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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

#81

Post by abalone »

petra wrote: post #76
abalone wrote: post #62

It's a car and it's not a "pivot". The Mac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and Watch are all about apply the same philosophy to new product categories and then tightly integrating them. At the core of it is fundamentally rethinking the interface between user and machine. With cars it makes perfect sense as long as you do one thing first: throw out everything you've read about fully autonomous cars being right around th…

First, Apple's historic design advantage is probably gone - since the competition has greatly improved. For example, the watch didn't offer something significantly different(10x) than other smartwatches. But i can see your second point being true, maybe full-autonomy will take a long time. So even if Apple will design a great interface, it would probably be copied by competitors fast enough, unless there's some big b…

No, think the fundamental cockpit driving control interface. Not just the entertainment system (although that will be a nice synergistic element).

Btw I agree about the watch, but it's also early days. The iPod might not have seemed as radical an improvement on other MP3 players either, at first. In retrospect the details made the difference between the product category working for people and not, and blew the category wide open.

Re: Apple R&D Reveals a Pivot Is Coming

#82

Post by DannyBee »

beloch wrote: post #37

According to this chart, Apple spent $6B in 2014 and is projected to spend just over $10B in 2016. For comparison, in 2014 Volkswagen spent $13.5B, Samsung spent $13.4B, and Microsoft spent $10.4B. [1] Apple has, historically, not been a big spender when it comes to research, tending to favor short-term, tightly focused research over long-term, curiosity driven research. Over the last few years their research budget…

"Has Apple's research focus changed?"

If it has, honestly, it's because they don't know where to put their money or they've put it all in one thing.

You more or less say the same thing.

"hey've loosened their research focus and now have a lot of people doing whatever the hell they want, much like MS, just because something useful might someday emerge." (This is we have no idea what to spend our money on).

"Perhaps we're not seeing some monumental project in the works, although an autonomous car would be pretty big." (This is we are betting big on this one thing we think has huge potential).

The other option apple has not been fond of is large investments in a small set of things, each of which may be a potential big future.

The first would be quite concerning. If you have companies with large research budgets, and they have no idea what they should spend money on in order to make the next big thing happen, that does not bode well.

Re: Apple R&D Reveals a Pivot Is Coming

#83

Post by DannyBee »

comex wrote: post #44
steve19 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They seem to frequently fail at software. iTunes is a dog, Mac OS X is getting worse and worse, the Mac App store is horrendous. iCloud is a joke. They do nice interfaces, and iOS is great. I have no doubt they would produce an amazing luxury car with a beautiful software UI, but I do not see them morphing into a machine learning software powerhouse anytime soon, at least compared to Google. Google Now easily beats S…

Google Maps' advantage has a lot more to do with data than algorithms. Google Now is probably a better example, though I've never used it myself.

"Google Maps' advantage has a lot more to do with data than algorithms."

Given literally everyone else collected the data well before google, and maps was still better, this seems wrong.

Google developed better ways to get the data and automate it, not just got better data. For years, literally everyone else had better data.

Re: Apple R&D Reveals a Pivot Is Coming

#84

Post by Niksko »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #59
untog wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For one because there is no evidence of it. Apple are secretive but at some point you have to take a car out on an actual road to see how it fares. And get government permisison to do so. The fact that Apple has done neither leads me to suspect Google is further ahead.

Android was in development and publically known about for years before Apple unveiled the iPhone. Now all new phones are basically large touch sensitive screens. So who knows?

Yes, but the regulatory and development hurdles involved in developing an operating system are significantly different to those of developing an autonomous vehicle.

Re: Apple R&D Reveals a Pivot Is Coming

#85

Post by zargath »

Apple snatched a few Tesla employees and a few people has said that Apple are working on a car. Seems obvious.

Has anybody considered that it might be other form of transportation? Maybe an electric motorcycle or some other cart? All their devices is very personal, could be a personal transportation device?

Apple's mission seems to be to create the best products they know how to build. But environmentalism is pretty highly valued at Apple, so it seems likely that they will move towards things that they think will benefit not only their costumers but also the environment.

