Apple Says It Is Working On Self-Driving Cars (theguardian.com) 133
For the first time, Apple has said that it is indeed working on technology to develop self-driving cars. The company confirmed late last week its previously secret initiative in a statement to the U.S. highway regulator. From a report on The Guardian: "The company is investing heavily in the study of machine learning and automation, and is excited about the potential of automated systems in many areas, including transportation," said the letter from Steve Kenner, Apple's director of product integrity, to the head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The letter offered no details of the project, instead highlighting the "significant societal benefits of automated vehicles," which it described as a life-saving technology, potentially preventing millions of car crashes and thousands of fatalities each year.In a statement to Financial Times (might be paywalled), a spokesperson for Apple said, "We've provided comments to NHTSA because Apple is investing heavily in machine learning and autonomous systems. There are many potential applications for these technologies, including the future of transportation, so we want to work with NHTSA to help define the best practices for the industry."
Apple products.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Hey Slashdot: (Score:4, Insightful)
Slashdot Editors / owners / etc.:
o Please stop supporting paywalled sites.
o Please stop supporting sites with closed comment sections.
These things are bad for the web and the web's denizens -- of course not for the ethically crippled sites themselves, as we are their product, and both payment up and dissent down are multipliers to their bread and butter.
The paywalled sites are monetizing the news, and that almost always makes for biased reporting.
The closed comment sections make for echo chambers, and that creates an environment where fake news and agitprop flourish.
Same thing to my fellow slashdotters: if you support bad actors in bad behaviors, they will naturally persist. So think about that before you click through the next time someone thrusts a paywalled or comment-bereft site in your face.
Thanks for reading.
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The paywalled sites are monetizing the news, and that almost always makes for biased reporting.
I agree that it is a waste of time linking to a paywalled site, but what evidence do you have that a paywall almost always makes for biased reporting. To me that sounds like a very biased claim.
If you wanted to push an agenda by making biased claims, wouldn't you be more likely to make your reporting available to more people by publishing it for free? If you wanted to make a news site that was less reliant on keeping advertisers happy (which might then colour your reporting) wouldn't charging to view the ar
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When you trade money for news, you tend to get the news that makes the most money. It's human nature, unless controlled by regulation. Just as corporations, utilities, colleges, all mostly get financially out of hand unless regulated, because people are mostly naturally greedy. There's scant sense of fairness, and gross excess of "take the market for all it can bear."
Look, news is all mostly biased anyway. Biased by what they cover and what they choose not to cover; by the editor's influence; by the publish
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Just the opposite. Breitbart is not only non-paywalled, but they're one of relatively few sites who still offers full-text RSS feeds. Paywalled sites are trying to pay for their unbiased reporting, rather than taking funds from partisan sources who will be happy with endless financial losses to further their agenda.
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....and I still don't care.
Apparently you care enough to be the first post.
Yearly upgrades! (Score:2)
Re:Yearly upgrades! (Score:4, Insightful)
Most people call those leases.
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I was more thinking it'd be defective and cause a crash and Apple will charge you $10,000 for the convenience.
More like walled gardens (Score:1)
The on-board map will have only streets that Apple decides are in your (their) best interest listed. All other streets will simply, as far as your car is concerned, not exist. Any time your car is "in limbo" (moving from one mapped area to another) your car doors will lock and the windows will tint black to prevent any interaction with or observation of an area outside the knowable universe. Trying to attach a third party charging or fuelling device will cause your vehicle to immediately shut down. And
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Just a reminder:
1. Roughly 7.7M vehicles sold every year.
2. Average prices is $33,000.
3. This makes it a $250 billion/year industry.
It's a very tempting market to get into for anyone.
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Your disclaimer is false.
The above numbers are this year's numbers. But even in a 'bust' market like say 2009, plenty are sold, like 10M vehilces
http://www.tradingeconomics.co... [tradingeconomics.com]
Which shows that my numbers above were low -probably only cars.
~18M vehicles/year = $550B market
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one will need a heavy duty wench
I'm afraid to ask...
