8 ms·

Is this a surprise? Isn't it well known that Apple is working on a car? I think the big question here is not are they working on a car, but can they deliver a

by darawk 11y ago

Is this a surprise? Isn't it well known that Apple is working on a car? I think the big question here is not are they working on a car, but can they deliver a car that represents a significant improvement over what's out there. And that i'm highly skeptical of, unless they deliver full autonomy. But there is just no way Apple is going to beat Google to market with that technology. So, I agree they're working on a car, but I feel fairly confident that it will be an absolute disaster for them. Though most times that's been said about their products in the past decade or two has been a disaster for the person saying it.

mturmon 11y ago
I guess it's the magnitude of the effort that is not widely appreciated. DF reported on May 4 (http://daringfireball.net/linked/2016/05/04/manjoo-moonshots http://daringfireball.net/linked/2016/05/04/manjoo-moonshots) that: "I know The New York Times can’t say that it’s certain that Apple is working on a car, but I can. They are. Of course they’re working on a pay TV service. It would be astonishing if they didn’t have teams hard at work on VR and AR. The difference between Apple and other companies is that Apple will spend tens (or in the case of the car, hundreds) of millions of dollars on a new product and never ship it. They don’t just say no to ideas — they say no to long-in-development projects." Note, "hundreds" of millions of dollars. Whatever you say about DF spin (and you'd be right!), the facts he leaks are generally accurate. The analysis in the OP (exhibit 3) would seem to indicate ~$5B on R&D on hitherto-unknown products since 2014. Which is astonishingly large. Because it's based on company reports, this must be common knowledge for serious tech industry analysts.
CPLX 11y ago
> But there is just no way Apple is going to beat Google to market with that technology. Why? Apple is possibly the world's most effective company at synthesizing industrial design and software in premium devices sold to consumers. Google is a web/cloud services and advertising company. The reason presumably is that you can't see what Apple is doing in public, while Google has a car that still can't drive itself in the rain that is occasionally seen wandering around Mountain View. I question the methodology of that analysis.
- steve19 11y ago
  They seem to frequently fail at software. iTunes is a dog, Mac OS X is getting worse and worse, the Mac App store is horrendous. iCloud is a joke. They do nice interfaces, and iOS is great. I have no doubt they would produce an amazing luxury car with a beautiful software UI, but I do not see them morphing into a machine learning software powerhouse anytime soon, at least compared to Google. Google Now easily beats Siri and Google Maps beats Apple Maps.
  - comex 11y ago
    Google Maps' advantage has a lot more to do with data than algorithms. Google Now is probably a better example, though I've never used it myself.
    - DannyBee 11y ago
      "Google Maps' advantage has a lot more to do with data than algorithms." Given literally everyone else collected the data well before google, and maps was still better, this seems wrong. Google developed better ways to get the data and automate it, not just got better data. For years, literally everyone else had better data.
      - dizzy3gg 11y ago
        Not really. Google collect more, like wifi info :/ and images (street view). Google really did revolutionise mapping.
        regularfry 11y ago
        Google Maps was better before they did that.
      - SyneRyder 11y ago
        Apple is not even trying, or is leaving their Maps team terribly under resourced. I've been running some experiments submitting the same edits to Google, Yelp & Apple simultaneously (since Apple uses Yelp data), and timing how long each takes to update. The last time I publicly recorded my results: Google Maps: 40 minutes Yelp: 3 days 20 hours Apple Maps: 13 days https://twitter.com/syneryder/statuses/668473075365642240 https://twitter.com/syneryder/statuses/668473075365642240 I know Apple's policy is to screen edits carefully to ensure accuracy & avoid vandalism, but it's actually making their maps more inaccurate, because it takes longer for errors to be fixed. Google has also started incentivising frequent editors with rewards (like free 1TB Google Drive subscriptions), which helps encourage people to make the corrections in the first place.
partiallypro 11y ago
