7 ms·

To be fair, that was what a lot of people thought about Apple making a cell phone. That they'd never compete with Nokia or Motorola and that US carriers would n

by eli 3y ago

To be fair, that was what a lot of people thought about Apple making a cell phone. That they'd never compete with Nokia or Motorola and that US carriers would never give them enough control.

amyjess 3y ago
The problem is that smartphones had very little consumer uptake before the iPhone came out. You had your Windows Mobile and Symbian devices, which were popular among hardcore turbonerds, but normies weren't interested in them. And that goes double for the US; there was more uptake of WinMo and Symbian in Europe, but very little in Apple's home market. The closest thing to a "normie" smartphone before the iPhone was BlackBerry, but most people who had one were business users who had their device issued and provisioned by their employer. And enthusiasts always pooh-poohed BlackBerries as "not a real smartphone" because it was basically just a messaging and groupware beast with limited general-purpose capabilities. So there was a big gap to be filled. Enthusiasts had their market segment, business users had their market segment, but the ordinary consumers had nothing. And Apple gladly swooped in to fill this gap. The problem is that cars are already ubiquitous, especially in the US. What can an iCar offer that a Toyota can't? Hell, even if you specify electric cars, other companies still have this covered. What can Apple offer that Tesla can't? And if you look internationally, it's even worse. You start selling electric cars outside the US market, you're going to end up going head-to-head with Chinese giants like BYD that are already kicking Tesla's ass outside the US. The only real path forward for an iCar that does to cars what the iPhone did to phones is if Apple were to perfect true Level 5 self-driving. If they could actually pull off "Siri, take me to work", it would change things enough that normal cars would look like dumbphones compared to the iCar. But that's a pipe dream. Our roads are too chaotic for Level 5 to be feasible for a long, long time. In fact, I'm willing to bet that the reason this project lasted a whole decade was because Apple was throwing everything they had at Level 5 self-driving, and they canned it because after an entire decade they still couldn't make it work.
ylee 3y ago
>To be fair, that was what a lot of people thought about Apple making a cell phone. That they'd never compete with Nokia or Motorola Not true. I helped cover Apple for a large investment bank before and after iPhone's launch. If anything, Apple was the one company that had the technology and market credibility to immediately make a splash in the market despite being totally foreign to it. >and that US carriers would never give them enough control. We did think that there was a real possibility of Apple launching its phone in conjunction with an MVNO. But this was again out of belief that Apple had the credibility to immediately have millions of customers switch to it as their carrier, not because Apple—of all companies—could not get what it wanted from carriers.
MBCook 3y ago
The phone made sense to me because by that point Apple had clearly proven themselves as a consumer electronics company. It’s wasn’t as big a jump and cell phone software was largely junk. The carrier thing was true, but they could have launched outside the US. Instead they found a carrier desperate enough. But they’ve never done safety critical stuff like a car. Of highly mechanical stuff like a car. Or things that need something of a dealer network the way a car does (existing Apple stores wouldn’t cut it). And really I’m not sure how much they could add a special “Apple touch” outside infotainment/interior controls compared to luxury automakers. If they a fully self driving car by 2018 and beat everyone by 7 years maybe. But as time went on it went from little to almost no sense. I enjoyed following it for that reason. But I never thought it would happen.
- theturtletalks 3y ago
  Apple is still waiting it out until most of the existing EV issues are resolved. Then, they can swoop in and leverage their walled garden to get buyers/users. They'll also be different than Ford, Mazda, Honda, etc since I don't think they will try to sell their cars. It'll be a subscription fee and Apple will own the car. All this news tells me is that Apple is putting EV in the back burner since users are still not convinced about EVs in the long-term. AI is here to stay so it makes sense pivoting the team to that. Hell, the AI might make it into their cars for all we know.
  - MBCook 3y ago
    What does Apple‘s walled garden have to do with buying a car? I’m so tired of people claiming apples walled garden gives them magic abilities. It has nothing to do with this. Do you really think people are going to pay an extra $30,000 for a car because it works with the iPhone? I have an iPhone. I love Apple stuff. I’m not paying any premium for an Apple car, they have to convince me it’s worth it over the competition.
    - theturtletalks 3y ago
      What does Apple‘s walled garden have to do with bluetooth headphones? Now, look at AirPods, simple bluetooth headphones, with tight integration with iOS. I was the one ridiculing Apple for even entering this market and I thought they looked dumb. Sony XMs looked way better. Now headphones are a sizable market for Apple. So many of my friends are awaiting the refreshed AirPods Max. The same people that said they would never buy AirPods when they launched.
dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
Not really the point. Apple succeeded because they applied their strengths, product and user interface design, to what is essentially a small computer. Apple have always developed core products that are essentially a computer. Even though cars increasingly look like laptops on wheels, the actual computer bit is relatively minor and the user interface is mostly the wheel and pedals, not so much the screen.
- MBCook 3y ago
  I think that’s why they were a bit more interested when the original idea was to skip all that and do all automatic driving. But as soon as it became clear that wasn’t going to be an option I don’t understand why they didn’t just give up and instead seemed to try to shift towards a more normal car.
- eli 3y ago
  I agree that a car is on a different scale, but I think it's only in hindsight that a phone is obviously just a computer and that the user interface is important part.
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
    Do you really not see how a car is a much greater departure from their core expertise than the iphone? They were already making handheld electronic devices well before the iPhone. And they were making computers pretty much for the whole history of the company. Ipod touch was a natural evolution of the ipod and the iphone was basically just an incremental improvement on the ipod touch. The closest thing they've made to a car is those wheels for the mac pro.
    - _aavaa_ 3y ago
      The Mac Pro comment is an unfair comparison. It's closer to a car on cinder blocks since the wheels cost extra.
    - fabioborellini 3y ago
      iPhone predates iPod touch, though.
scarface_74 3y ago
Rumors of Apple making an “iPhone” were rampant and always seen as the next step from making the iPod.
kazinator 3y ago
Phones are just networked computers though.
xorcist 3y ago
A connected PDA was always a thing. Palm/3Com made phones. HP/Compaq made iPaq phones. Sharp made their Zaurus. The were OEM phones you could get branded. The Qt guys had their Trolltech phone. Everyone wanted to see what phone software developed by an actual computer company who knew software would look like. Everyone and their brother wanted to see what an iPod phone would look like. The Apple phone was perhaps the most anticipated device in years. What surprised people wasn't that they released one, it was that they went all in on a capacitive touch screen, which was novel tech, and that it didn't have real mobile data or native apps. There was this long song and dance about how apps were to be replaced by web pages but people were still skeptical.
- type0 3y ago
  > There was this long song and dance about how apps were to be replaced by web pages Yeah and the first iPhones were terrible if you didn't jailbreak them
  - stephen_g 3y ago
    Terrible compared to what? At the time, mobile applications were universally pretty crap. Browsers were atrocious, not being able to render real CSS or anything (they’d give you a simplified broken layout). I didn’t have the first iPhones (my first was the iPhone 4) but I had a first generation iPod Touch, and Safari felt pretty magical at the time compared to anything else on the market. The capacitive screen, multitouch, being able to decently render pages - lots of stuff we totally take for granted now… The App Store became publicly available just one year after the original iPhone was released too - people seem to make out as if Apple held on for years and years but the SDK was announced less than six months after the iPhone’s release and was made available to developers a couple of months later.
    - vel0city 3y ago
      Opera Mobile would render pages with heavy CSS (for the time) pretty accurately. Even with Pocket IE, a lot of pages did render pretty decently. I was able to browse and post on phpBB boards and what not with it. The browser built-in on the various Symbian devices I owned were also pretty decent. They were built on WebKit, supported real CSS, working JavaScript support, and more. When you're talking about browsers on mobiles, are you talking just WAP browsers on dumbphones or actual smartphones?
type0 3y ago
No, that's like comparing apples and oranges
iancmceachern 3y ago
Yeah but a cell phone and a computer are close cousins. A car and a cell phone, or anything Apple has yet made, are wildly different. They may as well have had a battle tank program, or started making airplanes. Those things have screens and "infotainment systems" too.
- heartbreak 3y ago
  > Yeah but a cell phone and a computer are close cousins. Were they really close cousins in 2006?
  - vel0city 3y ago
    Before 2006 my phone was already my portable media player, my internet modem on the go, a quick web browser, my portable email machine, my internet instant messenger client, a mapping tool, and more. By 2007 I was even using it for video calls.
  - int_19h 3y ago
    In 2006, yes. J2ME apps were already fairly broadly supported by feature phones and somewhat popular.
  - iancmceachern 3y ago
    Yes. Anything that has machined and injection molded housings, a screen, pcbas and software/firmware. Basically all consumer electronics are cousins in this context. Time doesn't matter here, industry verticals do. Cars are wildly different, 50 years ago GE would have seemed like the one that would make a phone, not ford.

