[mikeash]

I completely agree, however people were saying pretty much the exact same things about Apple's phone efforts about ten years ago. In hindsight, it's clear that smartphones lined up just about perfectly with Apple's core competencies, but before they proved it in the market, people were saying just this sort of thing: the engineering is tough and different, the stuff Apple is good at isn't the stuff that's hard, regulation is far more difficult, it's not just a tiny computer, etc.

Now, just because they were wrong to say it then doesn't mean you're wrong to say it now. I think you're right. I'm just saying that phones are a terrible example to bring up if one is arguing that SV companies can't take over industries with entrenched incumbents.

[csydas]

Please excuse typos as I am on phone in the metro

I appreciate that a lot since I was one of the naysayers. Admittedly I was a bitter PPC Mac user upset that we weren't getting attention on the desktop side but I was still worried.

However, even if hindsight is 20/20, I do feel that a lot of the infrastructure and resources necessary for an iPhone were just there already and apple seized an emerging market. With cars I feel that the regulatory, technical, and physical infrastructure for smart cars isn't there yet for anything disruptive. Driverless cars still appear to need a lot of hand holding, and while there will be an investment payout eventually for folks in the game at the moment, I'm not sure it's as great as they are hoping it as soon as they are hoping. In my mind it makes more sense to have an apple iOS port for cars than an iCar. Or set up the infrastructure that driverless car folk are going to want. Siri taxi for example. Siri pizza delivery. Siri breathalyzer and/or drunk talk analyzer and safe delivery to home.

Basically whereas I feel that in the mobile space controlling the hardware 100% make sense, with the cars maybe it makes more sense to just get the software right. Maybe Apple sees the writing on the wall and figures very tightly controlled hardware so not much testing needed/similar performance.

I do this the differences are great enough Between the car and phone research to warrant the move. But maybe once again I'm just bitter Apple isn't paying attention to their desktop line. :p

[mikeash]

I don't even think the naysayers were particularly wrong. Apple succeeded by fundamentally changing what a smartphone was, not by beating Blackberry and Nokia and such at their own game.

The biggest challenges were being extremely energy efficient to get acceptable battery life out of a tiny battery, and being extremely data efficient to get acceptable costs from expensive cellular carriers. People pointed out, and rightfully so, that Apple wasn't good at either.

They didn't anticipate that Apple would build a phone that was basically a thin shell around a (relatively) huge battery, or that they'd manage to convince a major carrier to offer an "unlimited" data plan. Suddenly, the stuff that the incumbents were good at didn't matter that much.

I don't see any way to do an equivalent move in the automobile industry. I don't think there are any areas that everybody is failing to fundamentally rethink, the way they were with energy and data usage a decade ago, where Apple could jump in and change the whole game. But I wouldn't bet money on it....

[twoodfin]

The biggest challenges were being extremely energy efficient to get acceptable battery life out of a tiny battery, and being extremely data efficient to get acceptable costs from expensive cellular carriers.

I'd reword your first challenge as moving what had been theretofore a desktop OS onto a handheld device with acceptable performance/power consumption. Once that was done, it provided massive leverage for Apple over any of their competitors due to the maturity and flexibility of their toolchain, as well as a wealth of developers both inside and outside the company who could exploit it.

[mikeash]

It's both. They shrank their OS down to fit on a handheld device, but they also massively expanded what a "handheld device" could do. After the iPhone was announced, RIM supposedly couldn't figure out how Apple could possibly be doing all this fancy stuff and still have acceptable battery life. The answer, of course, was that they just made a gigantic battery. Amusing post about it here:

http://www.edibleapple.com/2010/12/28/rim-was-in-disbelief-f...