[Superleroy]

But does that even make sense? That would mean they redesigned something that they are not able to build in realistically at least the next 5-10 years. Or to go even further, they tried to make something better that does not exist yet. Wouldn't it make more sense to just go for the self driving car first and then, after you are sure that you can build that, creating teams which make it better?

[coldtea]

>That would mean they redesigned something that they are not able to build in realistically at least the next 5-10 years. Or to go even further, they tried to make something better that does not exist yet.

At Apple don't do basic research and leave it at that.

They are trying to build a commercial product.

In that sense, it makes sense to try to solve the problem of self-driving along with how an Apple car should be like (besides self driving).

So that, if the self-driving research pans out, they have a complete product, not just some run-of-the-mill car design that basically sells for its self driving capability.

And even if their self-driving thing doesn't pan out, they can always enter the car market licensing some other self-driving technology (like they license/buy batteries, ssd, cpus, etc) but with their own spin on the general product.

[ars]

> In that sense, it makes sense to try to solve the problem of self-driving along with how an Apple car should be like (besides self driving).

No it doesn't. Self driving takes decades to solve, designing pretty cars takes a year or two. There is an order of magnitude difference there.

They were seriously trying to constrain the location of the LIDAR before actually knowing what types and numbers of LIDAR a self driving car actually needs! That is utterly backwards.

[coldtea]

>No it doesn't. Self driving takes decades to solve, designing pretty cars takes a year or two. There is an order of magnitude difference there.

They are not the same teams doing each, so there's no opportunity cost involved.

And whether it might or might not actually "take decades", if Apple considered it would "take decades to solve" they wouldn't be interested in it in the first place. The idea was that we are close to a breakthrough and commercial applications, not that we'll have something in the market by 2040, maybe.

So, for Apple it was more like "can we get something out in 5-10 years at most? Oh, and if it just self-drives, nobody will care -- by that time there would be 10 more self-driving cars from Google, Tesla, Audi, GM, etc. We also want it to be great/different in other aspects".

>They were seriously trying to constrain the location of the LIDAR before actually knowing what types and numbers of LIDAR a self driving car actually needs! That is utterly backwards.

There's nothing backwards about it -- given that the car will need a LIDAR (which I don't think their self-driving researchers where doubting), they should explorer the design space for placement/hiding it etc.

[dkonofalski]

I'm not sure why you're arguing with the person that keeps responding to you. I think you've clearly made the point that Apple feels like they don't need to work off of existing design or technology methodologies and yet this person seems to think that Apple's entire predicted failure is that they're not working off of existing processes and technologies. He seems to be arguing a straw man of your argument rather than your actual argument and part of me feels like he's being willfully disingenuous in doing so. It's "Apple can't possibly do it different than everyone else because everyone else has only been able to do it in this one way" without any room for the possibility that the "best" (subjective, of course) solution may be one that doesn't exist yet because it requires the very paradigm shift you're referencing.

[ars]

What you are suggesting is like designing how a hotel will look before you know where it will be or how big it will be.

It's completely backwards. You can kind of do it, but it's a huge waste of time and money.

Apple did not do that because they "knew what they would need, so let's get started", they did that because they had no clue how to make a self driving car, but despite that, the team needed to show something, anything.

[coldtea]

>What you are suggesting is like designing how a hotel will look before you know where it will be or how big it will be.

Well, you know most things. You know you're making a car, you know it will have LIDAR, you know it will be self driving etc. You are free to (and if you want to win time, you pretty much got to) design the car, the interior, materials, displays, etc -- even the transmission, engine and wheels -- independently of the self-driving algorithms.

If and when those self-driving algorithms are ready, you don't then have to spend another 1 year to design the rest.

There's not any real dependency between them -- so much that you can even test your self driving algorithm in ANY random car as almost all companies do. It's not like being a self-driving car dictates the car form and the latter has to be designed around that property.

(That said, before even Google's car and the self-driving hype, a lot of rumors insisted on Apple merely making an electric iCar -- Tesla competitor, not some full self-driver type 5).

>Apple did not do that because they "knew what they would need, so let's get started", they did that because they had no clue how to make a self driving car, but despite that, the team needed to show something, anything.

I, for one, have no doubt that Apple got some top notch researchers in ML and driving car technology. I also have no doubt they got some top notch car guys (plain car). I also have no doubt that there's nothing to know about "how to make a self driving car" that the Apple team doesn't know (or any team for that matter), apart the ML/self-driving algorithm aspects. So there was nothing about the form of the car holding them back.

[ars]

I don't agree with everything you said, but let's assume you are right - for the sake of the argument.

So what's the plan? Design a car, then let the designs sit on a shelf for 10 years (or more)? In 10 years tastes will change, and the people who made the designs will no longer have them fresh in their mind - if they are even still employed by Apple.

How does that make any sense?