by eli 3y ago

To be fair, that was what a lot of people thought about Apple making a cell phone. That they'd never compete with Nokia or Motorola and that US carriers would never give them enough control.

amyjess 3y ago

The problem is that smartphones had very little consumer uptake before the iPhone came out. You had your Windows Mobile and Symbian devices, which were popular among hardcore turbonerds, but normies weren't interested in them. And that goes double for the US; there was more uptake of WinMo and Symbian in Europe, but very little in Apple's home market. The closest thing to a "normie" smartphone before the iPhone was BlackBerry, but most people who had one were business users who had their device issued and provisioned by their employer. And enthusiasts always pooh-poohed BlackBerries as "not a real smartphone" because it was basically just a messaging and groupware beast with limited general-purpose capabilities. So there was a big gap to be filled. Enthusiasts had their market segment, business users had their market segment, but the ordinary consumers had nothing. And Apple gladly swooped in to fill this gap. The problem is that cars are already ubiquitous, especially in the US. What can an iCar offer that a Toyota can't? Hell, even if you specify electric cars, other companies still have this covered. What can Apple offer that Tesla can't? And if you look internationally, it's even worse. You start selling electric cars outside the US market, you're going to end up going head-to-head with Chinese giants like BYD that are already kicking Tesla's ass outside the US. The only real path forward for an iCar that does to cars what the iPhone did to phones is if Apple were to perfect true Level 5 self-driving. If they could actually pull off "Siri, take me to work", it would change things enough that normal cars would look like dumbphones compared to the iCar. But that's a pipe dream. Our roads are too chaotic for Level 5 to be feasible for a long, long time. In fact, I'm willing to bet that the reason this project lasted a whole decade was because Apple was throwing everything they had at Level 5 self-driving, and they canned it because after an entire decade they still couldn't make it work.

ylee 3y ago

>To be fair, that was what a lot of people thought about Apple making a cell phone. That they'd never compete with Nokia or Motorola Not true. I helped cover Apple for a large investment bank before and after iPhone's launch. If anything, Apple was the one company that had the technology and market credibility to immediately make a splash in the market despite being totally foreign to it. >and that US carriers would never give them enough control. We did think that there was a real possibility of Apple launching its phone in conjunction with an MVNO. But this was again out of belief that Apple had the credibility to immediately have millions of customers switch to it as their carrier, not because Apple—of all companies—could not get what it wanted from carriers.

MBCook 3y ago

The phone made sense to me because by that point Apple had clearly proven themselves as a consumer electronics company. It’s wasn’t as big a jump and cell phone software was largely junk. The carrier thing was true, but they could have launched outside the US. Instead they found a carrier desperate enough. But they’ve never done safety critical stuff like a car. Of highly mechanical stuff like a car. Or things that need something of a dealer network the way a car does (existing Apple stores wouldn’t cut it). And really I’m not sure how much they could add a special “Apple touch” outside infotainment/interior controls compared to luxury automakers. If they a fully self driving car by 2018 and beat everyone by 7 years maybe. But as time went on it went from little to almost no sense. I enjoyed following it for that reason. But I never thought it would happen.

theturtletalks 3y ago
Apple is still waiting it out until most of the existing EV issues are resolved. Then, they can swoop in and leverage their walled garden to get buyers/users. They'll also be different than Ford, Mazda, Honda, etc since I don't think they will try to sell their cars. It'll be a subscription fee and Apple will own the car. All this news tells me is that Apple is putting EV in the back burner since users are still not convinced about EVs in the long-term. AI is here to stay so it makes sense pivoting the team to that. Hell, the AI might make it into their cars for all we know.
- MBCook 3y ago
  What does Apple‘s walled garden have to do with buying a car? I’m so tired of people claiming apples walled garden gives them magic abilities. It has nothing to do with this. Do you really think people are going to pay an extra $30,000 for a car because it works with the iPhone? I have an iPhone. I love Apple stuff. I’m not paying any premium for an Apple car, they have to convince me it’s worth it over the competition.
  - theturtletalks 3y ago
    What does Apple‘s walled garden have to do with bluetooth headphones? Now, look at AirPods, simple bluetooth headphones, with tight integration with iOS. I was the one ridiculing Apple for even entering this market and I thought they looked dumb. Sony XMs looked way better. Now headphones are a sizable market for Apple. So many of my friends are awaiting the refreshed AirPods Max. The same people that said they would never buy AirPods when they launched.

dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago

Not really the point. Apple succeeded because they applied their strengths, product and user interface design, to what is essentially a small computer. Apple have always developed core products that are essentially a computer. Even though cars increasingly look like laptops on wheels, the actual computer bit is relatively minor and the user interface is mostly the wheel and pedals, not so much the screen.

