I was genuinely looking forward to them refusing to install airbags because it compromised the dashboard being 100% screen, and then later installing airbags in a “notch”, but calling them iBags, and advertising them as a revolutionary new feature that only Apple could think different enough to invent.
Shifts team to generative AI.
If your car development team can be transferred to AI developement you weren’t building much of a car.
Except news always was that Apple was pushing pretty hard into self-driving vehicles, which would use much the same AI learning systems as you need for generative AI.
Ehh, that’s a bit of a stretch. They’re very different technologies with only limited overlap.
This is referring to the team working on the self driving functionality.
Still, self driving and generative AI are very different. Just because they fall into the same big “AI” bucket doesn’t mean it’s the same.
Skilled developers can easily transition to another field of software engineering.
No one can become a skilled ML/AI dev overnight. That will still take a year or two or more of working with it daily. If you transition to a new field you basically become a junior dev all over again for a while. Domain knowledge is a big part of being a good programmer.
Even in 2024, there’s still a lot of non-software (automotive) engineering involved in building a car – even an electric one.
Once upon a time, stoves had a dial you set, and it was basically a resistor and some wires. Today, a stove has a computer built in it that operates the entire thing.
While the computer in a modern oven is simple - it is an illustration that more, and more of what we have is computerized. When you add in reinforcement learning algorithms to adjust factors like say, If the fridge is aware of what time you generally open the fridge it can opt to kick on the heat pump a little before that to bring the temperature down and avoid running while it is open. This could save pennies of electricity in a year. But more importantly - could lead to less duty cycles on the condesor that could cause a fridge to say instead of lasting 10 years, last 12 years.
If you are starting a car company today, what you have to be thinking about is a reality where we move to “Humans don’t drive, the cars drive you” - I mean even a manual control situation could have the AI actually being a watcher in effect we “Let” people drive, but if the AI detects an unobserved obstacle etc it immediately takes over and adjusts. Well: You need to build that - and that, is AI.
If a company isn’t thinking about AI, and makes anything but basic appliances - they are likely on a limited time window because at some point Autonomous cars WILL be good enough, and the safety consideration will make both people, and governments, along with insurance companies to eliminate human driven vehicles.
Apple isn’t looking next year, or a year after. They are looking 5 to 10 years out and they don’t see a path where they can effectively compete in the car industry and make the profits they are after. However, if they can solve the AI driving problem - they don’t NEED to make a car, they can sell the brains and system that drives the car.
Maybe the i-bike is more appleish? Imagine this, it’s a bike like other bikes, but you only need to pedal with one leg, and if you turn the pedal, the whole bike turns. Tilt it back to stop. Sure, you may look fucking stupid running around with only one pedal while your other leg does nothing at all. That’s it. Oh, and it’s white and smooth in gorme plastic-like design. You can charge your bike but you must remove the seat and turn it upside down using our special turning device since it’s 700lbs.
Also you can only use it on roads built by Apple!
DAE I’m too poor to afford Apple products?
Not sure why everyone’s cheering, more competition is never bad and there are already plenty of manufacturers adding subscriptions and such, I doubt Apple would even have been the worst.
At the very least, they probably would’ve had a slick UI in a world of crap infotainment UIs.
However they announced Carplay 2 a few years ago and I’m hoping manufacturers will go ahead with adding that as an option so you could just opt in to Apple UI all over the car and revert back at any time. This is probably the best of both worlds. There are plenty of companies that know quite well how to build a car, they just mostly still all suck at UI.
Apple isn’t competition, Apple is a closed market, more anticompetitive than Microsoft and only undone by the degree of their control.
…a closed market you don’t have to participate in…
Don’t worry, I don’t. … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …
A problem with apple…Like if my friend has a Toyota, i can borrow that. If they have an icar, I probably couldn’t drive it because I don’t have an iPhone required to start it or apple shoes required to activate the pedals. You know they’d be dicks like that.
Warning: unauthorized, non apple certified tyres detected on your iCar. Disabling airbags due to security issue.
Setting destination to Apple Genius bar.
Competition usually isn’t bad. Unfortunately, Apple has a tendency to not only be terribly anti-consumer, but also tends to be a trendsetter. They do shitty things, and other companies learn from their example. Thus, the competition becomes a race to the bottom.
they probably would’ve had a slick UI
Apple hasn’t had a slick UI since Apple II PC.
