Apple R&D Reveals a Pivot Is Coming • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple R&D Reveals a Pivot Is Coming

#261

Post by pritambaral » Fri, May 13, 2016, 1:39 AM UTC

baron816 wrote: post #228

bo1024 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like the idea of Apple making cars for the same reason I'm uncomfortable with their phones: you won't own the car you're purchasing, in most meaningful senses of the word "own". (We have seen this problem with Tesla already.) To your second point, I'm not sure that autonomous tech will be easily commoditizable. Some companies will have much better tech than others and consumers will prefer them. Think about i…

Search engines are free. Whether you own or hire a self-driving car, you're going to have to pay for it, but all you really care about is whether it gets you from point A to point B. It's quite binary--either it works or it doesn't. There is objective and subjective factors the determine preferences towards search engines and phone. But if all driverless car tech works the same, then you're not going to care which on…

> all you really care about is whether it gets you from point A to point B

If that was really the only reason people bought cars, we wouldn't have as many variants, manufacturers, models of cars.

Re: Apple R&D Reveals a Pivot Is Coming

#262

Post by mitchty » Fri, May 13, 2016, 1:44 AM UTC

tzaman wrote: post #145

iLoch wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not nearly as much fun as he'd have talking about how he designed it.

Not nearly as much fun as YouTubers would have remaking his promo videos :)

You know the word chamfer would factor in somehow. :)

Re: Apple R&D Reveals a Pivot Is Coming

#263

Post by Communitivity » Fri, May 13, 2016, 2:14 AM UTC

jamesrcole wrote: post #198

Communitivity wrote: post #164

I don't understand the confusion on what Apple's next big thing is, they've laid it out time and again. Come to think of it, I think I just saw a slide with it right on the single slide during the Viv presentation. I went back and found it. Here is the video URL at the time the slide is shown: https://youtu.be/Rblb3sptgpQ?t=51 It's the same thing OpenAI, HARC, and other groups are working on: creating revolutionary i…

Do you think that's the only major thing they're working on?

You're right, I think it's definitely not the only thing, but Apple seems to do one main thrust and lots of smaller thrusts. I suspect wearables and the car may be smaller thrusts (which would still be huge expenditures compared to other smaller players), but their AI thrust will be 5-10x the investment of one of the smaller thrusts.

Re: Apple R&D Reveals a Pivot Is Coming

#264

Post by prawn » Fri, May 13, 2016, 4:55 AM UTC

I suspect the Titan codename is a trick and they're actually working on single-occupant vehicles.

HMD and transport are the obvious markets to tackle.

Re: Apple R&D Reveals a Pivot Is Coming

#265

Post by thbb » Fri, May 13, 2016, 10:14 AM UTC

Apple certainly does well in investing in R&D and looking towards some amount of pivoting.

However, this quasi-exponential growth in spending reminds me of a pathetic moment at a EU commission meeting I attended, on research and innovation public funds in 2010.

The EU commissioner basically complained that Europe had no Unicorns like the GAFAs, but wanted to be reassuring: this is about to change. We will prevail, because we'll spend more on R&D (through tax money) than all of these do together.

With the implicit assumption that the more you spend, the bigger the returns.

Re: Apple R&D Reveals a Pivot Is Coming

#266

Post by soylentcola » Fri, May 13, 2016, 2:59 PM UTC

jdmichal wrote: post #252

vidarh wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anyone didn't think it was possible. Back in '99 I was working on a tablet w/built in phone, and Ericsson had their ScreenPhone around the same time. Both where "tethered" to a base station at home (ours used a custom extension to DECT), I believe, but the intent was always to add proper mobile support. In fact, when I was first sold on the concept, the guy who started the company talked me through how…

> ... while everyone else were thinking like geeks willing to sacrifice usability for a "imagine if.." ideal of devices that were ultimately quite unfulfilling. As someone who was there on the consumer side, with an HTC Wizard bought in 2006 -- the year before the iPhone was released -- I completely agree with this. I did make the sacrifice of usability, because having the Internet accessible everywhere on a touchscr…

Also had WinMo phones prior to the iPhone (and after one Palm Treo). I definitely appreciated the things the first iPhone(s) got right because they were things that always seemed like they should work better on my WinMo devices but were always somehow screwed up (on-chip GPU without the necessary software to use it for graphic acceleration was a big one).

