longfang

charlesn said:

blastdoor said:

I have now fully come around to agreeing that It’s time for Tim Cook to go. 

A lot of great things happened under his leadership, especially apple silicon in Macs, but the Apple car debacle and now the AI debacle are convincing me that Apple needs a “product guy” leading the firm again. 

Please explain what you see as a "debacle" for the R&D that Apple put into a possible car. There was never any assurance that a car would result from this effort--the whole point of doing research and development is to determine if manufacturing a competitive and superior product is possible and financially viable. And for Apple, never having been in the car manufacturing business, the challenge was even more difficult, especially considering that Apple's business model is based on very high profit margins, while autos are a fraction of that. At the end of the day, Apple decided there was no financially viable path forward and shut down the project. Look around at the EV business and you'll understand why this was the smartest decision: Fiskar is already out of business, Rivian and Polestar continue hemorrhaging money like it's water, and every company not named Tesla that produces EVs is losing a massive amount of money on every EV they sell. Ford has been manufacturing cars for 123 years, yet Car & Driver reported that in the Q1 2024, it was losing $130,000 on every EV that it sold. And now, with the EV business already a black hole money pit for car makers, Trump is ending the incentives that helped to bolster EV sales, so things are about to get even worse.

The inescapable truth from all available evidence is that Apple avoided a money-losing debacle by shutting down Project Titan. The only argument one might make--and there's no way to know the truth of it--is that they should have shut it down sooner than they did. We also don't know what R&D for Project Titan might be useful for breakthroughs on other projects, so it's not as if the whole thing was pointless. 

22july2013 said:

anthogag said:

Apple is doing what it needs to to be a player China’s market. 

The US government should not take allies for granted and work with allies on AI. Part of China’s government’s AI success would be alienating America from its allies for AI research and development. 

But should Apple be developing tools to help the Communist Party of China harm its own citizens? "Following Chinese law" is not good enough.

mikethemartian said:

Bribes are always temporary until the next payment.

apple4thewin said:

Time to buy stock? This is a terribly good time for a get-rich-quick scheme. Destroy the economy, buy low, and when it rebounds, you will have more money than you need. *checks bank account* On second thought, I am broke. 🫠

bulldog5 said:

Why are you all shitting yourselves over a tariff that won’t matter until September? TONS could change between now and then, so go sit in the corner, drink your wheatgrass, and argue over each other’s pronouns.