Automotive is a low margin, high liability industry. I think Google is approaching this correctly in staying out of the hardware (for the most part.) Apple developing a full car that has to meet x & y regulation from every single different country could end up being a big disaster. Tesla isn't even profitable and has a cash burn that makes a winter furnace seem tame. I don't see how Apple can escape that reality too. I'm sort of surprised that Microsoft & Amazon are sort of just sitting back, watching. I guess neither of them care so long as the back end is running on their cloud.
- elchief 11y ago
  Tesla makes 25% margin on their cars.
  - whoiskevin 11y ago
    But still loses money
    - ProAm 11y ago
      I wouldnt be surprised if Apple is working with Tesla for the model 3. They have the money to invest and help, I can see them owning 25% of Tesla for it. But the fact they are hiring away Tesla engineers argues against this point.
      - nl 11y ago
        Tesla is a public company. Apple would have to disclose a buying significant stake, plus it is publicly available information.
        ProAm 11y ago
        I dont think they have yet, but Im wondering if hiring Tesla engineers is a way to skirt that issue and help to collaborate/co-develop a product. I dont see Apple building it's own car from scratch, especially given Apples quality track record the last 5 years.
vacri 11y ago
Apple has made plenty of turkeys in the past couple of decades. It's just that when they succeed, they really hit it out of the park.
rixed 11y ago
Maybe they are working on a non autonomous car? The car industry is somewhat similar to the phone industry at the time it was dominated by Nokia and telcos: not evolving, slow to integrate new technologies, terrible legacy UIs ... There is a lot of room for improvement outside of autonomy. I can hear the press mocking the development of a"manual " car like it's the 20th century again, and being ridiculed by Apple commercial success once again, as happened for the iPhone and iPad. Indeed. Autonomous cars are extraordinary difficult to produce but they may be even more difficult to sell while a radically new design of a non autonomous car may still be a great success. Customers are in average much less interested by Autonomous cars than engineers, in my experience.
- darawk 11y ago
  Ya if I had to guess i'd say that's exactly it. But do we really need an Apple car? What is there really for them to offer in that space? Better UX? Is there enough of a delta there to warrant entering the space? I grant though that this is a sort of 'unknown unknown'. By definition, the great new things are non-obvious. I may have said the same thing about pre-iphone phones. But I don't really see what they could offer me that would make me want to pay an apple-style premium for a car (other than full autonomy, of course).
  - gniv 11y ago
    > What is there really for them to offer in that space? Electric cars. Yes, there is Tesla, but not much else. And, as Tesla proved, there is significant demand for an electric car done right (ie, powerful, long range, not expensive). Throw in the brand name and a really nice cockpit design, and you have a hit.
VonGuard 11y ago
As with most Apple-related rumors, the truth is probably something a lot less exciting in the end. If Apple is working on a "Car" you can bet it's just s creep of it's current offerings, so, a car that includes iOS and links to your iPhone, has navigation info in the dash provided by Apple Maps, and has iTunes integration in the dashboard. A self driving car is not just going to magically appear from Apple. It'll take years, and offering a branded in-car experience with someone like Ford or VW would be a lot more Apple's style. But then, I've been repeatedly wrong about Apple for years. Still, I feel like when they introduce something these days it's evolutionary, not revolutionary.
- agumonkey 11y ago
  So more like an Apple Watch than an iPhone. They don't have the nice systemic headstart ipod and imacs gave them in electronic devices that made the iPhone possible 'all of a sudden'.
- tcannon 11y ago
  CarPlay? We have that already.
  - petepete 11y ago
    The next step for CarPlay might be more than just an iPad-sized screen, it could be the entire dashboard and Apple might have a thing to say about the interior design of cars. I think a company going from zero to massively produced and heavily scrutinised car in one step is too big a jump without acquiring someone along the way or signing up a existing player.
dagw 11y ago
Isn't it well known that Apple is working on a car? Is it? It is well known that they are hiring bunch of engineers with automotive industry backgrounds and are working on something related to cars. However I've also heard from friends in the industry that they're not really hiring people with backgrounds related to building actual car chassis. I think the jury is still out on whether there will actually be an Apple car (as opposed to an Apple (co-)branded car full of Apple tech).

