Slashdot Mirror
Apple's Electric Car Project To Be Led By Bob Mansfield (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Long-time Apple executive Bob Mansfield will lead Apple's electric car project, according to the Wall Street Journal. TechCrunch reports: "Mansfield stepped down from the Apple executive board in 2013, yet stayed around the company to work on, what Apple called, special projects. In this role he was reporting directly to Apple CEO Tim Cook. One of Mansfield's projects turned out to be the Apple Watch. Now it seems he will head-up Apple's car ambitions -- a project Apple has yet to publicly confirm. During Mansfield's tenure he lead the engineering teams responsible for numerous products including the MacBook Air, iMac, and the iPad."
I generally have always thought Apple had a good vision on the future. But since the death of Steve Jobs Apple has taken some rather empty dead end roads.
The creation of a Apple designed electric vehicle is another road less traveled in my opinion. I cannot imagine Apple creating an affordable car for the masses like for example the iPhone. For one, they have absolutely no current support structure for any vehicle and just because your a technology company. Doesn't mean you know how to do vehicles. Even Tesla is finding out how difficult it is to make cars, and sell, service, and deal with liability and safety. Apple most likely will end up way late to the game in EV vehicles, and it appears to be a distraction rather than a serious attempt at entering a EV market that is already shrinking. Some big auto makers have already reduced development in EVs or have decided to market them in only certain markets. Apple may simply be trying to convince everyone it can do something more than fancy tech devices.
No thanks.
You must reboot your car to install updates. Click here to automatically pull over and do it now, or here to do it tonight. Sorry that you are driving and in the middle of something while I am pestering you with this. - Your car. PS - Last night, you were hacked.
It could be led by Rob Liefeld.
There are too many gay drivers on the roads. Yesterday someone just topped in the middle of the high street and waved. The only possible explanation is that he is a gay trying to attract his boyfriend. Then someone else was tail-gating me for a mile. Must have been trying to get up my arse. Get those people in automatic cars as soon as possible
I'm no fan of smart watches but is there really anything wrong with the Apple watch aside from the fact that the whole concept is a solution to a non-problem?
No, the headline is correct. The car's chassis is made from one giant LED, echoing late 90s kitsch.
The initial model will only come in Bondi Blue but later customizations will allow buyers to select from a choice of designs.
Me? I'll wait for the Flower Power release.
And it probably only will come in 1 color, with no extra features and god help you if you try to change anything on the car. Just imagine the apple store will end up looking like a jiffy lube.
I mean whole cars meant for consumer sale.
While it's not like they don't have the cash (in Ireland..), but vehicle assembly is a huge job and I'm guessing that many of the parts for an electric car aren't something you can necessarily just get out of the Bosch parts bin or get from jobbers.
My guess is they're building one to try to understand them from the ground up to be suppliers of technology or to lure a major carmaker without an electric car into building it for them.
Still bitter that The Apple Watch sold more units in one day than Android watches did all 2014?
...won't make up for the fact that electric cars are still worse in almost every practical way than normal cars. In a rational market they'd be priced at about half what gas cars cost just to stay competitive. That is, assuming they're actually shooting for broad appeal and not the high-end luxury goods market.
Instead Apple will shit out a laughably ugly iCar with a $150k sticker price purchased only by the very smuggest rich assholes that I will happily pay the higher insurance premiums for the joy of 'accidentally' rear-ending.
I doubt they are just making a consumer electric car. The main bottleneck to the widespread adoption of these now is ultimately batteries, and Apple isn't a battery company, nor does it seem they are positioning themselves ahead of Tesla on mass producing batteries. In terms of vehicles, while a 1950s modernist designed Ive car in one color might appeal to some people, there are plenty of great car designs around that are pretty functional and nice to look at. Believing they can beat the market on that would be pretty naive. And then there are the masses of people who don't care what a car looks like and buy a Mondeo.