MBCook 3y ago
I think that’s why they were a bit more interested when the original idea was to skip all that and do all automatic driving. But as soon as it became clear that wasn’t going to be an option I don’t understand why they didn’t just give up and instead seemed to try to shift towards a more normal car.
eli 3y ago
I agree that a car is on a different scale, but I think it's only in hindsight that a phone is obviously just a computer and that the user interface is important part.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
  Do you really not see how a car is a much greater departure from their core expertise than the iphone? They were already making handheld electronic devices well before the iPhone. And they were making computers pretty much for the whole history of the company. Ipod touch was a natural evolution of the ipod and the iphone was basically just an incremental improvement on the ipod touch. The closest thing they've made to a car is those wheels for the mac pro.
  - _aavaa_ 3y ago
    The Mac Pro comment is an unfair comparison. It's closer to a car on cinder blocks since the wheels cost extra.
  - fabioborellini 3y ago
    iPhone predates iPod touch, though.

scarface_74 3y ago

Rumors of Apple making an “iPhone” were rampant and always seen as the next step from making the iPod.

kazinator 3y ago

Phones are just networked computers though.

xorcist 3y ago

A connected PDA was always a thing. Palm/3Com made phones. HP/Compaq made iPaq phones. Sharp made their Zaurus. The were OEM phones you could get branded. The Qt guys had their Trolltech phone. Everyone wanted to see what phone software developed by an actual computer company who knew software would look like. Everyone and their brother wanted to see what an iPod phone would look like. The Apple phone was perhaps the most anticipated device in years. What surprised people wasn't that they released one, it was that they went all in on a capacitive touch screen, which was novel tech, and that it didn't have real mobile data or native apps. There was this long song and dance about how apps were to be replaced by web pages but people were still skeptical.

type0 3y ago
> There was this long song and dance about how apps were to be replaced by web pages Yeah and the first iPhones were terrible if you didn't jailbreak them
- stephen_g 3y ago
  Terrible compared to what? At the time, mobile applications were universally pretty crap. Browsers were atrocious, not being able to render real CSS or anything (they’d give you a simplified broken layout). I didn’t have the first iPhones (my first was the iPhone 4) but I had a first generation iPod Touch, and Safari felt pretty magical at the time compared to anything else on the market. The capacitive screen, multitouch, being able to decently render pages - lots of stuff we totally take for granted now… The App Store became publicly available just one year after the original iPhone was released too - people seem to make out as if Apple held on for years and years but the SDK was announced less than six months after the iPhone’s release and was made available to developers a couple of months later.
  - vel0city 3y ago
    Opera Mobile would render pages with heavy CSS (for the time) pretty accurately. Even with Pocket IE, a lot of pages did render pretty decently. I was able to browse and post on phpBB boards and what not with it. The browser built-in on the various Symbian devices I owned were also pretty decent. They were built on WebKit, supported real CSS, working JavaScript support, and more. When you're talking about browsers on mobiles, are you talking just WAP browsers on dumbphones or actual smartphones?

type0 3y ago

No, that's like comparing apples and oranges

iancmceachern 3y ago

Yeah but a cell phone and a computer are close cousins. A car and a cell phone, or anything Apple has yet made, are wildly different. They may as well have had a battle tank program, or started making airplanes. Those things have screens and "infotainment systems" too.

heartbreak 3y ago
> Yeah but a cell phone and a computer are close cousins. Were they really close cousins in 2006?
- vel0city 3y ago
  Before 2006 my phone was already my portable media player, my internet modem on the go, a quick web browser, my portable email machine, my internet instant messenger client, a mapping tool, and more. By 2007 I was even using it for video calls.
- int_19h 3y ago
  In 2006, yes. J2ME apps were already fairly broadly supported by feature phones and somewhat popular.
- iancmceachern 3y ago
  Yes. Anything that has machined and injection molded housings, a screen, pcbas and software/firmware. Basically all consumer electronics are cousins in this context. Time doesn't matter here, industry verticals do. Cars are wildly different, 50 years ago GE would have seemed like the one that would make a phone, not ford.