Tim Cook Says Apple Is Focusing on an Autonomous Car System
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Please focus on Mac hardware. Please focus on giving me the hardware tools to work and play on the macOS platform. Continue improving your mobile devices. Consider adding and improving only those things that will continue to make my business and leisure tasks smoother, simpler, and more enjoyable.
I'd rather you didn't take focus from the things you've traditionally done well to do something that's never been in your wheelhouse. If you want to get involved with automobiles, work with the industry to improve my life while I'm riding along in the autonomous vehicle, but please don't try to build the autonomous vehicle. I'd prefer you wait until the market is saturated with terrible implementations so you can learn from others' mistakes and come along with a much-improved offering.
But for now, just give me and my fellows Macs we can depend on for everything, a reliable mobile experience that doesn't throw out the habits we gained on the previous iteration, and the tools to make great software for your platforms.
--d
Sounds very revolutionary to me. :mad:
hey - heres an idea Apple - rather than enter the world of gimmicks and toys, why dont you spend a little more time sorting out your pathetically expensive and crap server line up? :mad: or are you really aiming to become a glorified consumer gimmicks firm? :mad:
[1] https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apples-new-thing-ipod.5...
But the way Tim is framing this, they're looking at it as an AI problem. He doesn't go into the feel of driving or the wonderfully bad user interfaces of current cars, he describes it as "the mother of all AI projects." So while this is "something that's never been in [their] wheelhouse", they're approaching it from the AI side. And AI, given WWDC, is something they are very much trying to make their wheelhouse. And it sounds like they're doing it in a very Apple-like way: work on the hardest problem they can, then take what they've learned and apply it.
Even if they don't make a car, or even a driving platform they can sell, the AI things they'll learn will show up in Siri, iOS, and everywhere else.
So yeah, I want them to focus on Mac hardware. But I also want them to learn and grow. And I think they might, might, be starting to do both.
EDIT: Since I keep getting the same replies, I'm gonna edit it here too:
1. When you are in maintenance mode and you still manage to introduce more bugs than you are fixing then your are doing something wrong (usually that's a result of limiting the budget of a department and as a consequence hiring less experienced developers)
2. Every new feature the last few years has been ported from iOS and without much care. I still can't believe they have yet to make Siri and Spotlight one unified product (at least make Spotlight more powerful, I can't even set a timer with it).
And to add to this, being in maintenance mode doesn't have immediate effects. If Apple continues like this somewhere down the line macOS is gonna end up quite behind (and a big mess due to points 1. and 2.)
They are referring to the fact that Apple portables ship with soldered memory and max out at 16GB while PC manufacturers are shipping systems which support 32 and even 64GB in laptop/mobile workstation form factor.
So they are referring to the physical memory (RAM) limit of Apple devices, not any logical limitations of the OS.
That's a false dichotomy. Do you really believe they are the only options?
2. Every new feature the last few years has been ported from iOS and without much care. I still can't believe they have yet to make Siri and Spotlight one unified product (at least make Spotlight more powerful, I can't even set a timer with it).
I agree, but I think their approach is flawed. A car is more than an AI with wheels and a seat. Tons and tons of engineering expertise goes into making a roadworthy car, and even more goes into making a truly good car.
Apple quite simply does not have automotive engineering experience, and the jump from computers to iPhones pales in comparison to the jump from consumer electronics to automobiles.
Cook has never struck me as a man with a vision. I think this is just Keeping up with the Joneses.
I agree with you, and I think Cook and Apple do to! The article just says they're focusing on "an autonomous system." When asked if they were going to commit to a full automobile:
> "We’ll see where it takes us," Cook said. "We’re not really saying from a product point of view what we will do."
In other words, they're not making a car, just the AI for it.
Granted, Apple rarely makes 'components'; they make Products. It doesn't really jive with the Apple we know to make part of something without making the _whole_ thing. But I think these comments from Cook are telegraphing that they are--at least for right now--just making a component.
edit to clarify: Based on this and previous rumors, I think the "Apple Car" project (that totally existed, no joke!) has been refocused on the autonomous AI project. Cook and Mansfield realized that a car was big and complicated, and the market was inevitably moving toward self-driving cars. In realizing that without the self-driving component, they wouldn't have a car at all, they refocused the project to see if they could even build such a component. Once they have that, they'll go from there.