I imagine there is more to it than that. If they are going for disruptive, then the end game (where the puck is currently going) is to develop an autonomous vehicle taxi service - indeed, a service that integrates what Uber, Google and Tesla are doing into one company. That seems more like the type of thing Apple would do.
However, this would be a huge thing to do. While their products certainly have some nicely refined tech in them, they haven't ever really done anything at the bleeding edge of raw computing that gives me confidence that they can pull this off.
While it would seem certain that an Apple car would certainly be aesthetically pleasing (and sure to include design features not patented in a century of car design), will they diverge from what seems to be their standard approach with consumer technology devices?
Will it have a unique recharging cable? Or can only be recharged at outlets that also have the Apple vehicle charger?
Will it only run on Apple-approved roads?
Will you be able to change the battery?
Will it have gesture controlled driving and a windscreen that cracks if you so much as look at it?
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
MARINHEIRO FILHA DA PUTA, vou esperar esse casal de velhos pedófilos pra ter filho mesmo. Vão se fuder. E se Eu encontrar uma daquelas merdas, a Helena ou a Samanta, hoje na minha entrevista, vou querbrar a cara dessas filhas daputa com um chute bem dado. Pior que se filmo essas merdas abusando dos meus sobrinhos, quem vai pra cadeia sou eu por fazer filme de pedofilia. Por mim Eu começava investigando aqueola tal de Ingrid de Novo Hamburgo, pra saber se ela é agente da polícia federal poerque ela é competente, ou porque ela goza com criança. No mínimo é ela que ajuda a trazer heroína da china praquela merda do Falk.
Apple's made a phone... because it appeals to a certain demographic as a cool technology idea.
Apple's made a set-top box... because it appeals to a certain demographic as a cool technology idea.
Apple's made a laptop with one port... because it appears to a certain demographic as a cool technology idea.
Apple's made a watch... because it appeals to a certain demographic as a cool technology idea.
Each of these items had declining demographic appeal, with the preponderance of approval for the ideas coming from a cabal of nearly geriatric caucasian males. While iPhone has been a big hit, it hasn't been refreshed to keep up with the market and is slowly bleeding share into obscurity. AppleTV? Tied into that ecosystem. Super-thin-light laptop with limited functionality because, "Look Ma, no cables! (well except when I really need it, it's just ONE...)" A watch because that's what old white dudes like to look at during their golf games to know how long they have to keep talking to each other.
A car... yup. It's the boomer mid-life crisis "upgrade" of choice.
Good news, folks, Apple's next endeavor will be a robot trophy wife.
g=
Most likely they're already in talks with Elon Musk to buy batteries.
After that it's just an assembly line. Automotive engineers and industrial engineers are all over the world. Building electric cars is well within their capability.
And you think computers don't have tight margins?
Hardware makers have tight margins. Software companies not so much. See below.
Apple's ludicrous mark-ups? Somehow Apple makes ludicrous markups while managing in most cases to undercut the prices of their competitors.
Apple makes their big margins because Apple is a software company at its core. People pay those big markups for the software which just happens to come with a nice piece of hardware. If you put Windows on a Mac and sold it as a regular PC, Apple's margins would evaporate faster than you could say "shareholder lawsuit". The hardware is nothing particularly special - the motherboard is basically the same as any comparably equipped PC. Same for the iPhone. It's nice but there are Android phones that are similarly nice kit. But put Android on an iPhone and Apple couldn't charge the margins they do. People pay hefty margins for the software because that is what makes it "special".
Now to the point, I have a hard time seeing Apple as a car company. The most profitable car companies in the world (Toyota, Porsche, etc) have net margins around 10% - compared with Apple's 25% net margins. And culturally being a manufacturing company is quite different than what Apple does as well. So to make cars they are going to have to accept far lower margins, dump vast amounts of cash into building the business, conduct a complete culture change on the company and build a product that is more mechanical than software. That sounds like a heck of a gamble to me.
Whatsapp images and status & jokes
I just love the "non-problem" chant. It's like saying movies and video games are a solution to a "non-problem", go read a book.
