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Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey

bloomberg.com

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Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey

#941

Post by vel0city »

glitchinc wrote: post #836
steelframe wrote: post #782

After having gone through decades of adopting the "latest and greatest" tech, I've gotten to the point where what I really want is the least-complex thing I can find that does the essential job I want done. For a computer, I want something with SeaBIOS, a stripped-down kernel, and a handful of packages from the Debian Stable repository. I want it hackable and repairable -- something like a Framework. Nothing like a M…

I could not agree with you more. All electronics fail, and all systems reliant on electronics fail. Not all worm gears fail. As someone who has worked in tech my whole life, and who currently runs a technology-centric company, I generally detest the state of technology these days. I have reached a point in my life where I consciously limit my use of technology, and make it a point to steer clear of purchasing and mak…

I've had nearly flawless Bluetooth support across several different car brands and devices in my cars for well over a decade. Pair it once, and it just works all day every day. I truly don't understand people saying Bluetooth is unreliable, I've personally never experienced it and I use Bluetooth across several different devices every day.

Even now, my phone's Bluetooth is my key to the car. I don't normally carry any other key.

Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey

#942

Post by vel0city »

steelframe wrote: post #827
8ig8 wrote: post #806

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t forget about car windows with a crank.

Not sure if you're being sarcastic, but shortly after I relocated in the dead of winter to a place that's further north my driver's side window wouldn't roll back up after I rolled it down. It's not fun trying to transport your family around with a window stuck open in freezing temps. If a crank-based mechanism would have made that less likely to happen, or at least if it would be easier for me to get the window back…

Most failures of windows I've seen are the glass falling off the track or the track getting physically jammed or out of alignment. There's a good chance whatever failure you had a hand crank wouldn't have prevented it.

Even when its like "the motor burned out", well what caused the motor to burn out? The lift was way out of alignment and would have been dang hard to turn by hand, and probably would have just broken the gearing.

Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey

#944

Post by margalabargala »

mercutio2 wrote: post #640
margalabargala wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fired people for less than what? What part of it is confidential? Its existence? Obviously not. The fact that it uses SLAM? Not confidential, of course it does. That a person was transferred from that to the Vision Pro? Probably also on their linkedin page. Nothing that OP described this person as saying sounds "stupid" or confidential. Sure, maybe they also said something that was confidential in addition to what wa…

Apple employees most certainly cannot talk publicly about unreleased products. Including loudly discussing their roles in restaurants.

Is that an official, Apple-specific policy written down somewhere? That doesn't seem right, and doesn't match other similar companies.

I've known people at Facebook and Microsoft who were working on upcoming not-yet-released products and were free to talk about the products and their roles on them. These people, much like the person we're discussing, worked on upcoming projects which had already been publicly announced.

Of course publicly discussing a confidential project that no one knows about could get someone fired, but that's not the scenario we're talking about.

Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey

#947

Post by TechRemarker »

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #168

To be honest, I'm not sure what Apple could've brought to the table in regards to making an electric car. Apple's hardware design philosophies[1] don't really align with what consumers want in a car. Apple being less minimalistic than a Tesla — which is already at an extreme — is a hard sell. [1] Examples of what I mean: - Cars use faux materials all the time for cost and weight purposes, or even just looks (i.e. fak…

By 'less' minimalistic than Tesla, assume you meant you believe Apple would be even 'more' minimalistic. But I always imagined Apple would be able to be the Tesla without the Musk tradeoffs. That is yes, certainly far minimal than typical cars, but less minimal than Tesla who seemed to think it would be cool to have door handles retrack, and other missing common features, because they seemed cool. But then he never took enough feedback to others to realize while cool, not practical. Apple I believe would have been able to pull back and find a better balance I believe. And if they did overstep, they would be less stubborn in pulling back in a following version than Musk.

Though the market of cars from makers like Lucid and other premium options means Apple can only differentiate so much. And people critize every tiny detail of things the size of watch or a phone, imagine a car. The abilities for people to criticize things would be endless. And the fact that cars crash, no matter how well designed, and there would be an endless number of people finding creative ways to exploit any vulnerabilities to make it look as dangerous as possible. The risk for Apple seems unbelievable vs the gain.

Where is with AI, that intertwines everything they already do, with far more manageable risks. I'm very doubtful on their AI prospects, but certainly would prefer to see Titan level budgets spent towards AI. I'm looking at you Siri!

Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey

#948

Post by exe34 »

jcgrillo wrote: post #914
exe34 wrote: post #863

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you understand the concept of individual productivity? If you have 5 people working for you, and a new technology makes each 25% more productive, you can fire one of them. The idea here is that it won't stop at 25%. Even if you were to accept this premise, maybe you're just thinking about chat gpt 3.5 or 4. But it really doesn't take a lot more imagination to think about what version 7 or 30 might do. The same goe…

Has anyone been made measurably more productive with this stuff? Is even 25% achievable? I'm a software engineer, and I spend less than 25% of my time typing out code. So even if copilot could write every single line of code for me it could not improve my productivity by 25%. In order to make me 25% more productive it would also have to somehow speed up everything else I do at work as well. Has this been demonstrated…

Yes, I wrote a small app in kotlin to scratch an itch. Chat gpt 3.5 gave me code that in the past would have taken me weeks to figure out from the mountain of verbiage in Google docs for the ever changing APIs. Normally googling for this stuff just leads to loads of things that don't work and I have to figure out why. With chat gpt I just pasted whatever error and it gave me the right answer the second or third time. I now have my (private) app that does what I need. Without gpt it would have taken me several weeks (real time, it's a hobby).

I've seen new colleagues use co-pilot at work and it definitely increases the amount of stuff they can now figure out for themselves within a given time.

Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey

#949

Post by thiht »

solardev wrote: post #929
ProfessorLayton wrote: post #168

To be honest, I'm not sure what Apple could've brought to the table in regards to making an electric car. Apple's hardware design philosophies[1] don't really align with what consumers want in a car. Apple being less minimalistic than a Tesla — which is already at an extreme — is a hard sell. [1] Examples of what I mean: - Cars use faux materials all the time for cost and weight purposes, or even just looks (i.e. fak…

You don't like their mice? My Magic Mouse is the single most comfortable mouse I've ever had, and the only one that doesn't give me wrist or finger pain after a day's work. I've tried dozens from Logitech and Microsoft and SteelSeries and Razer, including ergo ones and track balls and track pads, but keep coming back to the Magic Mouse for its simple comforts. Similarly, the Airpod Pros are so incredibly comfortable…

I've used my Magic Mouse exactly 5 times. It forces me to both "arch" my hand because of the shape (too flat), and hover over the buttons to not accidentally trigger the gestures. For me, it's like the most uncomfortable mouse ever made, and I've ended up with cramps every single time I've used it.

It's amazing to me how they were able to make both the best trackpad and the worst mouse ever.

To each their own I guess but it's very weird to me that someone could consider the Magic Mouse comfortable, maybe something to do with the size of hands?

Re: Apple to wind down electric car effort after decadelong odyssey

#950

Post by iAMkenough »

NilsIRL wrote: post #739
JoshTko wrote: post #673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Ebike with non disableable airtag built into the frame as the killer feature.

This already exists: https://mfi.apple.com/

The bike pictured is a VanMoof S3 which was discontinued when VanMoof went bust.
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