thrang

Skeptical said:

Could it be that people are iPhone saturated and people aren’t dying to get one? Pure conjecture but this could be a consideration. 

Ummm, what's coming next month???

Is Fortnite even a big thing anymore? I'm not a gamer, but I haven't heard buzz about it in well more two years...other than the legal battle

darkvader said:

There is no Apple car.  There isn't going to be an Apple car.

It would take at least a decade of serious work for Apple to get to the point where they could even think about releasing a car.  They aren't doing that work, they haven't even started doing that work.  They're playing around with car audio, which may or may not ever be part of a product for somebody else's car.  But they're not making a car.

No one knows anything but Apple. But if there is any veracity to the rumors, including the car testing site they purportedly purchased, they have been "playing" for several years...

chasm said:

If anything, this story just reinforces my belief that Apple IS NOT building a car to manufacture. What they are building, IMHO, is a car ecosystem that may feature self-driving and that extended CarPlay they already showed off last year, that could be licensed to other car manufacturers.

This story and others just massively hint at partnerships with existing carmakers rather than Apple trying to enter the car manufacturing business, which would have produced impossible-to-hide factories and permitting proof at least seven years ago (minimum) if that’s what they were actually doing.

Umm, what about this story reinforces that pov? Because they are using Lexus SUV's? I would say that's meaningless in trying to derive Apple's ultimate goal, which may or may not be to make the whole enchilada.

But from a technology testing perspective, it's far simpler to tear down and build out an existing platform with all of your custom bits to test, tweak, iteratively upgrade and evaluate how all the sensors and software are working together. The actual car (design) would be a separate and secretive parallel development

Car manufacturers are already playing games with including CarPlay in current or future models, so more than likely Apple would enter into a manufacturing/servicing agreement with someone to produce their own vehicles to ensure its role in the Apple ecosystem is unadulterated and unencumbered.  If they do it at all...

Shot in the dark here, but I am guessing by the time it launches, the price will be less than 3,499... not enough to make a huge difference in the context of affordability, but will be positive PR along with the third party demos that will be part of Launch Part II....

Conversely, the open-ended "starting at" is concerning...

if these optical elements from Zeiss are another 300-600 bucks, even fewer will adopt version 1. Would be fascinating to know their sales estimate for Year One...

Nonetheless, they needed to do this to get the developer community interested in the platform, as well business and consumers to begin to see the possibilities....