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one will need a heavy duty wench
I'm afraid to ask...
Engineers recommend a heavy duty wench for adjusting nuts.
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one will need a heavy duty wench
I'm afraid to ask...
Too Late [deviantart.com]...
sorry, gonna have to throw a flag (Score:2)
one will need a heavy duty wench to get past the muddy parts.
Admit it. You did that on purpose, didn't you?
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People didn't want to buy Holden Commodores and Ford Falcons (6/ 8 cylinder) anymore so the car makers went cap in hand to the govt.
The consumer paid for it in higher car prices.
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" one will need a heavy duty wench to get past the muddy parts."
you really don't want to date one of those...
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It's problematic for Apple though. Cars aren't a high margin industry, but I can imagine them selling something that looks quite like a SMART car with an Apple logo, maybe for about £150,000. People will definitely pay.
It'll be interesting to see what bit of a car that we generally think of as indispensable Apple will courageously remove. I'm thinking maybe door handles, wipers, something like that.
Doubtless there will be patents involved too. Mind you, even the crazy rubber-stamping patent office of
Overpriced (Score:5, Funny)
Overpriced cars that only drive you where you want to go if your destination is within the Apple walled garden....
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or apple maps only. With apple only service centers even for tires and oil changes.
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With apple only service centers even for tires and oil changes.
They are electric cars. That don't have oil.
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With apple only service centers even for tires and oil changes.
They are electric cars. That don't have oil.
Self-driving doesn't mean pure elecric. Nothing in Apple's statement excludes ICEs or hybrids
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Self-driving doesn't mean pure elecric. Nothing in Apple's statement excludes ICEs or hybrids
You learn nothing about Apple by reading their "statements". The real information comes from the rumors. It is an open secret that Apple is the real power behind Faraday Future [wikipedia.org], which is developing self-driving electric cars.
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You learn nothing about Apple by reading their "statements". The real information comes from the rumors. It is an open secret that Apple is the real power behind Faraday Future [wikipedia.org], which is developing self-driving electric cars.
One thing we have learned from reading Apple's "statements" is that they have a LOT of cash - which makes the recent kerfluffle about Faraday Future halting construction due to lack of funds puzzling if Apple is backing them.
http://www.manufacturing.net/n... [manufacturing.net]
Apple may have an agreement with FF, or may be in investor but I think it's a stretch that they are the majority funder
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>They are electric cars. That don't have oil.
The apple car that doesn't exist is electric? The article mentions apple is rumored to be interested in Mclaren, who's only electric car is a toy car for kids.
Also all current production electric cars have Gear boxes with a reduction, and oil in them. Telsa's service calls for a Oil change at 150k miles.
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The Tesla service center told me that it's lubricated for 12 years, though that also roughly matches up with 150K miles. I'm close to 50K now at almost 4 years on mine.
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Electric cars are magic and don't have moving parts that need to be lubricated?
The point is that they don't have oil pans. So, no oil changes.
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or apple maps only. With apple only service centers even for tires and oil changes.
Tires? Surely you jest. The tires are glued on, and if you want new or different ones you're meant to buy another car. It's possible to remove the glue and attach new ones at great expense, but the wheel doesn't have a lip on the rim so you have to get special ones made just for it by some shady manufacturer and glue them on again and hope for the best.
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Definition of overpriced (Score:1, Troll)
Apple products are almost certainly not over priced or if they are it isn't by much. Apples products are (mostly) priced high but that is something different than being overpriced. As a general proposition product sold in a competitive market can only be considered overpriced when it is priced at a point higher than where marginal revenue equals marginal cost. Translated that means that it isn't overpriced until raising the price any further causes profits to fall from being priced too high.
Just because
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Definition of overpriced, for those of us who aren't long winded blowhards. "Anything that costs more than I as an individual think it's worth."
You may think Apple isn't overpriced, but I promise you, I do.
Tautology (Score:2)
Definition of overpriced, for those of us who aren't long winded blowhards. "Anything that costs more than I as an individual think it's worth."