But Tesla's mission seems to be about accelerating the adoption of electric cars. They need "everybody" to produce electric cars, so it is in Tesla's best interrest that they build a car. It will be interesting to see if Apple picks up on Tesla's R&D, with the opensource patents and maybe even a Tesla Gigafactory.

But very interesting to follow, hope they make a car and hope they make it great. But I am afraid they lost their cocky edge a few years ago, so it will probably just be a nice new car.

Re: Apple R&D Reveals a Pivot Is Coming

#86

Post by dizzy3gg »

DannyBee wrote: post #83
comex wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Maps' advantage has a lot more to do with data than algorithms. Google Now is probably a better example, though I've never used it myself.

"Google Maps' advantage has a lot more to do with data than algorithms." Given literally everyone else collected the data well before google, and maps was still better, this seems wrong. Google developed better ways to get the data and automate it, not just got better data. For years, literally everyone else had better data.

Not really. Google collect more, like wifi info :/ and images (street view). Google really did revolutionise mapping.

Re: Apple R&D Reveals a Pivot Is Coming

#87

Post by ori_b »

DannyBee wrote: post #82
beloch wrote: post #37

According to this chart, Apple spent $6B in 2014 and is projected to spend just over $10B in 2016. For comparison, in 2014 Volkswagen spent $13.5B, Samsung spent $13.4B, and Microsoft spent $10.4B. [1] Apple has, historically, not been a big spender when it comes to research, tending to favor short-term, tightly focused research over long-term, curiosity driven research. Over the last few years their research budget…

"Has Apple's research focus changed?" If it has, honestly, it's because they don't know where to put their money or they've put it all in one thing. You more or less say the same thing. "hey've loosened their research focus and now have a lot of people doing whatever the hell they want, much like MS, just because something useful might someday emerge." (This is we have no idea what to spend our money on). "Perhaps we…

> The first would be quite concerning. If you have companies with large research budgets, and they have no idea what they should spend money on in order to make the next big thing happen, that does not bode well.

Why doesn't it bode well? 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.

From what I understand of Apple's culture, it's unlikely that it will ever transform towards this, but that's a separate point.

Re: Apple R&D Reveals a Pivot Is Coming

#88

Post by rahoulb »

petra wrote: post #68
epistasis wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're going to go on history, it's quite likely that whatever Apple pivots to, lots of people will say "yeah, whatever Apple, that's a tiny market and there are already like four players in there and they're all more serious than you." Then within three years Apple will have taken what seemed not so consequential, completely dominated, expanded the market by several orders of magnitude, and left everybody in their…

This mythic story was true in the past, but with the Apple watch, they didn't introduce something that different from the competition - most of their win there was because of their brand, their loyal customers and the watch being a fashion item.

I'd say the watch is similar to the iPod; there was competition out there but the general public didn't really care. Then the iPod was released and commentators complained it was less capable and more expensive than its rivals (insert famous slashdot quote here). But the people who bought it loved it and Apple iterated on the design. (With the watch there are a number of studies that say that tech people don't like it but non-tech people love it - personally I sold mine and won't get another till the screen is on constantly and its thinner).

The question is whether the watch repeats the iPod trick of dominating and expanding the market two iterations on. With the iPod this happened when it was no longer tied to the Mac, maybe with the watch that will happen when it's no longer tied to the iPhone?

Re: Apple R&D Reveals a Pivot Is Coming

#89

Post by boznz »

Assuming its a car..

Cars are not phones and I don't see the massive factory/production line being prepared to build the cars nor the investment in battery production that would be required (assuming an EV not an ICE) so unless they buy BMW (LOL!) or another car manufacturer then it will be 3 years minimum from them showing a car to us being able to buy it.

Re: Apple R&D Reveals a Pivot Is Coming

#90

Post by realityking »

Daneel_ wrote: post #79
emdowling wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does. It has two of them in fact.

...via dongle, at US$29 each, thank you very much. Want to connect an external screen at the same time? Too bad. I'll take built in ethernet and two display connectors on my lenovo instead. Want to add another network port? Well, there's USB3 gigabit, or simply USB-C. If you need native PCIe adaptors, then Dell XPS range comes with Thunderbolt 3 via USB-C. Sorry, I have to agree with the parent that the port war is g…

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/
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