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Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

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Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#41

Post by bredren »

olliej wrote: post #37
pentae wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well thats my point - it seems that they can't chew gum and walk at the same time. If they could, we'd have Macs that are updated to the latest gen hardware in a reasonable amount of time, and issues like the faulty keyboard would have been fixed by now after 3 years.

Attacking the CPU is dumb - mobile cpus have not increased significantly in performance, so why pay a premium of more than x% for Seriously, the GPU is the only thing you're likely to get a big win from at the consumer level, and you're restricted to intel's shitty IGP until you get to the top end MacBook Pro. Again: you are exceedingly unlikely to get a real day-to-day performance increase from the high end intel mo…

Since you mentioned it, I just added the Apple / Blackmagic eGPU to my 2018 Macbook Air and holy smoke it is a major change for docked 4k workstation with a mac laptop. This eGPU is underrated bigtime.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#42

Post by npunt »

nostrademons wrote: post #12
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?

It reminds me of the Apple of the early 1990s. So many stupid vanity projects, some of which were actually pretty cool: Newton, Dylan, Copland, Taligent, OpenDoc, etc. And yet they couldn't succeed at their bread and butter of selling computers. There's no Steve Jobs to bring them back from the brink this time.

This is a completely different time than the 90s, when Apple's market strategy was failing, they were fast running out of cash, and had too many SKUs. The scale back then is orders of magnitude different than now, and the health of the company is a complete reversal. All this perpetual doom and gloom around Apple is silly.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#43

Post by altairiumblue »

culturestate wrote: post #22
nostrademons wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It reminds me of the Apple of the early 1990s. So many stupid vanity projects, some of which were actually pretty cool: Newton, Dylan, Copland, Taligent, OpenDoc, etc. And yet they couldn't succeed at their bread and butter of selling computers. There's no Steve Jobs to bring them back from the brink this time.

What precipice does Apple need to be walked back from? Certainly not the current one, where they rake in an amount of money roughly equal to the GDP of Luxembourg in a single quarter.

Financial performance during the biggest market bull run in history (which lasted almost 10 years) isn't that indicative of the future of company.

On the other hand, the declining quality, sloppier design, increased prices on already highly priced products, multiple conflicting product lines - all of those decisions will eventually have consequences.

Apple used to be about doing a handful of things really well and having a loyal customer base that would happily pay a premium for the quality/brand/premium-feel/coolness of their products - all of that has been slowly going away over the past 5-7 years.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#44

Post by npunt »

rurban wrote: post #24
leesec wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has 250 billion dollars at their disposal. They can obviously have multiple efforts running in parallel.

Yes, but obviously they cannot fix the more urging problems in their core business: Keyboards, laptop CPU's and memory, macOS development. It's a desaster area every developer working with their products wants to leave as soon as possible. And why should I trust them with an iPhone or car then, when the simpliest products were run into the ground.

Macs aren't their core business. You may think they should be, but they aren't.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#45

Post by robin_reala »

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?

Core business in terms of both units sold and income is iPhones, not computers. Apple hasn’t been Apple Computer for over a decade.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#46

Post by frereubu »

robin_reala wrote: post #45
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?

Core business in terms of both units sold and income is iPhones, not computers. Apple hasn’t been Apple Computer for over a decade.

I see what you're saying, but given that developers have to have an Apple computer to develop for iOS and macOS, the computer lineup does rather underpin everything else.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#47

Post by bredren »

nostrademons wrote: post #39
culturestate wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What precipice does Apple need to be walked back from? Certainly not the current one, where they rake in an amount of money roughly equal to the GDP of Luxembourg in a single quarter.

Money is a lagging indicator for product quality. When a company's built up a strong brand, it can take years (or sometimes decades - witness Sears and Applebees) of bad experiences or outdated products before it starts to show up in sales numbers. But when it does, it usually ends up cascading rapidly, oftentimes faster than the company can react. Apple started its slide the first time around 1989 - that was when Ma…

But there is no great lagging indicator of products in development apart from this reorg on autonomous systems. What about the glasses? Tablet interfaces have obviously peaked, yet there is no stronger ecosystem to support an AR product than what continues to mature around iOS.

Apple has a ton of cash and the best HW/SW/Design on the planet. The company is not done making new things.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#48

Post by npunt »

altairiumblue wrote: post #43
culturestate wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What precipice does Apple need to be walked back from? Certainly not the current one, where they rake in an amount of money roughly equal to the GDP of Luxembourg in a single quarter.

Financial performance during the biggest market bull run in history (which lasted almost 10 years) isn't that indicative of the future of company. On the other hand, the declining quality, sloppier design, increased prices on already highly priced products, multiple conflicting product lines - all of those decisions will eventually have consequences. Apple used to be about doing a handful of things really well and ha…

Which product lines are conflicting, and is that conflict a really big deal or just a minor one? Apple has always been self-cannabilizing, see iPod v iPod Mini v iPod nano. The company is much much larger than all these fond remembrances of golden days, which means product lines are going to grow a bit to hit different market segments which each have millions of customers.

Is this about iPad v MacBooks?

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#49

Post by an4rchy »

Although they aren't shutting down, I was thinking that even if they did, Apple can just wait for the dust to settle and buy one of the existing/growing players once the technology is proven out (they definitely have the cash to do it).

Spending a lot of money and trying to catch up to Waymo/Zoox/Cruise etc is also kinda hard, even for Apple, because of all of the pieces of the stack they need to work on and access to a very competitive/small talent pool.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#50

Post by Twisell »

rurban wrote: post #24
leesec wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has 250 billion dollars at their disposal. They can obviously have multiple efforts running in parallel.

Yes, but obviously they cannot fix the more urging problems in their core business: Keyboards, laptop CPU's and memory, macOS development. It's a desaster area every developer working with their products wants to leave as soon as possible. And why should I trust them with an iPhone or car then, when the simpliest products were run into the ground.

Anything baking up your old school Apple is doomed rant?

Swift is a huge and thankless work totally invisible to the userbase and heavily targeted to improve development on Mac/iOS.

You just can’t brush it off to fit your narrative.

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