I'm actually not sure why people praise Tesla as much as they do...I mean yes, they're making fully electric cars with all of this technology but their quality is horrible! For some reason, it seems like people are oblivious to this. They think Tesla is this wonderful company who makes electric cars, not realizing that Tesla is making really bad quality cars.
Tesla showroom is directly across from Apple in the Brea Mall (SoCal) "luxury" store wing. I always stop in on my Apple visits. I was shocked at how poorly the doors close--no reassuring solid clunk, but a rather shaky up-and-down motion while engaging the latch. Never see this in a luxo German car. Really turned me off.
I think the next really big thing will be the final arrival of the long-promised Jetson's flying car. Personal transport in its terrestrially-bound mode is reaching the point of diminishing returns. Once clean power and autonomous driving are fully implemented there's nowhere to go but up. With drone technology becoming ubiquitous, only the breakthrough of ultralight batteries stand in the way. Electric carmakers, particularly Tesla, are well-positioned and highly motivated to make this happen. Or maybe some new guy will come up with it.
I've posted my vision a number of times here, and why I think it requires a huge company like Apple to bring it to fruition. If only Woz had real vision, or would stifle himself on topics he's given little thought to.
Anyway, here it is again...
The car of the future is already here. It's called a Smartphone. Think about it. If you were to clear the slate, look at the modern world and ask yourself, how would I design a transportation system given existing and soon-to-come technologies, like autonomous driving, real-time availability scheduling. Route optimization, etc, no way you'd conclude there should be a car, or two, in every garage. You'd create a technology/software infrastructure to allow individuals to call up the transportation they need (car, truck, van, etc) on-demand. And it would show up wherever they are, or wherever they are going to be, when it's needed. You'd be able to schedule transportation in advance, like the airport shuttles of yesteryear that you'd schedule a week in advance. Über pretty much killed that business, I expect.
Or schedule recurring transportation, such as to take the kids to soccer practice and back. In this case the transportation technology system might suggest a shared van service, that knows the schedules for local after school sports practice and offers up and constructs pick-up and drop-off routes based upon participation; a regular route to gather up the kids and deliver them. Accommodation for security will be considered when children are being transported without accompanying parents, such as real-time tracking and a constant open line of communication, both audio and video streaming from the vehicle to parent's smartphones.
The specific vehicle that arrives can be determined by number of passengers, whether you'll be transporting something large or just yourself, etc. The notion of owning, maintaining, accommodating parking requirements of, insuring, etc, a personal vehicle, for many people, has already begun to feel like 'the old paridigm.'
To create this infrastructure, you need route optimization software, that incorporates the real-time whereabouts of all vehicles in a local fleet. You need scheduling software. You need to deal with remaining charge/range of each vehicle out in service to know when a vehicle can accommodate an additional requested or scheduled route without running out of juice. You need to accommodate stand-by, where the vehicle drops someone off at a location and is requested to stand-by for an indeterminate time while the person goes into a store or bank to run an errand. In short, you need a very sophisticated set of interacting technologies to accommodate smooth operation of a transportation network that provides near immediate responsiveness to a population's constantly fluctuating needs.
If I were Tim Cook, this is exactly the way I'd envision the future, and this is what I'd set out to create. It's not so much about constructing vehicles yourself, but about getting sign-in from all vehicle manufacturers such that their vehicles can work within the envisioned transportation network. And that means that people who do own vehicles could lend them into their local autonomous transportation fleet in order to earn money (this has already been suggested by Musk and makes sense for a maker of vehicles to accommodate, as it helps him sell more Teslas direct to consumers). It means that new rental fleets will simply be staged in large metro areas, with one or more depots that the vehicles come back to for recharging, maintenance, cleaning, etc. And that means that there's a path forward for the rental companies, because they already have staging areas for their existing fleets. The big picture can be accommodated during a transition phase from the world we have today to a world where almost all transportation is shared and autonomous.
Extend this to trucking, inter-city bussing, etc, and the whole thing becomes a future that Apple could play a major role in developing. Without ever producing, on their own, a single vehicle.
Also key to this is that everything Apple needs to do to revolutionize transportation does not require Apple to do any work on autonomous driving, nor does Apple need to build a single vehicle model. Nope, Apple will want to own the end user interaction used to summon and schedule transportation, and it'll want to own the route optimization algorithms and server side scheduling and dispatch. And take a cut of every ride.