If it weren't for products selling to appease the masses from "non-problems" you'd likely live in an empty shipping container with a coal burning stove and eating gruel 3 times a day. Most of modern life is about solving "non-problems."
And this isn't to say that the Apple watch (or any smartwatch for that matter) is a great product but you people who keep cawing on about "non-problems" probably spend a buttload more on crap that is just about as useful and as well thought out.
Nigel Mansfield
Odds are, Apple will have the car rolling off existing production lines in China, avoiding Tesla's production woes, and they have plenty of cash to set up infrastructure - you'd probably use existing independent repair shops for your service network.
I'm in the auto industry and I've done the sort of sourcing you are talking about. The fact is that there simply isn't enough margin in a car to outsource production like that, especially in light of the costs involved. Tooling for a piece of consumer electronics you can sell by the millions for a fat markup is NOTHING like tooling for a car which you will sell by the thousands for a thin markup. Unless you are competing in tiny volume production you simply have to build it yourself to make any money. Apple has no particular cost advantage nor any particular technology advantage when it comes to building a car and they won't be able to charge huge markups - not on a product costing tens of thousands of dollars. If they want to sell it and make a profit they'll have to watch costs very carefully. They are simply not going to be able to sell a vehicle and get 25% net margins like they are used to. The financing alone prevents it.
Tesla is actually doing EXACTLY the right thing by going vertical with their production. Every time you outsource something to another company you are hemorrhaging margin and potentially quality. Tesla would be bankrupt already if they tried to outsource production the way Apple does it's hardware. There is a reason that companies like GM and Ford and Tesla insist on doing final assembly themselves in most cases. I do contract manufacturing for a living and I can assure you that Apple couldn't afford to outsource to anywhere near the degree they do in their current products without giving away the bits that actually make money for them.
Sure, the Apple Car is high risk, but the EV is in just the sort of state that the PC, MP3 player and Phone markets were in when Apple stepped in.
That is a wildly unsupported assertion. Not saying you are necessarily wrong but proving it won't happen for quite some time. People in tech tend to assume every market works like tech and it doesn't. The auto industry could not be more different. While I think there is a ton of room for innovation (Tesla is proving that) it isn't going to be easy to turn that industry on its head by just building another type of car.
Making electric car components is not hard, and there are few real gains to be made in the drive train.
Speaking as someone who makes electronic car components for a living, I'd say you have no idea what you are talking about if you think making them isn't hard. I think there are substantial gains still to be made in the drive trains, particularly for EVs and hybrid vehicles. I think gasoline and diesel engines are probably well into the diminishing returns though.
The biggest area remaining for innovation/cost reduction is the batteries, and I doubt that Apple wants to become the world's biggest battery company
Any company that wants to compete in EVs in a big way is going to have to become a battery company or have VERY tight relations with one. I agree that batteries are probably the biggest area in need of advancement and the most likely to see it happen.
A special Apple only charger. Fingerprint door locks, that brick your car if you need to replace them. A big iPod scroll wheel for steering. No left indicator, you can just buy a dongle if you need to turn left. Glass covered bodywork that looks amazing until it scratches and shatters, so naturally everyone will buy ugly 3rd party bumpers to protect it. Apple Maps as standard (that's the joke). The iCar 2 will be 0.03mm shorter, with a Plus model offered if you need space to carry any shopping or passengers.
Naturally there won't be a 12V power socket, just a Lightning connector that also charges the car and is where your seatbelt plugs in to. After a couple of years a software update will reduce its max speed to 30 MPH, to encourage you to upgrade.
This is going to be a comedy gold mine.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
it would be great to see what Apple can do with an electric car. I'm wondering when/if they'll start to release information about the project. The market is moving pretty quickly with the Bolt and Model 3 and its possible Apple could be priced/innovated out of the market before they even announce their vision.
I misread it at first too, thought it said "manshield".
-SR
Don't forget the iCronies will be talking about how Google stole all of Apple's car designs in 10 years.