That definition is a tautology. "It's overpriced because I think it's overpriced" is the very definition of meaningless.
Re: Definition of overpriced (Score:2)
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Just because we're not enticed doesn't mean we don't understand.
That very statement proves the point.
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Apple products are almost certainly not over priced or if they are it isn't by much.
Ah Ha Ahahahahaha, good one. Not overpriced. Man, that'll keep me chuckling all day. Apple not overpriced. I bet your reckon they're not under powered either. Not overpriced, good one.
Willingness to pay varies by person (Score:2)
Not overpriced. Man, that'll keep me chuckling all day.
Laugh all you want but what I said is correct. You are conflating YOUR willingness to pay for what Apple offers with what OTHERS are willing to pay for it. To you it might seem overpriced but to others just the opposite is true. And BOTH of you are right. But until Apple starts losing profits when they raise the price further it is by definition not overpriced. It is meaningless to say something is overpriced unless you are considering the entire market for that product.
Basically you are arguing that A
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Not overpriced. Man, that'll keep me chuckling all day.
Laugh all you want but what I said is correct. You are conflating YOUR willingness to pay for what Apple offers with what OTHERS are willing to pay for it. To you it might seem overpriced but to others just the opposite is true. And BOTH of you are right.
To be fair, in my opinion mostly all high tech goods are overpriced but that's besides the point. I'm basing that on the fact that they offer no better and sometimes worse performance than their immediate competitors while being significantly more expensive. Now you or others might (and obviously do) think the apple premium is worth it, but when you're paying that a premium for the logo alone, they are overpricing it because they know they can, especially when most of the cost is disguised by payment plans.
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You seem to think that price should be based on performance in certain areas. Buying based on price vs. performance is perfectly reasonable, and many people on Slashdot do that. However, there's lots of other potential reasons to pick out a certain computer, including aesthetics, keyboard feel, trackpad performance for laptops, UI, etc, and it's perfectly reasonable to take such factors into account. Apple computers are not just rebranded Dells, and there's lots of differences besides the logo.
Price p
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They are way overpriced, just because you are a member of their cult doesn't change that simple truth.
Econ 101 (Score:2)
They are way overpriced, just because you are a member of their cult doesn't change that simple truth.
Actually I couldn't care less about Apple and my argument would be the same for any other company. Just because YOU think their products are overpriced is irrelevant except for your own decision to buy them or not. There is a clear mathematical way to determine whether a product is overpriced. It happens when profits fall when you raise the price further. (Specifically when marginal revenue becomes less than marginal cost) This is economics 101 stuff. A product being overpriced is a market decision no
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... and then 'just happen' to catch fire?
I believe that's Samsung's feature.
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I'm afraid of their translucent model: I couldn't yank-off on the way to work.
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I'm afraid of their translucent model: I couldn't yank-off on the way to work.
That's not the kind of "self-driving" they're interested in
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"It's a stick-shift, Officer. Honest!"
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If that's true, then it means we're not too far away from #6 of this old joke [snopes.com] coming true. First the Simpsons predicts Trump as President years in advance, and now a chain mail from the late '90s is coming to pass? These are scary times to live in.
When things eventually go wrong (Score:1)
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Since it's self driving, it's more likely you're sitting in it wrong.
Misleading title (Score:3, Insightful)
The very first line in the linked article:
Apple has said for the first time that it is working on technology to develop self-driving cars.
And in more detail:
The company is investing heavily in the study of machine learning and automation, and is excited about the potential of automated systems in many areas, including transportation,” said the letter from Steve Kenner, Apple’s director of product integrity, to the head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
The difference is that they have not said they're making cars in the same way they do not make TVs. But they do make hardware/software that will drive your TV - so to speak.
Just as auto makers can make 'carplay' http://www.apple.com/ios/carpl... [apple.com] compatible cars, you can imagine they might one day make 'carpilot' compatible cars.
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http://fortune.com/2016/09/11/... [fortune.com]
Does he still work at Apple?