I was kind of hoping that Apple and Tesla would just feud with each other for control of the “economy-quality product marketed as a luxury-quality product” market share.
Apple can’t compete in that space. Their schtick is producing moderately inexpensive nice looking goods for exorbitant prices that are designed to be impossible to repair by anybody with them.
Tesla has already corned the market.
Trying to block people from repairing? check, trying to block sales of used items? check. Getting rid of all the buttons for all the interfaces and making you work with a tablet in the center of the car? Check.
The fear for me was that Apple would grow quickly in the EV space due to its mainstream popularity, and then start doing the ecosystem thing so driving anything but an Apple car makes you a second-class citizen. Obviously it would only support Carplay and not Android Auto, and probably lack any sort of non-Carplay connectivity so you just can’t connect your Android phone to it at all. Presumably it would also have a proprietary charger that doesn’t work with other cars or vice versa.
I bet they wanted, but in EU they couldn’t
Thank fucking god. Imagine the kind of monetization that would exist inside an Apple car. You think subscription seatwarmers are bad, and they are, but I can guarantee Apple had much worse in mind, and that most companies would simply follow suit.
Or blaming customers for problems, “You’re shifting it wrong.”
Not sure if you’re aware that EVs don’t “shift” or if that’s an indictment to the level of idiocy that would likely be employed by Apple.
It’s a reference to an actual response from Jobs when the iPhone 4(?) had a bad antenna design.
Damn, good memory, it was the 4: https://www.wired.com/2010/06/iphone-4-holding-it-wrong/
They would come up with a charging port that only existed in the parking lot of Apple stores
Also it would on the bottom of the car
Deserves a shoop
alt-text: actual Apple Mouse charging via its bottom port
(Interesting, this guy says it gains hours of charge in three minutes, and thinks Apple knew some would leave it plugged it at all times. Intentional sure but not exactly “brilliant”.)
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That does seem more like their kind of style
TBF This is how luxury car manufacturers sell their options. Always have been.
Space Karen sells his false self-driving option for €7500 as a software option.
“Base model is this, but if you want seat heaters that’s another
$8,000$10,000, if you want lane assist, that’s another$5,000$25,000 and requires a 512GB storage bump for $2,000”Ftfy to more realistic numbers
I think all those dongles hanging off the car would have been a problem anyway
- You need a dongle for that, sir.
- A what?
- A dongle.
Wheels come separate each for $10k, unless you want to use VESA mount for the car
The windscreen is made from high-tech Apple SpaceGlass, and the integrated HUD (*Pro car only) presents all non-Apple cars as green bubbles in real time
We put the charging port underneath the car!
Lightning (in the US; USB-C in the EU)
I really feel for the engineers and devs who don’t get to see their project released into the world. Especially after so much effort.
I guess we will never see an electric car with the charging port on the bottom
I know this is a joke about the stupid Apple mouse, but a car with a bottom (and normal) charging port would be pretty cool. Imagine just pulling into your garage and a giant MagSafe charger snaps to the bottom of your car. (Yes, I know this is unreasonable with current technology due to poor energy efficiency)
I haven’t looked at the bottom of my car in a while, but judging by the amount of dust, mud and ice I see everywhere else, the bottom probably isn’t very clean. During January the ice coating got so thick that I had trouble opening the back doors. Makes me wonder how the charging port would handle that.
lmaoooo, I’ve been saying for years there’s no way in heaven or hell apple is making a car, and now look what happens
Aww and I was looking forward to a chipped windscreen requiring the replacement of the entire cabin, unless the car had ever been in the rain, in which case fuck you buy a new one.
That’s a Rivian.
Anyone got a non-paywalled link?
This is layoffs.
Did you read the article? Says they’re going to work on AI
Five people out of hundreds will yes.
This is layoffs.
Oh no all those developments that they introduced all going to stop, like nothing, bugger all, and zip.
They literally didn’t do anything, they announced the car I think they had a concept vehicle which looked very apple, and then they did nothing at all ever again.
Maybe they relized rhat they cannot trademark the itire and remotely lock it, and sell it for 20 times the price of a regular tire.
Apple was hoping to white label a Chinese ev and slap an iPad in it but the trade war is too hot now for them to deliver.
TFA: decade-long
Spell-check: decade-long
OP: decadelong
Stop trying to make ‘fetch’ happen, Felicia.
I didn’t realize Star Wars had an opinion on proper writing style.