Forget electric cars, what they wanna be doing is make a smart gun linked to a specific user(s). They'll love it, they can link to to the smart watch somehow and give people a reason to get one of them too. Make it that nice grey and stick the apple logo on it. Propriety ammunition, all movement contained within the shell, who cares if it shoots as far or as fast it'll make a killing...literally.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Not another hardware project led by someone with an MBA or something. Just how hands-on is this guy?
Any under-the-hood ( auto) experience? Ever changed a water pump? Rewired the dashboard?
Installed own amp and speakers? Worksed with Industrial electronics and motor control systems?
Or is this guy just another management type, with a little web search learning, and maybe a bit of common-sense?
What are his qualifications? Besides being golf/dinner buddies with other management types?
Well they did steal it. Google/Samsung made billion$ off Apple designs.
You can't change out your engine. Once the battery life dies you'll have to box it up and pay for shipping to Apple's Authorized Car Care and Warranty Return Center...but only if you're car is 5 years old or less, otherwise you'll need to buy a brand new car. The tires will be permanently attached and brake pads cannot be upgraded. It'll come with a 5000 pin proprietary charging cable and you'll need to buy an adapter to charge it at other places. The nagivation system will try its best to drive you into water or off a cliff.
Oh and since Steve Jobs believed that legs and feet were hinderences your steering wheel and other controls will be done via a mouthpiece - car renters beware.
Tesla has not yet shown that they can make money in the car market despite having a dominant position in the high end EV market. They are still pumping huge amounts of cash into the operation. I don't see how Apple can do any better, and they have a lot more at risk.
Exactly. The folks at Tesla are very smart and the business was built from the ground up to be a car company and they still are having a rough go of it financially. Just because Apple was good at consumer electronics is no reason to believe they would be good at making cars. That's like someone who runs a very successful restaurant and is good at it and making lots of money trying to get into the farming business. Maybe they can do it but there is no particular reason to assume they would succeed even if well funded.
So great, we can say the same thing about all the "stealing" Apple is doing from Google's work in 5 years. Or all the stealing they did from the people that came before them in the cellphone industry. Its so easy with your blinders on, right?
And I guess none of this means anything either, right? http://www.reuters.com/article... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... But, you know, rounded corners was such an innovation. Literally took computer science forward 100 years.
What if Apple doesn't sell these cars? What if they lease them, or even more likely, you sign up for an Apple Car Subscription Service? iJaunter.
What if they do? That's an easily replicated business model and why should anyone buy or lease a car just because it has an Apple logo on the side? What value is Apple providing here? People buy their current products because they like the software better than the alternatives and the hardware is (usually) first rate. They provide value to people. What could Apple provide in a car rental that GM couldn't easily replicate.
There are other opportunities here- Taxis, Car Rentals, Events, Vacation Travel... all those times that you need a Car, without the bother of owning one. And there are all the Side Services; Apple Pay is already in place for the various daily, weekly, monthly or yearly Payments, but there is also Insurance, Music and other media to consume on the road, and well, Apple could lose money on the Manufacture of every car initially, and still make tons of money down the road.
You've described business concepts, not business plans and certainly not a path to profitability. You're doing kind of a hand waive and presuming profitability is inevitable with these things and nothing could be further from the truth. Show me a credible business model where you get to profitability and you might have a point. As it is your argument has no substance behind it at all. You're just saying "maybe they're doing something else" but you have no idea what that might be or how they would make money at it.
This quaint concept- One hands over a huge chunk of money and you get a ton or two of metal and plastic on four wheels, to do whatever you want with for as long as you want, is dying.
There is no evidence whatsoever to support that. Furthermore most of our infrastructure is predicated on exactly that system. People continue to buy cars at near record levels and there is no evidence of that slowing down in any meaningful way any time soon.
The New Car advertisements rarely even mention purchase price any longer, just how much the monthly Lease costs.
If you are in the business of leasing cars then you are in the business of selling used cars as well. Leasing doesn't change anything except the financing.
