[madengr]

“Apple tried to partner with someone who can do manufacturing while they do design. BMW, Mercedes, Nissan - all rejected that offer.“

Rejected rightly so. That’s pretty smug of Apple. Seems they are forgetting about “design for manufacture”. I can see some hooty tooty Apple “designer” interacting with a group of grouchy, old automotive engineers.

“Initially Apple planned self-driving vehicle where 4 seats face each other, sunroof material that gives less hit, electrically tinted windows and holographic windshields. - Project was abandoned because they realized "designing and building fundamental parts of a new car was not simple".“

This is the attitude of Silicon Valley. Ignoring the “fluff” for some grandeous bullshit. They’d have a holographic windshield that crashed and rebooted constantly. Tesla is learning this the hard way, as they can’t even get their body panels to fit correctly. And I’m supposed to trust them with self driving?

[giancarlostoro]

I didn't think about it, but you may be on to something to watch out for... If Apple neglects the advise of automotive engineers for the sake of visual aesthetics that could be a red flag. Maybe they weren't going to ignore the engineers but didn't give off that vibe to the manufacturers they went to, who knows. I wouldn't want to drive with a car that puts aesthetics before known engineering safety decisions and the like.

Time will tell, I wish Apple the best in any regard. While I personally do not trust self-driving cars fully as a developer (software can and does fail for any given reason, and even car components aren't reliable / long lived enough in some cases, anyone else have that pesky tire air light come on recently? You'd think that sensor would just work kinda thing...) I don't mind some of the tech that could be created out of it, like warning a driver when they're trying to shift to a lane with a car too close for comfort, and other things. In other cases I wish we had self parking cars be much more common, some people just do not park right at all.

[madengr]

The iPhone 4 antenna is a prime example. Designers driving engineering, with a rush to market. People bitch about unsightly cell phone towers, while holding a device whose antennas is not any better than a wet banana peel.

[ralfd]

Antennagate was a none issue. There was one week of bitching, then a grumpy Steve Jobs had the press event were he handed out free bumpers and showed other phones also had the death grip, then the iPhone 4 sold tens of millions and was kept in the lineup even after the 4S next year.

Many of my friends had a 4 and used it for years and none ever complained about reception issues. (They did complain that the button broke after years of use, a real issue of the 4, fixed in the 4S, but with no media frency behind it.)

[TheForumTroll]

>Antennagate was a none issue.

Who are you to decide what is an issue to people? The phones never got fixed (which would be the only fair way to fix this beside giving the money back). It was most definitely an issue for me and I'll never buy Apple until they swap the broken phones or give buyers all their money back.

It makes no difference if other phones did it as well. That is an extremely poor excuse.

[giancarlostoro]

I forgot about the iPhone 4, heh and then they claimed "you're holding it wrong" which I thought was a ridiculous cop out. You designed it wrong! Own up to it!