it doesn't happen

I can almost guarantee that doubling the number of engineers working on the keyboard would make the problem worse, rather than better.

It would seem to me the issue is because of bad product design decisions. Apple decided having user serviceable reliable keys was less important than making the thinnest laptop they possibly could.

It's left for the market to validate whether it was the correct decision or not.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#134

Post by aembleton »

innocentoldguy wrote: post #35
pentae wrote: post #6

When you can't make a laptop with reliable screens or keyboards, or an iMac lineup that has CPU's 2 generations behind.. Maybe it's time to shut down the stupid vanity projects and focus on your core business instead?

I must be pretty lucky. I've been using Apple products since the original iMac and the only problem I've ever had was when I dropped my phone on a rock and cracked the screen. Apple was great about replacing it for me too. Regarding CPUs, I'm personally much more interested in being able to run macOS on my computer, iOS on my phone, and tvOS on my TV and have them all work together in ways that make me happy. If Appl…

Why did you build a machine with 128GB of RAM and then not use it? Was there a specific task you built it for? Why didn't you just rent some instances from AWS?

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#135

Post by B1FF_PSUVM »

jarym wrote: post #113
pentae wrote: post #6

When you can't make a laptop with reliable screens or keyboards, or an iMac lineup that has CPU's 2 generations behind.. Maybe it's time to shut down the stupid vanity projects and focus on your core business instead?

I’ll add my pet peeve to the list: Sell me a £1k phone that can’t connect to the £3.5k laptop you sold me because the phone comes with a USB-A cable and the laptop only has USB-C sockets. This is precisely the sort of garbage Stveve was very much against yet Apple seem to now think ‘it’s ok’. It’s not ok. To the down voters, the fanaticism only emboldens Apple to become more mediocre. Think about that a moment.

If the phone could block "No Caller Id" calls it would be nice too ...

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#136

Post by kamaal »

jarym wrote: post #113
pentae wrote: post #6

When you can't make a laptop with reliable screens or keyboards, or an iMac lineup that has CPU's 2 generations behind.. Maybe it's time to shut down the stupid vanity projects and focus on your core business instead?

I’ll add my pet peeve to the list: Sell me a £1k phone that can’t connect to the £3.5k laptop you sold me because the phone comes with a USB-A cable and the laptop only has USB-C sockets. This is precisely the sort of garbage Stveve was very much against yet Apple seem to now think ‘it’s ok’. It’s not ok. To the down voters, the fanaticism only emboldens Apple to become more mediocre. Think about that a moment.

>>This is precisely the sort of garbage Stveve was very much against yet Apple seem to now think ‘it’s ok’.

Steve Jobs is now gone. And your MBAs run the product management now. And those people have OKRs and targets to meet. And they seem to think if they make something that looks cute, utility be damned, as long as they meet sales and whatever targets, it must be ok. Then Apple also has enough loyal customers and brand they can milk. Eventually the public will tire out and move to something else. And so will they. There are enough companies to work at.

Having seen enough of this kind of sausage made. I can tell you no one cares. There are companies full of upper management whose sole purpose is optimizing for their careers. They survive because their kind, get hired by their own kind.

Eventually every one moves on.

Only real people who can make any change at all are the stock investors who hold big chunks of stocks. But even those guys care about 'percentage' of profits, and once they get it. They move on.

So no one cares really.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#137

Post by sonnyblarney »

pentae wrote: post #6

When you can't make a laptop with reliable screens or keyboards, or an iMac lineup that has CPU's 2 generations behind.. Maybe it's time to shut down the stupid vanity projects and focus on your core business instead?

The iPhone itself may very well have seemed like vanity project at the time.

Cars are computers with wheels these days, and there will be to some extent a merger of initiatives.

Steve Jobs did several BD deals with feature-phone manufacturers like Motorola before the iPhone specifically to learn and internalize issues from that space.

When you're sitting on $100B in cash, your cost of capital is probably cheap, and existential risks abound.

It makes a lot of sense to be working on trends which are nearly 100% guaranteed to have a massive impact. Since we know self-driving cars are coming one way or another, it makes sense for them to be there.

In 20 years, 'MacOS' could be powering your car and other devices and we might have forgotten about this iPhone thing.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#138

Post by setquk »

statictype wrote: post #133
matthewmacleod wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can almost guarantee that doubling the number of engineers working on the keyboard would make the problem worse, rather than better.

It would seem to me the issue is because of bad product design decisions. Apple decided having user serviceable reliable keys was less important than making the thinnest laptop they possibly could. It's left for the market to validate whether it was the correct decision or not.

Having returned my 2018 "improved butterfly keyboard" MBA because the keyboard died after 3 weeks, I suspect that the issue isn't being taken seriously. A minor design revision that didn't pick up or resolve a recurring issue is a death march for a product.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#139

Post by baq »

thirdsun wrote: post #132
GuardianCaveman wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides the connections the software doesn’t work between those two out of the box. My mom bought 2k MacBook Pro from the Apple store and a 1100 Iphone xs and we got home and plugged it in to back up her saved backup and iTunes wouldn’t let us. I can’t recall the exact problem but the solution was downloading the latest software for both devices. Several hours later it was working but out of the box? So disappointing…

That seems like a negligible issue. It's really not unusual that both device and software need to be on the same or latest version to work as intended.

steve would laugh you out of the room if he hadn't fired you on the spot...

(unless perhaps you didn't hold it properly.)

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#140

Post by tqkxzugoaupvwqr »

fipple wrote: post #62
groestl wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another option, assuming core Apple processes don't need more funding: they could pay out that cash as dividends, and let the market think about the future (getting the money to companies who's core actually is about automotive AI, if investors actually think so).

The other way of thinking about it is that autonomous cars are so obvious and will eventually be so commodity that Apple not sticking their logo on this market would be about as dumb as them not making the bigger phones the market demanded.

I would be scared to buy an Apple car. Let there be a design flaw: It will take a class action suit for them to acknowledge it. Until then, anyone who drives to their Apple Car Store will be told to pay out of their own pocket for fixing it, that they obviously mishandled the car, Apple is not to blame, it is not covered under warranty.
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