There will need to be some tech in each car to pick up the user interaction that began on a rider's smartphone or Watch, once the car arrives to pick up the rider. The car will need a voice interface to interact with the rider. The car will need to constantly ping its whereabouts to the dispatch and scheduling servers, along with its charge level, so that the dispatch system can determine its next pick up and determine when it needs to exit the active fleet and return to a nearby depot for recharging or maintenance. The car will need to contain sensors, like internal cameras, to monitor for left-behind packages, spilled coffee, etc, and report appropriately to riders or to dispatch. The car will need streaming audio/video capabilities to stream to parents when children are riding without adult accompaniment. All of this can be designed as a set of interfaces that automakers can implement in order to be compatible with Apple's dispatch and routing servers, and the vehicles might also be required to utilize Apple's mapping infrastructure.
Once verified as able to serve a ride request, the car is handed details on the location of the rider, and the rider's destination, and it can then utilize its own autonomous driving capabilities to serve the request. And all of this can integrate both driverless and human driven vehicles into the same service. So as vehicles are developed that are licensed for autonomous operation, these can be added to an existing Uber-like fleet of human driven vehicles, both serving together to form a centrally requested and directed/dispatched swarm serving a metrolitan area. Eventually, the human driven vehicles would all be replaced with autonomous vehicles, and the future will have arrived.
Though you raise great and wondrous points but this idea that people won't want to own cars in the futer is incomprehensible to me and is romanticizing the fun parts whilst ignoring the seriouse logistical problem that'll likely stop that notion in its tracks.
Firstly there's this notion that autonomous cars will reduced traffic this is unlikely if you really think about what causes traffic, it's not that people are just terrible drivers and do stupid things on the road and creating congestion it's that every one leaves for work at the same time and return at the same time, if you work from nine to five you will need transportation every morning at about 08:00 to 08:30 depending on how far you live from where you work and againe at 18:00 and guess what so will 5 million other people who work from nine to five this means there will need to be five milion cars to drive all those people to work and bring them back and whilst those 5 million who are the highest capacity this sysystem is suposed to be at the most minimum able to satify are at work there will be millions of cars siting idly wating for peake demand to become needed again issentially changing noting.
I just don't get it am I missing something ?
What qualifies as "next big thing in tech"? Electric transportation (been around for decades in some forms) is a yes, but wearables are not? The next big thing - pointless because there are advancements occurring in dozens of directions, some faster than others at the moment, and no one can really predict more than a few years out. In the past, flying cars & fusion power were the next big things...
The media always portray business as these great battles between companies - like countries fighting wars - but that is not how it goes in general. Google being tops in advertising and search is not a core threat to Apple. Facebook having the leading (Western) social media platform is not a core threat to Apple. Same with Amazon, Netflix, etc. There are some competitive points, but largely not.
IMO Apple is well positioned for the next 10 years (who knows what comes beyond that). Being able to design & manufacture ever smaller, intelligent devices seems to be a good fit for any type of computing evolution.
What qualifies as "next big thing in tech"? Electric transportation (been around for decades in some forms) is a yes, but wearables are not? The next big thing - pointless because there are advancements occurring in dozens of directions, some faster than others at the moment, and no one can really predict more than a few years out. In the past, flying cars & fusion power were the next big things...
The media always portray business as these great battles between companies - like countries fighting wars - but that is not how it goes in general. Google being tops in advertising and search is not a core threat to Apple. Facebook having the leading (Western) social media platform is not a core threat to Apple. Same with Amazon, Netflix, etc. There are some competitive points, but largely not.
IMO Apple is well positioned for the next 10 years (who knows what comes beyond that). Being able to design & manufacture ever smaller, intelligent devices seems to be a good fit for any type of computing evolution.
Not just decades, but at least 119 years for the electric car and at least 130 years for the electric trolly.
