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Apple R&D Reveals a Pivot Is Coming

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Re: Apple R&D Reveals a Pivot Is Coming

#171

Post by forgetsusername »

givinguflac wrote: post #167
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars are a terrible industry to get into. Building cars is massively capital and plant intensive, heavily dependent on supply chain logistics, and the market is already extremely competitive. The entire industry is well on its way to switching to electric and/or self-driving. Selling cars requires a huge dealer network rollout with huge up-front costs for training and spares. Doing it DIY would be insanely expensive,…

Pretty much everything you just said could have car replaced by the word phone, and you'd sound just like MS BB or Nokia in 2007. "Clever internals but crappy ux" describes pretty much every car ever. Regarding dealerships, ever heard of Tesla? It's definitely possible to diy, and Tesla has nothing compared to Apple's resources.

>Regarding dealerships, ever heard of Tesla?

Tesla is trying this model, but I don't know whether anyone can makes claims as to its success yet. Right now they're pretty low volume and are losing lots of money. Maybe the no dealer model scales, maybe it doesn't.

Re: Apple R&D Reveals a Pivot Is Coming

#172

Post by neo2006 »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #157
DannyBee wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Why doesn't it bode well?" For investors, i meant. " The transistor, the laser, Unix, information theory, and a giant number of other things which form the underpinnings of modern technology came out of Bell Labs, which is the epitome of a place with a large research budget and no specific "next thing to monetize" that the spending was directed towards." That was research for research's sake. It was, explicitly, not…

> "That was research for research's sake. It was, explicitly, not directed at ever making money, but instead, advancing the state of the art." Advancing the state of the art can lead to making more money, the research results can be monetised, whether they are or not all depends on the intent of those leading the particular institution.

This is a naive way to see things. Creating products and advancing technology are two different things and very often the one do not lead to the other. To create that business model based on technologies breakthroughs you need to have "the dare to fail" mindset and be willing to launch multiple fails before succeeding with one product, that's not Apple way of doing things there business model and reputation is based on creating "perfect" products well integrated which oppose to the technology edge and try and fail way of doing things

Re: Apple R&D Reveals a Pivot Is Coming

#174

Post by gambiting »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #168
gambiting wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BMW or Mercedes make million different models of their vehicles. Some of them make a lot of money, some of them are probably losing money and always will - M or AMG products are very expensive, but they sell relatively few cars every year - their brands keep those cars to be leaders in their sectors, not because there's a huge amount of money to be made on them(good example of that is the Veyron made by the VW group…

>despite it costing over $1 million USD, because the research to make it was so costly // Does the research only apply to the Veyron? I'd be surprised if they can't use advances there in other lines of cars or get patents that they can profit from when used by other car manufacturers. It does however speak to good marketing to say "we make this car for the love of making cars" rather than "we use this as a way of tar…

Well, that's a good point. I'm pretty sure VW uses technologies invented for the Veyron in their other cars, but I guess it's hard to estimate the cost/profit ratio in this case. In any case, the point I was trying to make was that other car companies don't maintain 25% profit on all of their vehicles like Tesla does, because they have a much more varied portfolio of models.

Re: Apple R&D Reveals a Pivot Is Coming

#176

Post by Retric »

forgetsusername wrote: post #171
givinguflac wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much everything you just said could have car replaced by the word phone, and you'd sound just like MS BB or Nokia in 2007. "Clever internals but crappy ux" describes pretty much every car ever. Regarding dealerships, ever heard of Tesla? It's definitely possible to diy, and Tesla has nothing compared to Apple's resources.

> Regarding dealerships, ever heard of Tesla? Tesla is trying this model, but I don't know whether anyone can makes claims as to its success yet. Right now they're pretty low volume and are losing lots of money. Maybe the no dealer model scales, maybe it doesn't.

Tesla has 325,000+ pre-orders for the model 3 a 35,000$ car.

For comparison Acura only sold 167,843 units in 2014 and they have some models for ~10,000$ less.* And they have an extensive dealer network. Honda their parent brand sells well under 2 million cars a year and is a major automaker.

*List price on a new ILX is 27,990 but this assumes people are paying sticker price.

Re: Apple R&D Reveals a Pivot Is Coming

#177

Post by marknutter »

Daneel_ wrote: post #95
realityking wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you thinking of MacBooks? Because the grandparent talked about the Mac Pro who has two normal RJ45 ports: http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/specs/

...yes. Yes I am. Egg on face. The point still stands though, it's such a shame seeing the minimisation of ports on all systems these days. I can understand using standard ports (usb-c) for peripherals, but essentials such as Ethernet, display and several USB ports (whichever format) should remain built in.

Good news! You don't have to buy the MacBook!

Re: Apple R&D Reveals a Pivot Is Coming

#178

Post by tyingq »

simonh wrote: post #144
astrodust wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just imagine how much fun Ive would have designing an orbital space station. What's interesting is how aggressively they're moving into the car space if that's what's happening. The phone people had no idea, they got blindsided thinking Apple wouldn't have the guts, would never commit the money.

I think the phone industry just didn't think it possible that real ground breaking innovation in their industry was at all possible. They imagined a phone must have a physical keyboard, couldn't run a decent web browser and Microsoft was already selling the best mobile OS it was possible to make. It wasn't that they doubted Apple's commitment, they just didn't have the imagination. To be fair to them, Apple timed thi…

>>They imagined a phone must have a physical keyboard

I get that I'm not representative of the market, but my pattern of using a smartphone involves a lot of email. I don't see that going away, as a lot of my communication involves people in other timezones.

I was way more productive in this when I had a blackberry, but, of course, it did suffer horribly when using the web.

It won't change, but I wish there was enough demand to keep up competition for phones with keyboards such that there was a decent physical keyboard android.

Re: Apple R&D Reveals a Pivot Is Coming

#179

Post by neuromancer2701 »

neo2006 wrote: post #172
ZenoArrow wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "That was research for research's sake. It was, explicitly, not directed at ever making money, but instead, advancing the state of the art." Advancing the state of the art can lead to making more money, the research results can be monetised, whether they are or not all depends on the intent of those leading the particular institution.

This is a naive way to see things. Creating products and advancing technology are two different things and very often the one do not lead to the other. To create that business model based on technologies breakthroughs you need to have "the dare to fail" mindset and be willing to launch multiple fails before succeeding with one product, that's not Apple way of doing things there business model and reputation is based…

If the Apple pattern holds then they will be 3rd or 4th to the mainstream electric car market but it will be marketed as "above and beyond" all products that we have seen to that point.

Re: Apple R&D Reveals a Pivot Is Coming

#180

Post by dpcx »

forgetsusername wrote: post #171
givinguflac wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much everything you just said could have car replaced by the word phone, and you'd sound just like MS BB or Nokia in 2007. "Clever internals but crappy ux" describes pretty much every car ever. Regarding dealerships, ever heard of Tesla? It's definitely possible to diy, and Tesla has nothing compared to Apple's resources.

> Regarding dealerships, ever heard of Tesla? Tesla is trying this model, but I don't know whether anyone can makes claims as to its success yet. Right now they're pretty low volume and are losing lots of money. Maybe the no dealer model scales, maybe it doesn't.

Tesla also doesn't have quite the clout that Apple does. Apple could literally bully their way in to the self-sales car market...
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