by darawk 11y ago

mturmon 11y ago

I guess it's the magnitude of the effort that is not widely appreciated. DF reported on May 4 (http://daringfireball.net/linked/2016/05/04/manjoo-moonshots http://daringfireball.net/linked/2016/05/04/manjoo-moonshots) that: "I know The New York Times can’t say that it’s certain that Apple is working on a car, but I can. They are. Of course they’re working on a pay TV service. It would be astonishing if they didn’t have teams hard at work on VR and AR. The difference between Apple and other companies is that Apple will spend tens (or in the case of the car, hundreds) of millions of dollars on a new product and never ship it. They don’t just say no to ideas — they say no to long-in-development projects." Note, "hundreds" of millions of dollars. Whatever you say about DF spin (and you'd be right!), the facts he leaks are generally accurate. The analysis in the OP (exhibit 3) would seem to indicate ~$5B on R&D on hitherto-unknown products since 2014. Which is astonishingly large. Because it's based on company reports, this must be common knowledge for serious tech industry analysts.

CPLX 11y ago

> But there is just no way Apple is going to beat Google to market with that technology. Why? Apple is possibly the world's most effective company at synthesizing industrial design and software in premium devices sold to consumers. Google is a web/cloud services and advertising company. The reason presumably is that you can't see what Apple is doing in public, while Google has a car that still can't drive itself in the rain that is occasionally seen wandering around Mountain View. I question the methodology of that analysis.

steve19 11y ago
They seem to frequently fail at software. iTunes is a dog, Mac OS X is getting worse and worse, the Mac App store is horrendous. iCloud is a joke. They do nice interfaces, and iOS is great. I have no doubt they would produce an amazing luxury car with a beautiful software UI, but I do not see them morphing into a machine learning software powerhouse anytime soon, at least compared to Google. Google Now easily beats Siri and Google Maps beats Apple Maps.
- comex 11y ago
  Google Maps' advantage has a lot more to do with data than algorithms. Google Now is probably a better example, though I've never used it myself.
  - DannyBee 11y ago
    "Google Maps' advantage has a lot more to do with data than algorithms." Given literally everyone else collected the data well before google, and maps was still better, this seems wrong. Google developed better ways to get the data and automate it, not just got better data. For years, literally everyone else had better data.
    - dizzy3gg 11y ago
      Not really. Google collect more, like wifi info :/ and images (street view). Google really did revolutionise mapping.
      - regularfry 11y ago
        Google Maps was better before they did that.
    - SyneRyder 11y ago
      Apple is not even trying, or is leaving their Maps team terribly under resourced. I've been running some experiments submitting the same edits to Google, Yelp & Apple simultaneously (since Apple uses Yelp data), and timing how long each takes to update. The last time I publicly recorded my results: Google Maps: 40 minutes Yelp: 3 days 20 hours Apple Maps: 13 days https://twitter.com/syneryder/statuses/668473075365642240 https://twitter.com/syneryder/statuses/668473075365642240 I know Apple's policy is to screen edits carefully to ensure accuracy & avoid vandalism, but it's actually making their maps more inaccurate, because it takes longer for errors to be fixed. Google has also started incentivising frequent editors with rewards (like free 1TB Google Drive subscriptions), which helps encourage people to make the corrections in the first place.

partiallypro 11y ago

Automotive is a low margin, high liability industry. I think Google is approaching this correctly in staying out of the hardware (for the most part.) Apple developing a full car that has to meet x & y regulation from every single different country could end up being a big disaster. Tesla isn't even profitable and has a cash burn that makes a winter furnace seem tame. I don't see how Apple can escape that reality too. I'm sort of surprised that Microsoft & Amazon are sort of just sitting back, watching. I guess neither of them care so long as the back end is running on their cloud.

