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."
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.
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.
You are a relic and you make my fucking skin crawl. ;)
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
It seems amazing to me that Apple think they're going to get their usual ludicrous margins on vehicles. It's an industry with tight margins. If they think people are going to pay 30% over the usual price of a car I suspect they're going to be surprised.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
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.
There was a time when Apple didn't know how to run retail stores or make cell phones. When they decide to get into any line of business, they hire the best people they can, and they enter the market with a compelling advantage.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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 doubt they'll end up realising they've bitten off more than they can chew and end up just licensing designs so EV's can demand a premium by having an apple logo on it, despite the door handles being under the car or some shit.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
And you think computers don't have tight margins? Apple's ludicrous mark-ups? Somehow Apple makes ludicrous markups while managing in most cases to undercut the prices of their competitors.
And for the GP post, how much support structure did Tesla have ten years ago? Apple certainly has the cash to build a support structure.
...well, they had no experience or support structure in phones, either, yet managed to get the carriers dancing to their tune.
Also, their competitors here are going to be Tesla and (maybe) Google rather than GM or BMW.
Some big auto makers have already reduced development in EVs or have decided to market them in only certain markets.
Bit like Xerox in the 1980s not really trying to push GUIs, local area networking and desktop publishing because it didn't fit their ossified business model, then?
Even Tesla is finding out how difficult it is to make cars, and sell, service, and deal with liability and safety.
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. They have lots of lessons - good and bad - to follow from Tesla.
The liability issue is Telsa trying to run before they can walk with the "self driving" feature, a mistake that is easily avoided. Its not even clear yet whether the Apple car is going to be EV, self-driving, neither or both. Sensible thing with self-driving is to start with 'personal mass transit' schemes in business campuses, airports, theme parks etc. and work up.
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. Meanwhile, the PC and Mobile market is mature and saturated and won't be offering huge growth prospects any time soon - Apple may not have come up with any genius innovations in the last few years, but neither has anybody else.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
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.
Some big auto makers have already reduced development in EVs or have decided to market them in only certain markets
Like who? As far as I can tell most manufacturers are ramping up, in some cases massively so. There appears to be a general recognition across manufacturers that the electric market is taking off fast and they all have plans to capitalize on it. I'm sure some will stumble on the way and some markets will be more receptive than others but that's the way of things.
As for Apple, I see no time now or in the future where they will make their own cars. They don't even make their own electronic devices and manufacturing a car is a vastly more complex endeavour. More likely they'll pay a 3rd party to build it for them or they'll buy out a manufacturer or gain a controlling interest. Even then developing a new vehicle from scratch is hard, particularly (since this is Apple) they would wish to build and own the infrastructure that goes with it.
I expect that's where most of these makers see profit - with a petrol vehicle their revenue stops with the sale of the car, but with electric they can lease batteries, bill for charging, subscription services etc. They see Tesla doing it and they want a piece of that action too. The dangerous bit is that unless governments mandate a common charging and billing infrastructure things could get horribly proprietary and fragmented very quickly.
But Apple doesn't undercut its competitors. The only time I've ever seen them "cheaper" than anyone else is if they're first to market with some chipset and there is nothing else to make a direct comparison with. Once there is a competitor they are cheaper and usually by a substantial margin.
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.
I don't know, look at Tesla. They don't have the margins because their costs are high, but people are willing to pay the prices they are asking. My guess is that Apple will be a luxury brand competing with Mercedes and Lexus. A lot of people buying those cars get them on short leases, a couple of years say, so it fits their "buy a new one every 24 months" model well.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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
I don't think you're looking very hard then. E.g. the last time I price out a Lenovo X1 Carbon compared to an MB Air, the MBA was less expensive.
Oh look, I can finally get 16GB in the X1 Carbon. Fully decked out, $1857. 13" MB Air, fully decked out (but only 8GB RAM), $1649
Thinkpad P70, quad i7, 16GB, 512GB SSD, $3234. 15" Macbook Pro, quad i7, 16GB, 512GB SSD, $2699.
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.
It could depend.
The Apple Car invention may not lead to Apple Cars driving the road. However the software learned from making it may be implemented into other standard vehicles beyond the standard entertainment systems.
Lets just say While the Apple Car is a flop but everyone loves the interface on the climate control. Apple could sell this to say Ford or Honda in their cars brand.
Or perhaps the software in the Apple car is far more efficient in using energy so the technology can be sold to Tesla or Toyota.
We seem to expect that progress needs to come from a Disruptive invention however we have gotten a lot of progress from many massive failure inventions. As these failures are often ahead of their time, and may lack one key piece of technology which isn't mature enough or priced well enough to be useful. However the process of invention gets the progress out.
Our Smart Phone looks much like the old Palm Pilot which came from Apples Failure of the newton.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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?
But Apple doesn't undercut its competitors. The only time I've ever seen them "cheaper" than anyone else is if they're first to market with some chipset and there is nothing else to make a direct comparison with. Once there is a competitor they are cheaper and usually by a substantial margin.
Just imagine they did that and a competitor came out that cost more. They'd have to put their prices up to compensate.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Affordable, like the iPhone? You're kidding, right?
Without carrier-subsidized cell phone payment plans, "the masses" would not be using iPhones as much as they are right now and most people would be using low-end Android phones instead.
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.
They occasionally undercut their competitors. The first flash iPods were cheaper than any other consumer device (including USB flash drives) with that much flash because Apple anticipated the demand and bought up an entire year's flash production capacity from several suppliers, getting a reasonable discount. No one else could get flash chips at close to the rate that Apple was paying for a while. More recently, they've used their cash reserves to build factories for suppliers in exchange for the first year of output from them. They end up paying less for chips than anyone else, and the suppliers then get to keep operating the factory and selling the output after Apple has moved on to wanting the newer process.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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.