It seems to me domestic/concierge/robotic/secure IoT AI is a much bigger and uncontested market.
What specifically does building an automotive AI give Apple that a more general robotics and/or concierge AI project doesn't?
We regret to inform you, but you are a part of a market niche known as "power users". That niche is but a small part of our customer base, and like all other big companies in the industry, we no longer care about you.
Don't be sad about gradually losing useful tools - enjoy the new, shiny toys instead.
Sincerely,
Apple.
However, I do think turning off power users is a great way for the company to shoot itself in the foot when it comes to recruitment. They really depend on a certain degree of enthusiasm to get the kind of engineering talent they want to get, much more so than money or the work environment or perqs. If they no longer inspire that enthusiasm in as many people, it'll make it that much more difficult to bring good people together to do whatever they want to do next. Unfortunately the general trend seems to be a long, slow transition from being the BMW of the computer industry to being the Chipotle of the tech industry. I'm sure all the metrics favor being Chipotle (and gosh do they love metrics), but that doesn't do anything to help make Chipotle a desirable place to work at that draws all the best talent.
I'm still waiting to see this effect in action from when Apple supposedly threw away the Final Cut Pro 7 userbase over night. That was back in 2011, 6 years should have been plenty of time to see this play out. Or perhaps the movers and shakers in Hollywood don't have as much influence as they thought.
I get asked all the time about buying laptops. I used to recommend Apple, but it has become very difficult to do so for a myriad of reasons. Lately, I have found that most people can get by with a chrome book after looking at their requirements.
-- Pear
like how they were a computer company and then decided to go into cellphone business?
Apple's claim to automotive relevance seems to be the idea that they could somehow worm their way into the supply chain of ordinary car manufacturers. As in, Ford, Toyota, Tata, etc. would all have the same iDrive system. To me, this is not only hopelessly naive, but utterly contrary to Apple's consistent insistence on controlling every aspect of their ecosystem.
This pivot does not seem like a savvy business move to me. It seems like they see a big market and want to be part of it regardless of their actual...ugh...synergies.
Apple has hundreds of billions of dollars. They can focus on more than a few products. It's natural that they look into AI.
Apple was doing just fine in 2007. OS X was in great shape. They had recently transitioned from the faltering PowerPC CPUs to x86, which revitalized their hardware offerings and opened up a world of new possibilities for users to dual-boot or virtualize other OSes. Their market share was pretty solid, and their share of PC profits was quite high.
You say "stature in the industry" as if there's a single "the industry" that encompasses both PCs and phones. If Apple hadn't done the iPhone then maybe Microsoft or Nokia would have done better, but so what? That wouldn't affect Apple in the PC market. Wikipedia says the top five PC makers are Lenovo, HP, Dell, Asus, and Apple, and as far as I know Apple is the only one with a substantial smartphone business.
Of course Apple wouldn't be nearly as relevant overall in a world where they never produced the iPhone. I don't care about that. I see no reason why the Mac wouldn't be about as relevant in the personal computing space, which is what I care about.
In any case, I'm not just annoyed at the existence of the iPhone, but the nature of it. If the iPhone had been a Mac-like open platform instead of this walled garden bullshit, all of my complaints would go away. I have no problem with mobile per se, I have a problem with pervasive vendor-controlled code signing, not getting root on my own devices, etc.
Most of Apple's APIs and tools run on and build for both Mac and iPhone. Without the iPhone, Apple would have to pay for that from just what they made from the Mac, so improvements to macOS would come slower than they do now.
> improvements to macOS would come slower than they do now.
I do agree that autonomous cars are a money pit not worth pursuing right now.
They're big enough to do a lot of different things. It's like asking Microsoft to focus on Windows and Surface instead of putting in effort into their Hololens. Again, why can't they do both?
Well they certainly aren't doing both at the moment. All of the Mac hardware updates have been so heavily "form over function" that they aren't very appealing to people that just need to get shit done. My 3 year old Macbook Pro is still very fast, and since I use most of the ports on a regular basis it's arguably more useful than the new Macbook Pro.
[1]: https://stratechery.com/2016/apples-organizational-crossroad...