At the same time, it was still a choice between finally getting a more responsive interface or giving up front/rear cameras, GPS, 3G cell radio, third party apps, multitasking, copy/paste, an actual file system I could browse, streaming audio (anyone remember Shoutcast stations? They're still around!), streaming video, hell...even changing my wallpaper or ringtone to something that didn't come with the phone.

I totally get why Apple succeeded and in many ways they deserved to: they didn't try to out-WinMo WinMo. They looked at the things that Microsoft, RIM, Palm, and the rest weren't doing and targeted those things. They saw who wasn't interested in having a miniature version of a laptop but loved simple and responsive electronics (thousands and thousands of regular consumers). That business savvy put them in a really strong position that continues to this day.

Granted it didn't help that you needed to switch carriers to AT&T and spend even more than the cost of existing smart phones to get one but clearly they improved that along with all the rest.

I'm still far from an Apple fanboy and I find using iOS on my iPad to be frustrating at least once every week or two but business/market success isn't about pleasing me. It's about pleasing enough people to make a good profit and clearly they've got that part down.

Re: Apple R&D Reveals a Pivot Is Coming

#267

Post by marvin » Sat, May 14, 2016, 10:30 AM UTC

dragontamer wrote: post #207

marvin wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't give a completely accurate picture of Tesla's financial situation. Tesla has MASSIVE capital expenditures and will continue to have so for years. They could probably become quite profitable on a quarter-to-quarter basis by stopping all new development and manufacturing investments, but this would kill their possibility of becoming a major auto manufacturer. The gross margin on Model S is indeed 25%, and…

I disagree. Tesla only had to go Model S -> Model 3, just as originally planned, and they'd be much more profitable than today. Model X, despite its 25% margins or so, isn't making money due to manufacturing issues. Its too complicated with its Falcon doors, and doesn't really have an impact from a sales or marketing perspective. Instead, Tesla spends billions ramping up Model X, only for GM Bolt to release before th…

I'm undecided on whether Model X was a mistake even when seen in retrospect. It might be the case. But assuming that it was, Tesla couldn't have known this beforehand. Model S demand turned out to be more than twice as high as Tesla initially expected -- at least six months of the Model X delay was caused by the deliberate decision to increase Model S production rather than carry on with the initial plan to produce Model X right away. Maybe Tesla could have backed water at this point, but I'm not sure that it would have been a good risk-adjusted move, given that Model X represents very good diversification in the premium-vehicle segment. There is low overlap between luxury sedan and luxury SUV buyers.

Model X was initially thought necessary to produce enough revenue through the time at which Li-ion batteries could be produced cheaply enough in large quantities to launch a cheaper, good electric car. That the Model S turned out to be so popular wasn't at all obvious in 2012, when it first entered production.

Re: Apple R&D Reveals a Pivot Is Coming

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Post by Doctor_Fegg » Tue, May 17, 2016, 9:04 AM UTC

mcphage wrote: post #191

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenStreetMap: 0 minutes

That wouldn't be good, either, since it would mean no quality control of the data going in.

Most first-user contributions to OSM are reviewed by the existing community: for example, many of the regional OSM IRC channels have a bot which pops up first-time edits, so a regular can check on them. It's just that they're retroactively moderated rather than proactively, which avoids new users being disillusioned when their edits don't show.

Re: Apple R&D Reveals a Pivot Is Coming

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Post by slantaclaus » Thu, May 19, 2016, 4:44 PM UTC

spriggan3 wrote: post #69

slantaclaus wrote: post #3

Fire Tim Cook?

> Fire Tim Cook? Why do you want him fired? who do you think can replace Cook? I don't see anybody.

Some guys were talking about buying out TSLA and placing Musk at the helm. Honestly anybody else. Somebody else deserves a chance. The idea that this guy is the BEST candidate for CEO of the largest company in the world is preposterous.