Please, God (Score:5, Funny)
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Why?
The Samsung Pinto has a ring to it...
Re: Please, God (Score:1)
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Hey, it might lead to the first self-driving rocket. Instant Jetsons!
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Pretty sure they already do... well, at least construction equipment, which, I would think, would have to be even higher quality and adhere to way more regulations than a consumer grade car.
Re:Please, God (Score:4, Informative)
Well, Renault Samsung Motors [wikipedia.org] already exists, and Samsung just bought Harmin International [nytimes.com]. So even if you don't own one of their cars, there's the chance your car stereo will soon be made by them.
proudly going out of business since 1976! (Score:4, Funny)
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I remember when they really were going out of business and Bill Gates had to prop them up to prevent anti-trust measures against him. Nowadays you'd almost expect Microsoft to go out of business before Apple.
Re:proudly going out of business since 1976! (Score:4, Informative)
In return for this, Apple dropped a multitude of patent-infringement lawsuits against Microsoft (which Apple appeared to be wining), and licensed those technologies to Microsoft. These were not related to Microsoft's anti-trust issues, nor was the existence of Apple. It's OK that Microsoft was a monopoly - monopolies are legal - it's the abuse of the power the monopoly gave them.
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Without Bill Gates buying the stock they would have collapsed. He didn't exactly do so of free will- he was forced to do so. That tells you something about the state of Apple at the time.
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I see a lot of statements about how desperately Apple needed the money that don't seem to match what I've read about the situation.
I think the more important thing might have been his promise to keep making Office for the Mac for the next five years (after which it was making too much money to just drop).
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Apple needed the cash as well. Apple had about 17 months of cash left [apple.com] when Microsoft invested in them, and had lost money for two years in a row. Microsoft's cash helped out immensely.
A LOT of businesses would be ECSTATIC with 17 months of cash in the bank.
Apple didn't need the cash. At their worst, Apple had enough cash to buy Compaq.
Re: proudly going out of business since 1976! (Score:1)
No investment opportunities big enough (Score:3)
Apple : "We have so much money we literally don't know what to do with it anymore."
That's alright. Neither do Google or Microsoft and a few others. They simply can't find investment opportunities large enough and profitable enough to do anything with their piles of cash. So the pile keeps growing. Eventually I expect it to attract a dragon or something.
Really they should be paying it back as dividends if they can't figure out what to do with the money.
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Apple : "We have so much money we literally don't know what to do with it anymore."
That's alright. Neither do Google or Microsoft and a few others. They simply can't find investment opportunities large enough and profitable enough to do anything with their piles of cash. So the pile keeps growing. Eventually I expect it to attract a dragon or something.
Really they should be paying it back as dividends if they can't figure out what to do with the money.
The reason they have large piles of cash isn't that they can't figure out what to do with it, it's that it's cash they generated overseas they can't move it to the US without giving 35% of it to the federal government. They can't pay it out as dividends without repatriating it, nor can they invest it in anything in the US. Since most of their operations are in the US, that means they spend a little on overseas operations and put the rest in high-liquidity overseas investments -- high-liquidity in case they
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They can't pay it out as dividends without repatriating it, nor can they invest it in anything in the US.
So they bring it back and pay taxes on it, and pay the remainder as a dividend. Then they tell the shareholders they would have got more if not for those taxes and deflect the blame, easy peasy.
Bottom line: the reason they have big piles of cash is because the US has the highest corporate income tax rate in the developed world.
No, it's because the US has a pathetic tax structure that makes it easy to dodge taxes.
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They can't pay it out as dividends without repatriating it, nor can they invest it in anything in the US.
So they bring it back and pay taxes on it, and pay the remainder as a dividend. Then they tell the shareholders they would have got more if not for those taxes and deflect the blame, easy peasy.
And their stock price would take a big hit as they reduced the assets on their balance sheet by a huge amount, to no benefit. Shareholders would be pissed, and the blame deflection would not work. At all.
Bottom line: the reason they have big piles of cash is because the US has the highest corporate income tax rate in the developed world.
