
Apple Drops Hints About Working on Self-Driving Cars - uptown
http://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-drops-hints-about-autonomous-vehicle-project-1480749280
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haswell
Let's just pretend for a moment that there's no ambiguity and they're actually
doing this. Would you drive...or rather...ride in a car powered by Apple
software?

I would not.

If there's one thing the current iteration of Apple has shown, it's that it's
not great at writing software. And with this in mind, I'd be terrified to ride
in a vehicle powered by carOS.

This isn't coming from a place of anti-Apple sentiment...I use quite a few
Apple products...I just accept that they're pretty bad at this stuff these
days.

Edit: Trying to understand the downvotes here. Care to follow up with a
comment instead? I'm genuinely interested in discussing this.

~~~
niij
I'm not a down-voter, but I have to ask: which major company would you trust
to develop this uncharted, potentially lethal software? All of the options
seem pretty frightening, simply because they don't have a track record yet.
I've got my money on Uber winning out in the long term, but only time will
tell.

~~~
sudhirj
Tesla and Google. Tesla has tons of data and already have proof of concept
ready, and Google knows how to write software that makes fast decisions in an
ambiguous reality to achieve good enough results.

~~~
wlesieutre
So when Google's car runs you over, the only way they'll pay medical expenses
is if you post on HN and an employee happens to see it?

Obviously kidding on the specifics because your insurance company should go
after them, but let's not give Google a free pass on their systems all having
"good enough" results.

~~~
alonmower
I do have to say that having just switched to Google Fi, Google's support for
customers that actually pay them is far beyond what their reputation would
have you believe

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Bud
The actual article belies the headline, and supports instead the same notion
that most recent reporting has supported, which is that Apple has given up on
building entire cars, but still may be interested in building software for
said cars.

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danielhooper
Why play the role of BMW and manufacture vehicles when you can play Mastercard
and collect 0.5% of every penny spent on ubers/lyft when asking Siri for
directions and confirming with Apply Pay and Touch ID.

If anything, Apple is gearing themselves up to profit off the movement of
people and not the vehicles themselves. Seems like a better strategy if you
ask me, but I'm not a strategist of any sort...

~~~
wavefunction
Or how about I just cut Apple out of the picture, which is what is actually
happening.

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revelation
Companies write to regulators or act as amici curiae all the time. So maybe
this is another "hint" of Apple, but so far we had a whole bunch of hints that
media have willingly eaten and the only thing to come out of that was a bunch
of crap.

~~~
Spooky23
I can't see it happen. The company is struggling to ship bread and butter
products like laptops.

~~~
cooper12
Oh really?

> The MacBook Pro made more money in 5 days than most laptops in the whole
> year, Slice added. "In only 5 days the new MacBook Pro's sales already equal
> 78 percent of all the revenue generated by the MacBook 12-inch since it
> became available in April 2015."
> ([http://www.forbes.com/sites/brookecrothers/2016/11/08/new-20...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/brookecrothers/2016/11/08/new-2016-macbook-
> pro-sales-defy-criticism-initial-revenue-strong-says-market-researcher/))

~~~
Spooky23
That kinda makes my point.

You had an explosion of pent up demand for a neglected core product line.

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zemvpferreira
I wonder if Apple would launch a self-driving Uber competitor, and I wonder if
they'd make it iphone-only and deeply integrated, like their other services.

Will Apple cars have access to more information about iphone users than
Google/Uber cars? Enough to be anti-competive? It's really interesting to see
their hardware-advantage-driven approach to services come to bear on different
industries.

~~~
maxerickson
How much of an edge do you get from information? The average car fare wants to
go from A to B, for some price, probably usually cheap. They are going to be
pretty willing to share A and B.

There's probably some more sophisticated planning you can do to increase
utilization by using further information, but I bet that ends up being a
pretty small edge.

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neom
I don't drive so ask HN: I seem to recall apple saying years ago that they
wanted to make the entertainment/ui for cars, did that ever happen, was it a
success?

~~~
Spooky23
Not sure. It's a tough sell imo, because carmakers have a maniacal obsession
for shipping garbage entertainment systems.

I've only seen it in a few cars, as my social circle are mostly cheapskates
with old cars. It's a pretty good system.

~~~
massel
Used to be true, but now, ads for any CarPlay-enabled vehicle seem to almost
exclusively feature the stereo as the key selling point.

A notable holdout: Toyota, who has arguably the garbagest entertainment
system.

~~~
Spooky23
That's great news. I haven't been car shopping for awhile.

A friend has a 2016 Honda Pilot. The enerertaintment system on this thing is a
pure shitshow... I think it's 3 clicks on some awful touchscreen to turn the
radio on.

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analog31
Will there be an "escape" button? ;-)