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.
The only "experience" is the consumer's self-delusion that the added price amounts to anything. It doesn't.
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
And so on.
Over the four-plus years I've compared, those specs have flipped several times. Honestly, anyone who's been in tech for more than three minutes knows there's a constant arms race. The next MBA refresh will probably have Retina and Skylake. And if history is any clue, the MBA will still be less money.
Apple had vision in the 80s. They've followed the path of Microsoft since and just ripped off things from others and touted them as their own.
Just keep those blinders on. I'm sure they must offer some comfort in this crazy world.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
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.
Nope, the latest release has broadwell. They are indeed a full generation behind. An apple head friend of mine just bought a brand new MBA and he said: slower than my three year old MBP.
I'm writing this in a comparable light computer 3200x1800, 16 GB at about the same price as an MBA.
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."
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.
Your friend's brand new MBA is interesting why? I wrote next refresh.
And your comparable light computer for the same price as a MBA is what exactly? Is it anywhere near close to the same build quality? Or is it some loss leader piece of crap? You're not bold enough to post the make and model because why, exactly?
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?
The only "experience" is the consumer's self-delusion that the added price amounts to anything. It doesn't.
And, like most 'muricans, you have no idea about the difference between "price" and "value".
Ah an apple head. No actually apple doesn't understand retail. Nor do they understand tech and without Jobs they don't understand business and lack an ability to truly innovate. The one and only thing apple has been competent at with or without jobs is marketing.
And, as CEO of your Mom's basement, of course you know better than all...
Your friend's brand new MBA is interesting why? I wrote next refresh.
And your comparable light computer for the same price as a MBA is what exactly? Is it anywhere near close to the same build quality? Or is it some loss leader piece of crap? You're not bold enough to post the make and model because why, exactly?
Because he doesn't want anyone to expose his lies.
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.
Your friend's brand new MBA is interesting why?
Because he bought the latest refresh model, released less a month or two ago. This means Apple is at least two refresh cycles behind.
As to my computer, you got me. It is a crap loss leader from an unknown manufacturer. Your standard run of the mill crap with QHD touchscreen, ultralight, latest generation skylake CPU that you can get in a back alley.
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.
You do realize, of course, that the car was a "Jobs" idea, right?
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.
And when gas prices make their inevitable climb back upward, the EV market will increase again. And by that time, Apple will be ready and waiting...
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.
Apple had vision in the 80s. They've followed the path of Microsoft since and just ripped off things from others and touted them as their own.
Of course. They just rip off things. Regardless of their individual success as products, here is a list to ponder:
///: Not Ripped Off.
Apple
AppleSOS: Not Ripped Off.
ProDOS: Not Ripped Off.
AppleWorks: Not Ripped Off.
Apple IIgs: Not Ripped Off.
GS/OS: Not Ripped Off.
Lisa: Not Ripped Off.
Twiggy Floppy Drive: Not Ripped Off.
LisaOS: Not Ripped Off.
LisaProject (became MacProject) : Not Ripped Off.
7/7 Office Suite: Not Ripped Off.
All Macs, in whatever forms: Not Ripped Off.
MacOS (Classic): Not Ripped Off.
MacWrite: Not Ripped Off.
MacDraw: Not Ripped Off.
FileMaker: Not Ripped Off.
AppleTalk: Not Ripped Off.
QuickTime: Not Ripped Off. (But later Ripped-Off BY Microsoft)
Newton MessagePad: Not Ripped Off.
Pippin: Not Ripped Off.
QuickTake Camera: Not Ripped Off.
Copeland: Not Ripped Off.
Rhapsody: Not Ripped Off.
Darwin: Not Ripped Off.
Quartz: Not Ripped Off.
OS X: Not Ripped Off.
iPod (All): Not Ripped Off.
CoreAnimation: Not Ripped Off.
Final Cut Pro: Not Ripped Off.
MainStage: Not Ripped Off.
Pages: Not Ripped Off.
Numbers: Not Ripped Off.
GCD: Not Ripped Off.
launchd: Not Ripped Off.
iPhone: Not Ripped Off.
iOS/TVOS/WatchOS: Not Ripped Off.
App Store: Not Ripped Off.
ApplePay: Not Ripped Off.
AppleTV: Not Ripped Off.
AppleWatch: Not Ripped Off.
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.
Our Smart Phone looks much like the old Palm Pilot which came from Apples Failure of the newton.
...as did most of Palm's original Engineering Team.
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
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...
I'm not American. Any more ad hominems you want to throw out there?
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.
Yes but .. have you forgotten the iPod? Apple were a late entry to the mp3 market and a few years later they were practically the only player that was left.. For EV self drive vehicles imagine the Apple car comes out in 5 or 6 years, that will probably put them at exactly the right point just as the market is starting to mature.. There's some pretty stiff competition out there though with Google and Tesla just as a start. Then there's the traditional auto makers who should not be dismissed in this.. I would love to see an Apple car just for competitions sake..
I would put Tesla out in front at the moment, especially with the upcoming Gigafactory. That factory gives them a unique position that potentially allows them to become the battery supplier of choice for the whole market..
Interesting times.
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
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.
I have bought those and it's a hit'n miss affair. Some cables work, some don't.
So like USB3 cables you buy at Amazon.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Your friend's brand new MBA is interesting why?
Because he bought the latest refresh model, released less a month or two ago.
Either he bought his just released MacBook Air over a year ago, or you have no fucking clue what you are talking about. Or you are just an average troll. Yeah, that's the most likely one.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.