No, it's because the US has a pathetic tax structure that makes it easy to dodge taxes.
You don't know what you're talking about. The taxes we're talking about here are taxes that companies in most countries wouldn't pay at all. The US is nearly unique in trying to tax overseas profits.
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The US is nearly unique in trying to tax overseas profits.
This empire has to be paid for somehow. You get a lot of oppression for your money.
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The US is nearly unique in trying to tax overseas profits.
This empire has to be paid for somehow. You get a lot of oppression for your money.
Indeed, and there seems little interest in the electorate for scaling that back. Sigh.
US tax policy is NOT the problem for Apple (Score:2)
The reason they have large piles of cash isn't that they can't figure out what to do with it, it's that it's cash they generated overseas they can't move it to the US without giving 35% of it to the federal government.
They don't have to repatriate it to do useful things with it. Believe it or not you can actually do interesting things outside the USA. I know right? Who knew? Furthermore they don't actually have to repatriate it to return money to shareholders. Have you wondered why Apple has taken out loans in recent years despite having gobs of cash and no actual need for the money? They are doing it to shuffle money around without triggering a tax liability. They have $79B in long term debt on their balance shee
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They don't have to repatriate it to do useful things with it. Believe it or not you can actually do interesting things outside the USA. I know right? Who knew?
Lose the snark. They already do about as much as they can with their cash outside of the US. There are a lot of reasons they keep the bulk of their operations in the US, and in Silicon Valley.
Have you wondered why Apple has taken out loans in recent years despite having gobs of cash and no actual need for the money?
No, I haven't wondered because it's blindingly obvious, and it's not the reason you state. The reason they do it is because they can borrow against overseas capital and use it to obtain cash for operations and growth in the US. It's a way of partially working around exactly the problem I described.
Over 50% of Apple's business is outside the US.
Revenues, yes. Operat
ME TOO!!!1!!1 (Score:1)
Re: ME TOO!!!1!!1 (Score:1)
This is poof that Apple has become another "ME TOO (Score:1)
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No, I don't remember that.
Apple has never invented anything. They take something that is already on the market and make it sleeker, flashier and easier to use.
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Remember when they used to have some original ideas?
When was that? They don't invent new industries, their success has come from entering struggling or new markets with a better product. Making driverless car technology would certainly be similar.
Won't work (Score:3)
Non-replaceable tires, headlights, etc. Rest assured, Apple will find some way to kill the value proposition. That's all they do these days.
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Nah, what they'll do is equip North American models with Europe-style charging plugs because it takes "courage."
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Maybe they'll just ditch the charging connector altogether and provide a non-rechargeable, non-removable battery. The entire car will be only 5mm high, with humans riding in a dongle-wagon (sold separately), attached by a very stylish trailer hitch.
Great, an Apple car. (Score:2)
What are the chances it will be incompatible with existing roads?
What are the chances that after we build the roads for the Apple cars Apple will change the newest cars to require a road upgrade, and that upgrade will still work with the previous two year models, but will keep the old cars from working on the newest roads?
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The voltage will be 314.15 Vac at 271.82Hz, which will be pattented and nobody will be able to use unless apple gets a cut. The car will be made entirely of magnes
Dateline 2025 (Score:4, Funny)
As long as they don't use Apple Maps :-) (Score:1)
They may be very fashionable and ergonomic, but good luck arriving at your intended destination if they use Apple Maps for navigation. At least you'll get lost in style :-). The graybeards reading this will remember that for decades there has been a comic narrative going around about "what if UNIX/LINUX, Microsoft and Apple made cars instead of software?" It was something about the UNIX car arrived, still in its crate, and was delivered to your driveway with no tools or instructions and you were on yo
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I've found Apple Maps to be pretty reliable recently (although there was that left turn on Chicago Avenue I don't understand). It had serious problems when they introduced it, but it's been improving.
ugh (Score:2)
they will just replace the doors with some oddball port nothing fits into
We have no interest in AC, Use the iWipe (Score:2)