So are they trying to emulate the awesome Sinclair C5 or what ?
How are we going to power all of our electric cars if we're going to run out of electricity in 2040?
Still bitter that The Apple Watch sold more units in one day than Android watches did all 2014?
Huh?! What has that got to do with anything?!? Apple (and many others) have tried to sell a device that fails on the simple premises of being a 'watch' before any other bells and whistles. Fits nicely on the the wrist, minimal weight, battery lasts for years... Now put the simple premises of a car, addressed as badly as smart watches have been and see how badly that thing gets you from A to B.
I'm no fan of smart watches but is there really anything wrong with the Apple watch aside from the fact that the whole concept is a solution to a non-problem?
They're a great solution to the problem "I have spare money that I want to spend on an expensive, impractical gadget".
Main problems (shared with most high-end smartwatches):
1. Short battery life: Fail to put it on charge at night and its useless the next day, something that's most likely to happen when your routine is disrupted, e.g. by travel, which is just when you're most likely to need a smartwatch.
2. Normally off OLED display: strictly for people who don't remember why the LED digital watches of the 1970s were such an amazingly bad idea.
3. Obligatory XKCD reference. Seriously - this. I've got a phone with accurate time that can be in my hand in 2 seconds, one-handed. It's barely less convenient than a watch, especially a dumbwatch on which I either have to press a button, invoke Siri or strike a mail-order-catalog "I am now looking at my watch" pose to get the display to turn on.
Practical upshot: forget the "smart" bit - it doesn't even do the "watch" bit properly.
Main problem not shared with other smartwatches: it only works with iPhone. If you use an Android phone, don't bother. Anybody think the iPod would have been the success it was if His Jobsness had stuck with the original, Mac-only version? Or if the iPhone had required you to own a Mac?
The only smartwatch that appeals to me remotely is the Pebble range, because they have vaguely credible battery life and always-on reflective displays (but they look awful). Those seem like absolute, bare-minimum requirements for a smartwatch to me.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
They are making the next Uber. They will create self driving "suites on wheels" to allow people to travel intermediate distances. The type of travel that is borderline time wasting in a airplane (say Austin TX to Dallas TX) but a PITA to actually drive. They can get these commuters to lease time in these vehicles for this type of travel. They will crush the bottom end of the discount airline industry. They aren't necessarily after the auto industry, per se.
And Dealer only service at forced X miles or the car will be forced into limp mode. ATT only data plan with big roaming fees for going out side of the usa.
3. Obligatory XKCD reference. Seriously - this. I've got a phone with accurate time that can be in my hand in 2 seconds, one-handed. It's barely less convenient than a watch, especially a dumbwatch on which I either have to press a button, invoke Siri or strike a mail-order-catalog "I am now looking at my watch" pose to get the display to turn on.
Personally (and I've believed this for a lot longer than smart watches have been a "thing") I think there's something to be said for reducing life's little annoyances. Reducing the keys on my keyring, for instance, made a small but noticeable change in my daily routine. I had to re-key some locks in and around my house, but I think it paid long-term dividends. When I moved to a new house, I went to a simple keypad entry system (without IoT) and now I only have to carry the key fob to my car. It made me happy.
So yeah, pulling the phone out of my pocket isn't that hard. But I do it many times a day, so even a small improvement pays dividends for me. And looking at my watch is a lot easier than pulling my phone out of my pocket while I'm sitting down.
Is it worth hundreds of dollars? That's a subjective personal question that everyone will have to consider for themselves. For me, on a quest to reduce the annoyances in life, the answer was a clear "yes".
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
Nothing says automotive excellence like "long-time Apple executive."
He keeps trying to retire and they keep pulling him back. Poor guy.
Wow. You're edgy and utterly pointless. Rebel without a clue.
Now it seems he will head-up Apple’s car ambitions — a project Apple has yet to publicly confirm.