I think Woz has been out of the game for so long that he doesn't consider the impact of R and D resources on technology. Not to belittle their tremendous contribution and innovation, but It's a far cry from the infant stage when he and Steve were pioneers, with little competition, able to tinker with things in a garage by ordering some parts and such and innovate., to where Apple now has billions to spend on things like chip design instead of ordering from Radio Schack. Technology has advanced so much farther and there are now millions of engineers and others working on ideas. Apple will have spent over $30 billion dollars on R and D in the past three years with the brightest minds on the planet having de facto unlimited resources to experiment and innovate. Google, Amazon, Intel, Samsung and others are also fiercely competing. It doesn't mean a small company, though that's hardly Tesla, can't and won't make contributions and breakthroughs, but Wozniak doesn't seem to acknowledge the vastly different tech environment and I'd place my bet on companies like Apple continuing to lead innovation in tech.
I think electric cars are a big deal in many ways, but will probably never be all that terribly profitable for anyone. Nobody is in a position to really have a lot of market power there. Tesla might have been first, but many others are entering this market. General Motors beat Tesla to the punch with the Bolt (coming out before the Model 3), showing that Tesla's early mover advantage here is pretty much gone before Tesla can even turn a profit.
Self-driving cars will probably turn out to be the same -- a hugely important product for the economy overall, but possibly not a creator of big profits for any one company.
The thing that has driven Apple's success over the years has been innovations in how humans connect to computers (aka, UI). There is a lot of room to improve UI, and as more devices become computerized, there are more devices that require a good UI. Apple clearly views AR as an important next step in UI, and they're probably right about that. Eventually we will be looking at direct and seamless connections between the brain and a computer. I think Apple has a huge advantage in terms of branding for something like that because things like security and privacy will become incredibly important issues. You'd really have to be a total fool to let Facebook, Google, Amazon, or even Microsoft be the company that sells you that ability.
The Automotive business has always come down to manufacturing prowess. Tesla's innovation, packaging a big battery in a sporty car, has gotten him this far, but from hereon, it will be Tesla's manufacturing that will matter. There is tremendous diffusion of technology in the Automotive business, so Tesla won't even be able to count on having the superior autonomous system.
More to the point, bicycle's are having a renaissance in urban areas, especially in Europe, and in first world countries, car ownership will likely be decreasing over time.
Lot's and lot's of large battery manufacturing facilities going up in China. and world wide production will likely double by 2020. Panasonic isn't the only party to launch a "Gigafactory" for battery production. New battery tech may come from the Tesla/Panasonic partnership, but is as likely from others.
As for Woz, his pronouncements aren't really a bellwether of anything. Woz was king when he was designing discrete logic circuits. That time has long passed.
BTW, the next big thing is medical sensors/devices for realtime, personal monitoring. Disruption will come from some startup that we haven't heard of before, with something that we don't yet know that we want.
Your last paragraph describes where Apple Watch is heading. I get the feeling Series 3 will be huge in biometric data.
Sadly, Woz's views and predictions on the tech front basically amount to not much more than a bunch of stream-of consciousness meanderings and blather.
If anyone here can name one great tech insight of his from the past decade -- no, make that two decades -- I'd love to know. Just one. That would be enough.
Woah not cool not cool at all I take GREAT exception to you're unkind post, I'm a Jobs fan but you're statement is going too far, it's sad how unknown or appreciated Woz is, it pains me how history only remembers the lead singer and forget the drummer in the back without whom there would be no song, In case you don't know but it was Woz's brilliance that built the first computer that Apple sold without which there is no Apple, you may disagree with the man, but let's not forget who this man is and that he sits at the round table, a sit he's fully earned, respect due, please, before mouths start running
Woz has been attacking Apple since he left the company, and betting against it for the last 30 years. Pretty much everything he's hyped and championed has amounted to nothing. The guy is a clown living off of his Apple stock.
Woz has been attacking Apple since he left the company, and betting against it for the last 30 years. Pretty much everything he's hyped and championed has amounted to nothing. The guy is a clown living off of his Apple stock.
I don't think he's been attacking Apple, he just has a very different outlook for the company. I personally don't agree with his pretty much everything he wants for technology because it's grounded in an unrealistic ideology, but I wouldn't say he's wrong for wanting it.
Woz seems to be seduced by the buzz, but the Musk initiatives remain very problematic from a business perspective. Yes exciting, but still problematic.
The Solar project is being driven poorly as one example. The first year Apple sales of electric cars will dwarf Tesla, and Musk knows it.