Apple's the richest company in the world and it seems like they are actually focusing a bit on the MacPro and some of the other pro offerings power users need.
I'm also confident with the amount of money they have, they can certainly do both.
Yet that was too much of a stretch. So they are focusing on autonomous driving systems which would have to integrate with third parties' dumb cars.
I could see Google or Microsoft executing such a strategy. Not Apple though. They'd need to control all the parts.
Only Tesla can make the car that Apple would be proud of, but couldn't make on their own. So I predict that Apple acquires Tesla for its brand, products and heir-apparent.
I was thinking that Lotus would have been the type of Apple candidate and on the market for acquisition. That's basically starting the same road as Tesla, 15 later - seems a bit late for that. Volvo is another company that would align nicely with Apple design goals, but similarly they have progressed along too well.
Maybe brand like Saab that has still retained enough engineering capability, had some traditional car design know how ( interior design like seat, ... ) that can quickly (i.e. Apple need a fully autonomous car in the next 10 years top) be capitalised with Apple own know-how into a decent Tesla, VW, BMW, Volvo 2025 competitor ?
I would be shocked if any current or potential Lotus owner would be interested in a "automated Lotus". That being said, I think the number of "current or potential Lotus owners" is a vanishingly small market, so it may not matter.
Except for Beats, where Apple bought an established large player and left them under the Beats brand
Okay, lemon is «citron» in French, not Citroën, but close enough, right?
Apple is off its game when it talks to investors about how it's going to deliver revolutionary tech. It goes well for them the other way: deliver-shock-and-awe.
Tele Atlas: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tele_Atlas_camera_au... TomTom: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mapping_van_tomtom_w... and of course Google: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Google_M...
While detailed LIDAR data is valuable for self-driving vehicles, you can also put it to more mundane uses. For example detecting where the kerbs are relative to the mapping vehicle; and detecting whether that featureless concrete-coloured thing the cameras captured was a barrier or not.
Autonomous cars haven't existed for a while so I'm a bit skeptical Apple will be able to deliver something trustworthy.
There's no reason they can't be working on a car that won't be released for 5+ years, after the market has matured.
Granted, earlier this year we saw them meet with Apple-centric press to tell them "don't worry, we're building another Mac Pro, just not in 2017", but those present pointed out how un-Apple-like it was to make such an announcement.
If Tim Cook unveiled the new car today, som62345's concern would be valid.
For now, we just know it is an area of interest for Apple and they may one day release a product.
Perhaps the more interesting part of this is that this is the the second time since Steve Job's death that Apple has revealed an area that is working in before unveiling the product.
Anyway: except for the obvious answer "money" I don't really see why Apple feel the need to compete in the autonomous car market. Is it because Samsung makes cars?
I don't see it as Apple trying to compete, but Apple attempting to serve their customers a better end product that ultimately make all other Apple products better in the process. For example, I get into my Apple car environment and so does the rest of my Apple ecosystem. It'd be nice for Siri to say, "I've prepared your documents for you to review for your 10am meeting, enjoy your ride."
About 2/3 of Apple's profit comes from iPhones.
Apple was a household name before the iPhone existed, because of the iPod.
While Cook is mentioning it officially today, as you know they have been hiring countless people from the auto industry for many many years as they work on the tech. AI is integratal to Apple across all their product lines so makes sense to also do AI for autonomous systems such as a car. Apple isn't saying they will build their own car necessarily, they are saying they would build the underling tech for the car, that they would then presumably license to luxury car makers.
That's not true, unless you define "car tech" very narrowly. Samsung has been in the car business since 1994:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Samsung_Motors
"In the early 1990s, Samsung's Chairman Kun Hee Lee recognised the automotive industry as the culmination of several others. For the Samsung Group, this would allow to leverage resources and technologies from the entire group including Samsung Electrics and Samsung Electronics."
More automation benefits Apple inasmuch as the less time people spend on tasks like driving, the more time they have to spend using their iPhone/iPad/Mac. But they are still very different problem domains, and it's not clear to me how most of Apple's strengths in creating consumer-friendly electronics will help it in automation, when the whole point is to eliminate human interaction.
It seems like Apple would be better off just investing some of its cash pile into a plethora of automation startups. Let those startups concentrate on automating everything, while Apple concentrates on capturing all the free time it opens up for people.