This silly Apple car rumor appears every year with some "sources inside Apple" saying that they will launch iCar any time now. I remember one time it certain that Apple would announce iCar because it was reported that Apple engineers met with Elon Musk and Tesla. Then Apple announced CarPlay. At this point, it is no big secret that Apple is working on CarPlay; they've been working on CarPlay all along. People somehow want it to be iCar but I don't see that as a remote possibility.
If everyone would think about what the rumors mean, it would be somewhat obvious it's unlikely that iCar would be leaked. While Apple is very quiet publicly about their upcoming projects, there are equally secretive internally about brand new products. The people who were recruited to work on the original iPhone were not told what they were working on it beforehand. They worked for years in secret. That culture still exists today somewhat as development of their known products is not discussed internally (iPhone, iPad, etc.). There would be a limited number of people inside Apple that would know about iCar and they would be fired for leaking anything to the press.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Since iPhones have a much larger market share than OSX devices your point is moot. But don't let that stop you from blabbing on about it. Or the fact that Apple has sold more iWatch products than all other smartwatches combined.
And I guess none of this means anything either, right? http://www.reuters.com/article... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... But, you know, rounded corners was such an innovation. Literally took computer science forward 100 years.
It was a lot more than just rounded corners.
Yet, strangely, that is what they sued over. I guess you guys know more then Apple, huh?
Timmy can't trust anyone!
So he re-hires a "buddy".
Trouble is, "Project Titan" is DOA! Mansfield is an old-school (System 7 days) "hardware" guy, but NOT an Auto-mechanic!
Ha ha
Apple also makes software. That makes them a Software Company? But I haven't paid for a iOS or Mac OS upgrade in years.
What's your point? I haven't paid for a Windows upgrade in the last 15 years either but that doesn't mean Microsoft isn't a software company. Don't take my word for it, Steve Jobs himself said it and he's right. Apple completely outsourced their hardware manufacturing. All of it aside from some industrial design. You don't outsource the stuff that makes you money. They did not outsource ANY of their software. People pay a premium for Apple software, ergo they are a software company. The hardware is just the pretty box they sell their software in. They effectively sell their hardware at cost or for a minor profit and the markup you pay is for the software on it. If you tried to sell a Mac with just Windows on it, hardly anyone would pay a premium for that. We know they cannot sell their hardware for huge markups because it isn't really much different from their competitors products. Hell Apple sued and admitted in court that Samsung's products were basically almost indistinguishable knockoffs. Why would people consistently pay more for an identical product? Brand has some value but no brand will get you from 10% net margins to 25% net margins for decades at a time.
Almost without exception the software on my phone and Mac is free: Xcode, GarageBand, iMovie, iDVD, iTunes, Maps, etc.
It's not free at all. You pay for it every time you buy a piece of Apple hardware. Just because the cost is rolled in with other expenses doesn't make it free. I'm an accountant and when I quote products I roll cost together like this all the time. Apple's sales strategy is symbiotic with their hardware sales but make no mistake that absolutely none of that stuff is actually free.
You apparently haven't been paying attention for the past 40 years. Apple considers itself, first and foremost, to be a hardware company.
You seem to have overlooked the video of Steve Jobs himself stating point blank that "Apple is a software company" and that the hardware is just the "pretty box" to enable them to sell their software. I'll take his opinion on the matter over yours.
Really there is huge gains to be made in the drive trains for electric vehicles? May I scathingly ask where?
You may although there is no need to get scathing about it. If you want to skip the incremental improvements we can go straight to superconductivity.
Supercapacitors are in kind of a grey area between power source and drive train controls and probably are an opportunity. You noted some of the other opportunities (transmissions, electronics, controls, etc) which are more incremental in nature. There also are economic opportunities for improvement. Electric drivetrains are comparatively expensive at the present. Driving cost out will require a combination of scale and technology improvements.
Basically I think there are more opportunities for technology improvement left in electric power trains than in gas ones. I would agree that as a general proposition that EV drive trains are pretty good in a lot of ways already. It's more a question of marginal improvement than anything else and adapting them to the specific use case of automobiles.