This is why Woz needed Steve Jobs to run Apple. Woz is in now way visionary. He knows how to put parts and pieces together really really well...but no sense for the future.
He puts parts together based upon the visionary ideals of his partner. Wozniak couldn't have cared how the boards were laid out, but Jobs was obsessive about it.
Woz seems to be seduced by the buzz, but the Musk initiatives remain very problematic from a business perspective. Yes exciting, but still problematic.
The Solar project is being driven poorly as one example. The first year Apple sales of electric cars will dwarf Tesla, and Musk knows it.
How can you possibly say that as an absolute statement when there's still no evidence of Apple even building a car? What plant will they have that dwarf's Tesla's Gigafactory—the world largest building by footprint, and one of the largest in general? Where are the deals for sourcing the lithium or are they going to be using a completely different element for their battery tech? Where is this giant factory that will out produce Tesla and their relatively low-cost Tesla 3? Do you understand the business reasons behind Tesla announcing a low-cost Tesla 3 that will make it affordable for more people? It's not because they're reducing the number of vehicles they're able to produce.
Revolutionary things come from revolutionary people, and sadly Apple lost theirs having first fired him then got him back, there more one looks around beyond Apple fandom the more noticeable how intrinsic and inseparable dynamic leaders are to the companies they lead. What is Tesla if not Musk, what is Amazon if not Bezos and if this assertion hold true then what is Apple if not Jobs, how much of these companies is essentially the will and vision of these guys and can they be the same with out them.
It's nice rhetoric, but not law. Disney is still cranking out magic despite losing its founder. I'm sure there are others if you look for it.
Man SrangeDays you enjoy posting on other's post but I'm great full you challenged my points instead of some dismissive and condescending comment, thanks.
To the excellent point you raise, true Disney is still cranking up the magic and Ford still makes cars, but when Walt ran things Disney created Mikey mouse and Lion king nothing recently comes anywhere close to those in endurance and cultural relevance, and there's nothing much to be said about morden Ford really other then they're still around. I'm not saying the death of the leader means the company withers and die, that would mean that those companies were not that impressive to begin with, Disney won't just die, Walts' efforts like Steve's were just too monumental and heculian to be so easily squandered, even by the most incompetent successor. what I'm saying is that these companies are never ever going to be the same as what made them so special was so closely link to the people who in many cases founded them, and lead them to great success and how that in many ways is the way of nature, like how there have been many musicians who've come and many to come still but there'll only be one Mickael Jackson
Walt Disney died in 1966 -- long before Lion King and nearly every film and franchise that millions of kids idolize. True there was Mickey, but he and Donald Duck just aren't what they used to be to audiences today. When was the last Mickey or Donald movie? How much did it gross? Etc.. The best days of Disney were ahead of it when Walt died, not behind.
It's nice rhetoric, but not law. Disney is still cranking out magic despite losing its founder. I'm sure there are others if you look for it.
That's up for serious debate, given that they've run out of sequels to shit out and home video re-releases to reprint are now just remaking all of their old films yet again, only this time they're political.
Uh, that sounds like crank material to me. Sorry you don't like that most of the world isn't a grumpy conservative that wants to keep people in boxes and wear blinders.
Comments
The media always portray business as these great battles between companies - like countries fighting wars - but that is not how it goes in general. Google being tops in advertising and search is not a core threat to Apple. Facebook having the leading (Western) social media platform is not a core threat to Apple. Same with Amazon, Netflix, etc. There are some competitive points, but largely not.
IMO Apple is well positioned for the next 10 years (who knows what comes beyond that). Being able to design & manufacture ever smaller, intelligent devices seems to be a good fit for any type of computing evolution.
edit: 185 years for the electric car.
If anyone here can name one great tech insight of his from the past decade -- no, make that two decades -- I'd love to know. Just one. That would be enough.
He puts parts together based upon the visionary ideals of his partner. Wozniak couldn't have cared how the boards were laid out, but Jobs was obsessive about it.
Uh, that sounds like crank material to me. Sorry you don't like that most of the world isn't a grumpy conservative that wants to keep people in boxes and wear blinders.
Deep down, Tesla is actually an energy company, not just a transportation company.