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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

#61

Post by neya »

I don't think Apple has advancements in machine learning tech as much as its competitors. For example, take a look at how primitive Siri is. It struggles a lot in comparison to its competitors even for some basic commands.

Or, take a look at Apple Music's recommendation system in comparison to Spotify's discover weekly.

Now, take a look at Amazon and Google. They both have their own cloud infrastructure (which ironically Apple uses) with machine learning built right into it. Both have state of the art image recognition systems (proprietary) for various applications (Eg. Google Image search, Amazon shopping, etc.)

I am not saying Apple can't do it, I just think they're lagging behind and this move totally makes sense.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#62

Post by fipple »

groestl wrote: post #54
usaphp wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They stopped making routers and monitors not because they are non “core” products, they stopped making them because there is not much money in it. You buy routers ones every 10 years probably, and margin is limited, but supporting them throughout this period is quite expensive. As for monitors, there is so many competitors right now, that it’s hard to make it worth building your own monitor, Especially if you want to…

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.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#63

Post by fipple »

bredren wrote: post #41
olliej wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For what applications?

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#64

Post by dba7dba »

bredren wrote: post #41
olliej wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree eGPU is a game changer , at least for me. Having the ability to use eGPU in my next laptop is now a requirement for me.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#65

Post by groestl »

boyband6666 wrote: post #32
traek wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you believe the autonomous car project comes at the expense of Mac improvements, rather than being unrelated?

It will still take up senior management and board time. THis is something recognised accross corporate governnce - see recently GSK spinning off it's over consumer health and the counter portfolio of drugs, to focus on what it's core business is; novel pharmaceuticals. Yes you don't want to be a total one trick pony, but if you do everything, you do nothing well.

> if you do everything, you do nothing well.

Sometimes that's true, but I think that most often, these kind of transactions (M&A, spin-offs etc) are the result of political gaming on top of companies, rather than driven by actual business or financial needs. Top managers play their own game very well, and at the end of those transactions usually there is a bonus paid out, no matter the results 5 years down the road. It's not as if verticals within a large company hadn't their own specialized staff, focusing on their own products.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#66

Post by redwall_hp »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #59
Theodores wrote: post #15

I wonder if this autonomous driving thing has gone off the boil across the industry. Years ago fully autonomous was only just around the corner - as in five years away - but now nobody is talking of much more than improved lane keeping assist grade safety features, stopping if someone walks in front of the car rather than navigating a whole city including small streets. The scale of autonomous has been misleading. Ei…

Well, it really really looks like Waymo has something decent. TBD because they are damn secretive and there is probably ten years or more before the tech is perfect, but I think there’s opportunity to start taxi services in good weather in the coming years.

It's already starting https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/22/waymo-plans-to-open-a-self...

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#67

Post by reindeerer »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #53
ulfw wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea why you're getting downvoted. If a company decides not to produce wireless routers (which were class leading) or monitors etc anymore, all because they're non "core" to a computer/mobile hardware company then I don't see how building automotive AI is core to a computer/mobile hardware computer company that has zero core competency in either car manufacturing or AI.

I suppose they're getting downvoted because "why are you working on X when Y has problems" is kind of a silly argument. The problems with the butterfly keyboard design are almost certainly not a result of all the keyswitch engineers having been foolishly reassigned to work in the automotive group.

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

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#68

Post by dilyevsky »

neya wrote: post #61

I don't think Apple has advancements in machine learning tech as much as its competitors. For example, take a look at how primitive Siri is. It struggles a lot in comparison to its competitors even for some basic commands. Or, take a look at Apple Music's recommendation system in comparison to Spotify's discover weekly. Now, take a look at Amazon and Google. They both have their own cloud infrastructure (which ironic…

They reason is because they don’t snoop on their users and so don’t have good training sets available.

Training set for driving is more readily available.

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#69

Post by [deleted] »

neya wrote: post #61

I don't think Apple has advancements in machine learning tech as much as its competitors. For example, take a look at how primitive Siri is. It struggles a lot in comparison to its competitors even for some basic commands. Or, take a look at Apple Music's recommendation system in comparison to Spotify's discover weekly. Now, take a look at Amazon and Google. They both have their own cloud infrastructure (which ironic…

[deleted]

Re: Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit

#70

Post by vardump »

reindeerer wrote: post #67
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose they're getting downvoted because "why are you working on X when Y has problems" is kind of a silly argument. The problems with the butterfly keyboard design are almost certainly not a result of all the keyswitch engineers having been foolishly reassigned to work in the automotive group.

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

Doubling the number of engineers can also make progress slower, once communication costs dominate.

(Or did you mean the keyboard doesn't happen if number of engineers is doubled? I don't think it can be that bad.)

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