Improvement in electric vehicles will all come from the power source...
That is unquestionable the biggest. You are quite correct about that. Particularly power density, weight, recharge times and number of recharge cycles.
Okay, so what would be an innovation in drivelines that would be so disruptive to the industry?
Room temperature superconducting motors at economically viable price points. That would be a very substantial innovation and there is no known opportunity for equivalent improvement in fossil fuel drivetrains. You seem to have missed the point. I'm saying that EV drivetrains have more room to improve than fossil fuel ones in automobiles. I'm not saying they aren't already very good - they are.
You think Apple is doing all this so they can beat out infineon on power switch topologies?
I have no idea what Apple is doing and don't pretend to. Whatever improvements they might bring to the car industry probably won't be in the area of drivetrains, battery technology, or (probably) chassis design. Frankly unless they want to mimic what Tesla is doing I'm not really sure what Apple brings to the table as a car manufacturer. Maybe something in human interface design or software.
Even if they made a superconducting motor that took up half the space of Tesla's oversized induction motor, that is hardly going to be the tech that breaks the market open.
You seriously think a superconducting motor that worked without exotic coolant for reasonable cost wouldn't matter? Gonna have to disagree on that.
If you think that is where the big advances in electric vehicles are coming from then you can't see the wood for the trees. Give some real examples of areas in the drive train that are ripe for disruption or stop pretending to be an expert.
I think the BIG advances in electric vehicles are going to come from battery research. I think there is substantial though lesser room for improvement in EV drive trains as they relate to automobiles.
No thanks.
Why?
94% of AppleWatch owners are still happy after a year of ownership. Not many cars have better satisfaction ratings (though some do).
I doubt that Apple wants to become the world's biggest battery company.
Why do you not think they already are? With over a billion iPhones sold, hundreds of millions of iPads, hundreds of millions of laptops... few companies on earth can surpass Apple on battery manufacturing and research and most importantly charging and management firmware. Not even Tesla.
Honestly what company on earth makes greater use of advanced batteries than Apple today?
This will happen someday, but maybe not as soon as people think.
Interesting to see how people continuously underestimate Apple despite ample proof to the contrary.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
in your gay car? That is very gay.
Are both Google and Apple really developing self-driving cars? I can see the allure: if it works perfect, it'll sell and they'll make trillions in profit. But it just seems so afar from consumer electronics to start developing mechanical systems. I helped perform electronic analysis in a major automotive case once, and what surprised me was the /interaction/ between electronics and mechanics created its own system which failed (i.e., neither independently failed). This is something automotive manufacturers have dealt with for a long time. Also, I don't see how machine learning alone could really lead to self-driving cars in unprepared environments -- that's kind of the point of statistics, you need "training data" and anything not within or near that training it can't handle.
Nelson ‘Bighead’ Bighetti might be available...
Since iPhones have a much larger market share than OSX devices your point is moot. But don't let that stop you from blabbing on about it. Or the fact that Apple has sold more iWatch products than all other smartwatches combined.
(a) iOS market share is around 30% c.f. 70% for Android - and these days, that Android figure includes a lot of high-end phones from Samsung et. al. Apple could probably double their target market by supporting Android. On what planet does that not make sense?
(b) Most of the competing smartwatches suffer the exact same drawbacks as the Apple Watch: high price, poor battery life, normally-off emissive display, too bulky/delicate/expensive for sport. The FitBit (not a full smartwatch - but nails the most compelling use case of smartwatches) outsells the Apple Watch by a factor of two.
Of course, the iPod, iPhone probably ended up selling more Macs... but they did that indirectly, by promoting the brand, despite being supported on PCs. If Apple think many Android users are going to by a Watch plus an iPhone to link to it - or even look at a Watch if it doesn't work with their phone - then they're holding it wrong.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Yet, strangely, that is what they sued over. I guess you guys know more then Apple, huh?
Well, show us the suit were they sued over rounded corners. Not the design of the iPhone, but over "rounded corners and nothing else".
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.