Apple has a history of bringing things in-house (see P.A. Semi and the A* chips).
Altough since their skills are in design, if they design a car/shuttle(even with a human rider) that multiple people ride together, AND enjoy that experience - they would have something big on their hands.
Along with Cook recently saying humans should be involved in decision-making, there are some very interesting AI-related statements coming out of Apple these days.
Honestly if Apple disappeared tomorrow someone else would manage to fill this car gap just fine. But if Apple disappeared tomorrow who would fill the gap their computer hardware and OS left?
Windows is getting slowly better but I don't think it will ever truly manage to be as slick as OS X. Especially when the passionate Windows insist on using an 8 year old OS and devs insist on writing software using the same systems and libraries they were using 15+ years ago.
To me Apple is only valuable as a computer company, an Apple car would just be a toy for the super rich.
I do wonder if this project came about as a way to keep talent in the building?
/s
Everyone here is assuming the latter with no evidence to support it.
2. Buy high-leveraged CFDs on AAPL
3. Release the news
4. Profit
Wish them the best, but they need to get their core business right (said he who types this on 6 yrs old Macbook Air)
The iPhone has strong network effects and a luxury brand. But auto driving tech is strictly a commodity - if the next Ford Focus comes with a "Powered by Apple" label nobody will pay more than if the label read "Powered by Google".
But powered by Apple? Meh. For many people it still means "but I'm not using anything by Apple".
In terms of its products, Apple is already essentially a luxury automobile manufacturer today, it just happens to be a luxury auto manufacturer that makes laptops rather than cars. They make expensive, high grade physical products whose quality and status help people of means define their personal brands and lives in ways that bring joy and function. That's indistinguishable from the role of a BMW or Audi or etc.
Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are all much better equipped and positioned to build amazing AI. It's that Jony Ives chassis, exterior, and interior that that would set the automotive industry on fire.
If his car design is anything like his watch designs, then I doubt it.
I feel autonomous cars going mainstream could be more transformative than many realize.
Yes, you have people arguing there's been a drop in software quality, it seems to have been a great click-bait topic in 2016 particularly.
I think this article accurately describes the situation: https://medium.com/@AlexandraMint/apple-s-elephant-in-the-ro...
Someone should get a memo over to the App Store, Apple Music, Apple Pay, iTunes, iCloud and other services teams. They only brought in like $7 billion of revenues last quarter [1].
[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2017/05/02/app-store-revenue-up-40...
All those services only really make money due to ecosystem lock in.
Unless you expect some iOS-centric reason to order an Apple car with a higher price, I can't imagine why this would be good for Apple.
is it? Doesn't look that way when you think about the iPhone and iPad market shares.
[1] http://fortune.com/2017/01/18/apple-iphone-market-share-2/
[2] https://www.strategyanalytics.com/strategy-analytics/blogs/d...
[3] http://www.pewglobal.org/2016/02/22/smartphone-ownership-rat...
[4] http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/23/apple-captures-record-91-perc...
> Some critics are skeptical that millennials will ever catch up. Prolonging car-buying, they say, means fewer cars purchased during one’s lifetime, a problem for the auto industry.
and
> millennials are looking for cars from manufacturers that integrate seamlessly with their smartphones and sync with other technology
Which actually is in line with what Apple is doing. Either way, I agree it's not a stupid move.
I bought my first car when I was 36. Compared to friends who got their first car when they where 18, the main difference is that I've bought 1 fairly nice new car in my life and they've bought 1 fairly nice new car and 5 pieces of crap. By the time we're both 65 we'll probably have spent about the same total amount of money buying cars in our lifetime.
I'm also expecting costs to come way down when you no longer need a driver, and people are willing to trade some inconvenience for significantly reduced costs.
Transport-as-a-service will commoditise the industry. Apple may change, of course. But if they follow their usual pattern, I agree with your parent that lack of owner-pride could challenge Apple's unique selling proposition.
Still, as you said, the market is huge. Even if I'm right, Apple can sell to owners, who'd become proud-though-minority road users.
Hint look at how Horse drawn Army's handled horses (read small warsthe USMC manual) individual troopers look after their own horse for a reason.