elchief 11y ago
Tesla makes 25% margin on their cars.
- whoiskevin 11y ago
  But still loses money
  - ProAm 11y ago
    I wouldnt be surprised if Apple is working with Tesla for the model 3. They have the money to invest and help, I can see them owning 25% of Tesla for it. But the fact they are hiring away Tesla engineers argues against this point.
    - nl 11y ago
      Tesla is a public company. Apple would have to disclose a buying significant stake, plus it is publicly available information.
      - ProAm 11y ago
        I dont think they have yet, but Im wondering if hiring Tesla engineers is a way to skirt that issue and help to collaborate/co-develop a product. I dont see Apple building it's own car from scratch, especially given Apples quality track record the last 5 years.

vacri 11y ago

Apple has made plenty of turkeys in the past couple of decades. It's just that when they succeed, they really hit it out of the park.

rixed 11y ago

Maybe they are working on a non autonomous car? The car industry is somewhat similar to the phone industry at the time it was dominated by Nokia and telcos: not evolving, slow to integrate new technologies, terrible legacy UIs ... There is a lot of room for improvement outside of autonomy. I can hear the press mocking the development of a"manual " car like it's the 20th century again, and being ridiculed by Apple commercial success once again, as happened for the iPhone and iPad. Indeed. Autonomous cars are extraordinary difficult to produce but they may be even more difficult to sell while a radically new design of a non autonomous car may still be a great success. Customers are in average much less interested by Autonomous cars than engineers, in my experience.

darawk 11y ago
Ya if I had to guess i'd say that's exactly it. But do we really need an Apple car? What is there really for them to offer in that space? Better UX? Is there enough of a delta there to warrant entering the space? I grant though that this is a sort of 'unknown unknown'. By definition, the great new things are non-obvious. I may have said the same thing about pre-iphone phones. But I don't really see what they could offer me that would make me want to pay an apple-style premium for a car (other than full autonomy, of course).
- gniv 11y ago
  > What is there really for them to offer in that space? Electric cars. Yes, there is Tesla, but not much else. And, as Tesla proved, there is significant demand for an electric car done right (ie, powerful, long range, not expensive). Throw in the brand name and a really nice cockpit design, and you have a hit.

VonGuard 11y ago

As with most Apple-related rumors, the truth is probably something a lot less exciting in the end. If Apple is working on a "Car" you can bet it's just s creep of it's current offerings, so, a car that includes iOS and links to your iPhone, has navigation info in the dash provided by Apple Maps, and has iTunes integration in the dashboard. A self driving car is not just going to magically appear from Apple. It'll take years, and offering a branded in-car experience with someone like Ford or VW would be a lot more Apple's style. But then, I've been repeatedly wrong about Apple for years. Still, I feel like when they introduce something these days it's evolutionary, not revolutionary.

agumonkey 11y ago
So more like an Apple Watch than an iPhone. They don't have the nice systemic headstart ipod and imacs gave them in electronic devices that made the iPhone possible 'all of a sudden'.
tcannon 11y ago
CarPlay? We have that already.
- petepete 11y ago
  The next step for CarPlay might be more than just an iPad-sized screen, it could be the entire dashboard and Apple might have a thing to say about the interior design of cars. I think a company going from zero to massively produced and heavily scrutinised car in one step is too big a jump without acquiring someone along the way or signing up a existing player.

dagw 11y ago

Isn't it well known that Apple is working on a car? Is it? It is well known that they are hiring bunch of engineers with automotive industry backgrounds and are working on something related to cars. However I've also heard from friends in the industry that they're not really hiring people with backgrounds related to building actual car chassis. I think the jury is still out on whether there will actually be an Apple car (as opposed to an Apple (co-)branded car full of Apple tech).