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Apple Says It Is Working On Self-Driving Cars (theguardian.com)
For the first time, Apple has said that it is indeed working on technology to develop self-driving cars. The company confirmed late last week its previously secret initiative in a statement to the U.S. highway regulator. From a report on The Guardian: "The company is investing heavily in the study of machine learning and automation, and is excited about the potential of automated systems in many areas, including transportation," said the letter from Steve Kenner, Apple's director of product integrity, to the head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The letter offered no details of the project, instead highlighting the "significant societal benefits of automated vehicles," which it described as a life-saving technology, potentially preventing millions of car crashes and thousands of fatalities each year.In a statement to Financial Times (might be paywalled), a spokesperson for Apple said, "We've provided comments to NHTSA because Apple is investing heavily in machine learning and autonomous systems. There are many potential applications for these technologies, including the future of transportation, so we want to work with NHTSA to help define the best practices for the industry."
....and I still don't care.
Imagine the cash flow if the same people who buy Apple products every year or so did the same with cars?!? That would be insane. Smart move for them.
I don't respond to AC's.
Overpriced cars that only drive you where you want to go if your destination is within the Apple walled garden....
You're driving it wrong
The very first line in the linked article:
Apple has said for the first time that it is working on technology to develop self-driving cars.
And in more detail:
The company is investing heavily in the study of machine learning and automation, and is excited about the potential of automated systems in many areas, including transportation,” said the letter from Steve Kenner, Apple’s director of product integrity, to the head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
The difference is that they have not said they're making cars in the same way they do not make TVs. But they do make hardware/software that will drive your TV - so to speak.
Just as auto makers can make 'carplay' http://www.apple.com/ios/carpl... compatible cars, you can imagine they might one day make 'carpilot' compatible cars.
Don't let Samsung start making cars.
They can take my LifeAlert pendant when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
Apple can't even make computers that work anymore.
http://www.macrumors.com/2016/...
http://www.macrumors.com/2016/...
http://www.macrumors.com/2016/...
Apple : "We have so much money we literally don't know what to do with it anymore."
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Since Apple can't get mapping software to work properly I think developing a self-driving car would be an incredibly bad idea.
Prepare for more "me too" driverless cars to jump on this bandwagon to try and be 'cool'
Remember when they used to have some original ideas?
Apple products are almost certainly not over priced or if they are it isn't by much. Apples products are (mostly) priced high but that is something different than being overpriced. As a general proposition product sold in a competitive market can only be considered overpriced when it is priced at a point higher than where marginal revenue equals marginal cost. Translated that means that it isn't overpriced until raising the price any further causes profits to fall from being priced too high.
Just because their products are higher than YOUR willingness to pay doesn't (necessarily) mean that they are overpriced as a general proposition. You can only call something overpriced if you can show that profits would increase if they lowered the price. Conversely something is underpriced if the company can make more money by raising the price. If marginal revenue = marginal cost then the product is priced optimally.
Apple : "We have so much money we literally don't know what to do with it anymore."
That's alright. Neither do Google or Microsoft and a few others. They simply can't find investment opportunities large enough and profitable enough to do anything with their piles of cash. So the pile keeps growing. Eventually I expect it to attract a dragon or something.
Really they should be paying it back as dividends if they can't figure out what to do with the money.
How many people these days would be able to spend $100K+ for an iCar from Apple ?
So every OS update means my older model will now run 10mph slower?
"Help! Jane, stop this crazy thing!"
Soon to be renamed to iDriveYouOffABridge
Non-replaceable tires, headlights, etc. Rest assured, Apple will find some way to kill the value proposition. That's all they do these days.
No, I don't remember that.
Apple has never invented anything. They take something that is already on the market and make it sleeker, flashier and easier to use.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
one will need a heavy duty wench to get past the muddy parts.
Admit it. You did that on purpose, didn't you?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
What are the chances it will be incompatible with existing roads?
What are the chances that after we build the roads for the Apple cars Apple will change the newest cars to require a road upgrade, and that upgrade will still work with the previous two year models, but will keep the old cars from working on the newest roads?
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Remember when they used to have some original ideas?
When was that? They don't invent new industries, their success has come from entering struggling or new markets with a better product. Making driverless car technology would certainly be similar.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
"“To maximise the safety benefits of automated vehicles, encourage innovation and promote fair competition, established manufacturers and new entrants should be treated equally,” Apple wrote."
Bull. apple has never promoted fair competition. To even suggest it is laughable. Sounds like they want help up to the adults table with a booster seat.
"Kenner argued that manufacturers should pool their data as they develop automated systems, to help everyone identify unusual situations or “edge cases” that cars may encounter on the roads."
Basically apple is upset no one is handing over all their hard earned data to apple. apple doesn't do research; they wait and let others do the real work, then they swoop in and copy it.
We need a law that states that Public means shall not be used to adapt roads to make them more compatible with any specific vehicle automation technology.
Public money shall only be spent on improvements that are based on open technologies, usable for all manufacturers, without being encumbered by patents and such.
I'm not gonna get in a car that has only one button ...
The YPD (http://www.yakimapolice.org/) is researching self-driving paddy wagons.
Slashdot Editors / owners / etc.:
o Please stop supporting paywalled sites.
o Please stop supporting sites with closed comment sections.
These things are bad for the web and the web's denizens -- of course not for the ethically crippled sites themselves, as we are their product, and both payment up and dissent down are multipliers to their bread and butter.
The paywalled sites are monetizing the news, and that almost always makes for biased reporting.
