Fair, but I just still can't believe it. It's not a core competency.
The car project has always seemed like a "we have too much money" project. Or a good idea from someone who never leaves their perfect spaceship campus.
Sure, but when it launched, and while it was developed, this was not even remotely considered a core competency of the company. Which was my point. That core competency did not exist when the iPod was being worked on (and presumably could have been canned). And that’s the same case here.
> An iPhone/iPad is a variation of a laptop at the end of the day.
That’s an extreme stretch. To the point where Apple itself disagrees with how they’re being segmented. If it was just a variation, you’d have seen a combination of product lines and features at this point.
More to the point in a discussion about cars, they mostly share the same hardware as well. None of them have a suspension, or a motor, or wheels, or....
Hell, some new cars are literally driven by a computer, both in the AI sense and in that your steering wheel movements are not directly connected to your front wheels. An EPU for a long time has controlled how an engine runs, which is a literal computer. New cars’ components are connected with automotive-grade Ethernet. They use a screen to interface with “apps” like media playback and navigation. They connect to external services and devices like your phone.
What, exactly, makes it not a computer, if we’re defining the term loosely enough to encompass practically all devices Apple makes right now?
If you don’t have any actual reasons or rebuttals, then there’s nothing left to discuss.