sbdude

slow n easy said:

am8449 said:

I’d guess that Apple’s decision to not produce a car was about not only low profit margin, but also whether they could bring enough innovative technology to a car that would warrant a higher profit margin. 

I can imagine Tim Cook saying in a closed door meeting, “Our current and near-future machine learning algorithms for an autonomous self driving system are not good enough to make a truly safe car experience, so we’re not going to bring it to market.”

On a side note, this seems quite different from what Elon Musk and Tesla have done regarding their autonomous self driving system. Even letting Tesla owners be guinea pigs and risking their own safety to test their system. 

There is absolutely nothing wrong with what Tesla is doing, and it's ridiculous to call Tesla owners guinea pigs. They are required to pay $12,000 or $200/month if they want the car to drive itself, and they have to be almost constantly touching the steering wheel, or the system will deactivate. They also use a strike system, so if you get (I believe 3 strikes) then you are cut off for a week or something like that. So people are required to take their role as a Beta Tester seriously. Also FSD 12 should go to wide release any day now. That is end-to-end AI and an elimination of 300,000 lines of code. It should be a total game changer. Tesla is still the only auto manufacturer where every vehicle they sell is capable of driving on every road in the country by itself. They are so far ahead of everyone else, it's hard to imagine that the other car companies will ever catch up. I'm guessing that they will have to license Tesla's technology. Tesla already gave away their charge port, and every auto company except Stellantis is using it starting in 2025. There is no way that Stellantis can hold out forever or people will stop buying their cars.

rob53 said:

I give credit to Apple designers in their effort to expand the camera capabilities of iPhones but there comes a time when designing exterior sets of lenses might be a better option for many users. Traditional camera users have always purchased exterior lenses to meet their specific needs. I have some Sandmarc external lenses and will probably purchase their brand new 6x, focusable telephoto lens. This lens screws into the Sandmarc case, properly positioning the lens in relationship to the iPhone camera lens. I know iPhone users might want everything within the phone but there comes a time when there won't be enough room to put quality camera components inside such a small device. Of course having both would serve everyone's needs.

9secondkox2 said:

anantksundaram said:

This is not good. 

Overall, it reeks of being a rushed product,  notwithstanding the very good initial reviews. 

It was clearly rushed. Reports of apple internal staff not being sold on it was a big red flag. 

The reveal wasn’t compelling and now that it’s in the wild, it’s pretty much another headset in the market. But with better hardware. It has its limitations and flaws, but it’s a good headset overrall. 

I think if Microsoft launched it or meta came out with it and called it the quest ultra or whatever, it would be reviewed well but the price would be laughed at and it wouldn’t sell outside of a tiny group. Only apple can command the really big dollars with something like this, niche or no. 

Decent effort? Sure. Rushed product? 100%

I think apple leadership is at this weird place where they feel like it’s run by a committee instead of a clear focused vision. Too many cooks in the kitchen nowadays. 

Old apple used to allow the naysayers to go around… naysaying. Then at Macworld or whatever, they’d drop the nuke and laugh all the way to the bank. 

Nowadays they feel like they have address misperceptions, control “the narrative,” and get ahead of bad publicity. 

The Vision Pro seems to be a reaction to “hey guys meta is going to change the whole digital landscape. We neees to do it better. Oh and HoloLens is getting a pro market. This vice thing is really up there with the specs so we need to beat that. But let’s not use any entrenched vocabulary. We want to build a better headset but avoid comparisons with headsets ok guys? This is not a headset from now on ok?” 

Apple shouldn’t have released a headset. They should have learned from the process and kept secretly getting it into glasses/sunglasses, or I don’t know, something really out there like bio powered contacts. Something truly magical. Not… a headset. 

But here we are. It’s ok. Nothing groundbreaking. But it’s good for what it is. 

It’s not a bad product. It’s just not “apple.” Would be better if they launched experimental stuff under a sub brand like Beats or something. Actually, I think that’s a viable solution for current apple with stuff like this. 

Apple used to be the adult in the room amongst the chaotic wannabe fad products, the doomsayers, the two-day trendsetters, etc. then when the children were done spazzing out and running around the room, patient apple steps in, laughs “silly little children,” and shows them why they had nothing to worry about, reveals the thing they never knew they always needed/wanted, and paves the way forward for the entire industry. 

Whoever the next ceo is, I hope it’s a product guy, but someone with the supply chain understanding of cook or at least humble enough to have an equally humble and trusted “right hand man” working with him who is a supply chain/managerial genius to see those product done justice. 

Cook has done wonders in building decent sized apple into megaladon apple. But it’s looking a little shaky on the product front with only the tubby iMac and dissing the big iMac peoole for the Mac Studio which also disses the max pro, then the Vision Pro, the continual lag of Apple TV +, the fiasco that was Apple Music for a while, etc. the watch I think was actually a big hit. I don’t think many of us realized that when it launched and the initial reliance on iPhone was a pain but it’s kind of a must have now (especially once the glucose situation gets sorted - FDA recent politics notwithstanding). If and when the apple car materializes, that will be a very big deal also-but it will be a substantial energy investment as apple can’t just develop the car and ride it out. They’ll need to continue to improve, release new hardware and software features, models, etc. so cook hasn’t been without product vision. It’s just not his major forte.

But a new/old guy with product line as his gift would be most welcome. Get things back to making sense and pushing the envelope - only to open when it’s clearly ready.