The closed comment sections make for echo chambers, and that creates an environment where fake news and agitprop flourish.
Same thing to my fellow slashdotters: if you support bad actors in bad behaviors, they will naturally persist. So think about that before you click through the next time someone thrusts a paywalled or comment-bereft site in your face.
Thanks for reading.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Dateline 2025: Apple has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Mitsubishi and Ford over alleged violations of Apple intellectual property. The claim is that both Mitsubishi and Ford are infringing on Apple's patents on autonomous vehicles in that the Mitsubishi Allgonica and Ford Frobnulator have rounded corners and four wheels. Spokesmen for Mitsubishi and Ford were unavailable for comment.
They may be very fashionable and ergonomic, but good luck arriving at your intended destination if they use Apple Maps for navigation. At least you'll get lost in style :-). The graybeards reading this will remember that for decades there has been a comic narrative going around about "what if UNIX/LINUX, Microsoft and Apple made cars instead of software?" It was something about the UNIX car arrived, still in its crate, and was delivered to your driveway with no tools or instructions and you were on your own from there. The Microsoft car would crash numerous times a day without any explanation - closing and reopening the windows would somehow make it work again. The Apple cars looked stylish and ran smoothly but they only worked on about 20% of the roads. You can google it if you're of a mind.
Cars with one button, overpriced, only work with a small subset of accessories, and require you to upgrade every two years!
It'll know the real time location of every Starbucks in America.
they will just replace the doors with some oddball port nothing fits into
Just what we need. I have no words
The on-board map will have only streets that Apple decides are in your (their) best interest listed. All other streets will simply, as far as your car is concerned, not exist. Any time your car is "in limbo" (moving from one mapped area to another) your car doors will lock and the windows will tint black to prevent any interaction with or observation of an area outside the knowable universe. Trying to attach a third party charging or fuelling device will cause your vehicle to immediately shut down. And yet, despite these facts, millions of people will develop panic attacks any time they are encouraged to actually leave their vehicle leading to a society that is forever commuting but never actually arriving anywhere useful.
The reason they have large piles of cash isn't that they can't figure out what to do with it, it's that it's cash they generated overseas they can't move it to the US without giving 35% of it to the federal government.
They don't have to repatriate it to do useful things with it. Believe it or not you can actually do interesting things outside the USA. I know right? Who knew? Furthermore they don't actually have to repatriate it to return money to shareholders. Have you wondered why Apple has taken out loans in recent years despite having gobs of cash and no actual need for the money? They are doing it to shuffle money around without triggering a tax liability. They have $79B in long term debt on their balance sheet despite not needing a dime of it.
They can't pay it out as dividends without repatriating it, nor can they invest it in anything in the US.
Over 50% of Apple's business is outside the US. They can invest in plenty of things without returning a penny to the US. Furthermore just because the US has a high statutory tax rate doesn't mean that companies actually pay that rate. The effective tax rate in the US for corporations is actually below the world average.
the reason they have big piles of cash is because the US has the highest corporate income tax rate in the developed world.
The tax issue is certainly a complication but it's not the elephant in the room. Not even close. The actual reason these companies have huge piles of cash is that it is REALLY hard to find investment opportunities worth tens of billions of dollars with a 20%+ net profit margin. There just aren't a lot of opportunities like that out there and creating new ones isn't trivial. Apple has revenues of $215B for the last 12 months. For them to grow just 4% they have to create a business the size of eBay (revenue $8B) from scratch. THAT is what is keeping their money in cash. It has almost nothing to do with tax policy.
Definition of overpriced, for those of us who aren't long winded blowhards. "Anything that costs more than I as an individual think it's worth."
That definition is a tautology. "It's overpriced because I think it's overpriced" is the very definition of meaningless.
Not overpriced. Man, that'll keep me chuckling all day.
Laugh all you want but what I said is correct. You are conflating YOUR willingness to pay for what Apple offers with what OTHERS are willing to pay for it. To you it might seem overpriced but to others just the opposite is true. And BOTH of you are right. But until Apple starts losing profits when they raise the price further it is by definition not overpriced. It is meaningless to say something is overpriced unless you are considering the entire market for that product.
Basically you are arguing that Apple products are overpriced because you think they are overpriced. That is circular reasoning and not applicable to anyone but yourself. Essentially the market votes on whether something is overpriced and you get a vote but you don't determine the outcome with your opinion alone.
I'm not arguing one way or the other whether Apple's products are good value for money. Merely observing whether others have found them to be good value and clearly many have. Whether they could have gotten better value elsewhere is a separate question. You could substitute Samsung for Apple in the above argument and the argument would be identical and equally correct.
They are way overpriced, just because you are a member of their cult doesn't change that simple truth.
Actually I couldn't care less about Apple and my argument would be the same for any other company. Just because YOU think their products are overpriced is irrelevant except for your own decision to buy them or not. There is a clear mathematical way to determine whether a product is overpriced. It happens when profits fall when you raise the price further. (Specifically when marginal revenue becomes less than marginal cost) This is economics 101 stuff. A product being overpriced is a market decision not personal one.
You get a vote on whether it is overpriced but so does everyone else. It's the outcome of all those votes that determines whether it is overpriced. To use a different example I don't like Budweiser beer and even though it is quite inexpensive, to me the price is still too high. But millions of cans are sold every year to enthusiastic buyers so my (un)willingness to pay for the product does not make it overpriced even though I wouldn't buy it at the price offered.