Good!
Maybe they can get back to making some new laptops, and some desktops (Mac Pro, Mac Mini), that don't suck!
We shall see what October brings.
How Apple Scaled Back Its Titanic Plan to Take on Detroit
71–80 of 118 posts
Re: How Apple Scaled Back Its Titanic Plan to Take on Detroit
#72I think Detroit and other manufactures are fearful of automation. If you ask them what the future looks like its driving assist technology. Fully automated driving kills the emotional experience that is used to sell cars.
Someone from Ford was on Marketplace last week describing how they want to move towards cars being a utility sort of product.
Re: How Apple Scaled Back Its Titanic Plan to Take on Detroit
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think he means "cyclical" like "they obsolete themselves quickly so you have to buy a new one," but rather "cyclical" like "when the economy is down, people just hang on to the car they have for 5+ more years rather than buy a new one." Margins is super complicated. iPhones don't cost more than Samsung flagships -- Apple's margins seem to come mostly from controlling manufacturing costs. Could Apple assert si…
ICE cars are more complicated than phones, but I'm not sure pure-electric cars are that much more complicated. One of the nice things about the electric car business is the the part count is a lot lower, they are basically much simpler devices, and thus should be able to be made much more cheaply. We may see a Yugo level electric car for $10,000 in a few years. This would allow for margin expansion, especially if App…
They would have to figure out distribution though, which Tesla has been having a few problems with lately...
Re: How Apple Scaled Back Its Titanic Plan to Take on Detroit
#74By the end of 2015, the project was blighted by internal strife. Managers battled about the project’s direction, according to people with knowledge of the operations. “It was an incredible failure of leadership,” one of the people said.
This is in stark contrast to the compartmentalization of new projects that Apple under Steve Jobs was able to accomplish with the development of the Macintosh and the iPhone. Is this evidence that Apple is unable to do that now?
Re: How Apple Scaled Back Its Titanic Plan to Take on Detroit
#75As an Apple shareholder, I am thankful Apple has shelved plans to dump billions into a cyclical, low margin, low return business.
Low margin? Uber collects ~20% from the cost of every trip taken. Given the hypothetical that full autonomy is a solved problem, A premium robotaxi service could readily command Apple-grade profit margins. The barriers to entry are insanely high, of course, and that places Apple amongst a handful of companies with the resources to clear those barriers. Autonomous vehicle pioneers have recently amended their expectati…
Margins depend on a competitive advantage. I was speaking about car manufacturing, though I personally doubt there will be sustainability to 20% margins in a car service.
Uber may arguably have a first mover and scale network advantage. I personally doubt that will hold.
Re: How Apple Scaled Back Its Titanic Plan to Take on Detroit
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
The fundamentals of electric engines aren't very complicated. Manufacturing an actual all-the-bits modern luxury electric vehicle is way, way, way more complicated than making a phone, and also hard in a very different way than making a phone. One of the things that has made me never really believe in Apple's competitive advantage with cars is that beyond an ultra-high talking points level ("design!"), I don't see an…
Apple can flat out buy a huge car company. Ford is worth 47.26B, GM 50B apple could buy both with less than 1/2 of their cash on hand. Now buying Ford is probably not the way to go. But, Apple can skip a lot of the 'ramp up' if they ever wanted to get into the car business.
I agree, Apple could skip a lot of ramp-up if they buy a car company. But, then, what are they bringing to this hypothetical scenario? Does buying an existing car company make it easier for them to bring some kind of distinctive iCar onto the market? If so, what do we imagine is the distinctive iCar-ness that they're bringing?
There are two things that I hear people say Apple is notably good at:
1. "Design."
2. Controlling a complicated end-to-end extremely high-quality manufacturing process.
For 1, I'm not sure I believe that there is a transferable organizational expertise between designing phones and designing cars.
For 2, I'm not sure I believe that there is a transferable organizational expertise between manufacturing phones and manufacturing cars, and I'm definitely sure that I don't believe that they can transfer organizational expertise to manufacturing cars if they purchase an extant manufacturing process/organization.
Re: How Apple Scaled Back Its Titanic Plan to Take on Detroit
#77As an Apple shareholder, I am thankful Apple has shelved plans to dump billions into a cyclical, low margin, low return business.
Porsche makes a gross margin of $23,000 per car.
Re: How Apple Scaled Back Its Titanic Plan to Take on Detroit
#78I think Detroit and other manufactures are fearful of automation. If you ask them what the future looks like its driving assist technology. Fully automated driving kills the emotional experience that is used to sell cars.
They are missing a huge value proposition: A chauffeur costs more than a car, and that's what I want: A personal driver to take me point to point, on demand, low-latency.
Re: How Apple Scaled Back Its Titanic Plan to Take on Detroit
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
The bigger issue is that autonomous cars make it extremely easy to massively boost utilization: driver assist still means your car sits at home, work, etc when not in use. This in turn means more cars are required by society. Autonomous cars can achieve much higher levels of utilization. This is the real reason legacy car makers don't want fully autonomous vehicles.
A car being driven all day (especially in cities, where the demand will be highest) is going to wear cars down incredibly fast. Manufacturers won't see that big of a hit if fewer people buy cars, if those people will replace it every year or two.
If it is profitable, it will be financeable.
Re: How Apple Scaled Back Its Titanic Plan to Take on Detroit
#80By the end of 2015, the project was blighted by internal strife. Managers battled about the project’s direction, according to people with knowledge of the operations. “It was an incredible failure of leadership,” one of the people said. This is in stark contrast to the compartmentalization of new projects that Apple under Steve Jobs was able to accomplish with the development of the Macintosh and the iPhone. Is this…
Maybe. Could also be that a car project is much more complex with more opportunities for "battl[ing] about the project's direction." One manager wants to emphasize a modern cockpit, one an electric drivetrain, and one full autonomy. And a leader that understands consumer electronics well enough to navigate "an iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator" might not understand cars enough to navigate a car project the same way.
Thus, we get Mansfield in to say "no, we're focusing on this first; we don't have a car without it." This would be like Jobs (or Forstall) coming in to say "we're focusing on a multi-touch OS X first; we don't have a phone without it."
So, to answer your question: maybe. :)