[hallmark]

We have the iPhone because Apple was so ambitious. Imagine if they had just partnered with existing phone manufacturers rather than trying to build a magic touch slate.

Wait, we do know what would have happened - the Motorola ROKR, which everyone should be forgiven for forgetting.

[josteink]

> We have the iPhone because Apple was so ambitious.

When you say that, you conventiently forget that Apple re-invented the smartphone. It was an proven thing, which already sold in spades in the tech/enterprise market.

They took something which existed and was awkward to use, and re-did the UI layer of the whole thing. They refined something else which was already proven. They didn't invent something original from scratch.

Here Apple is clearly trying to design a new kind of a car, where every part is different from what's already out there in the industry. Where none of the new bits has been invented yet.

They are trying to do original discovery in addition to refining things, in an industry where they have absolutely zero experience.

> Project Titan looked at a wide range of details. That included motorized doors that opened and closed silently .... Apple, as always focused on clean designs, wanted to do away with the awkward cone.

That they were even considered things like this important in a self-driving car when they hadn't even solved the self-driving bit (or even car-bit) yet tells me all I need to know about the realism of this project. There was none.

It was doomed from day one.

[danso]

Also, the iPhone was preceded by years of producing iPods, which at least gave them expertise in portable electronics. What has Apple produced that is remotely similar to an automobile? It's not just design expertise, but the supply chain and manufacturing. Auto parts industry is massive. Is controlling the parts for a computer on the same scale as for an entire automobile? I suppose if Tesla can do it...but Tessa's cars so far don't seem as ambitious as what Project Titan was looking at.

[simonh]

>When you say that, you conventiently forget that Apple re-invented the smartphone. It was an proven thing...

That's what it looks like from the outside, but listening to interviews with current and former Apple people that's not at all how it looked from the inside.

When they initially developed the OSX derived core OS, System architecture and UI libraries they weren't thinking about phones at all. It was intended to be a tablet computer OS. It's only fairly late on in development that Jobs pivoted the team to adapt the technology to a phone form factor and tacked on a phone app and cellular radio. It was not at all developed from the starting point of looking at existing phones and going from there. Things like touch swipe to scroll and pinch to zoom were taken straight from contemporary touch UI research, not Palm or any other existing commercial products.

[ars]

Yup, exactly this. They have no idea how to make a self driving car so wasted time on other things hoping someone will solve the actual hard part.

It's pretty common when given an impossible project, and you need to show something.

[usrusr]

> They took something which existed and was awkward to use

This is the key difference: people already love their cars, more than they love their home and more than they love their iPhone. The enjoyable smartphone was an unsolved problem, the enjoyable car has been comically over-solved for decades.

Everything unpleasant about cars is happening to the outside. Not just to pedestrians, cyclists and residents, but also to other drivers: just imagine how much nicer your commute would be without all the other commuters. A Lada on an open road would be more enjoyable than a Rolls Royce in a traffic jam. It's a commons problem, one that cannot be designed away with cute UI and expensive surface finishing. Even self-driving won't really solve that, as anyone who has been a passenger in gridlock should know. The only way to significantly improve transport is by making it more space-efficient by cooperation. Public transit with the Apple doover? Could be amazing, but it's just not in the Apple DNA. Autonomous cars with extreme platooning? Massive potential, but just like with public transit, the biggest benefit goes to those who refuse to cooperate and stick to individualistic reaping of the benefits of lower congestion.

[erikpukinskis]

There is no such thing as a UI layer. UI and function are inextricably linked.

For example, see iPhone's voicemail. Or the touch screen. Or the app store. None of those things could have been executed by UI teams at any other device manufacturer at the time.

[rothbardrand]

No. Apple invented the smartphone. There were no smart phones before the iPhone. There were PDAs and feature phones.

People like to pretend Apple never invents anything and to do so they always point at vaguely similar things that aren't nearly as good as if they support the point.

Someone one here once told me that Apple didn't invent multi-touch because it existed in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey

[grwthckrmstr]

Apple is reinventing the car?

[usaphp]

> When you say that, you conventiently forget that Apple re-invented the smartphone. It was an proven thing, which already sold in spades in the tech/enterprise market.

Isn't a car a proven thing? All apple is need to do is re-invent it and slap a nice AI on top of it.

[omegaworks]

They have no clear visionary at the top vetting things for quality user experiences. Had Jobs still been with us we might actually have beautiful 3D Touch experiences. We might be seeing a beautiful refinement of the driving experience. Instead they're flailing. Hopefully this is a realignment and rededicated effort to do what they do best: make cool, proven tech perfect and accessible.

[greggman]

there is a 20+ year history of PDAs before the iPhone. For all intents and purposes my 1998 Windows CE Casio PDA looks and acts like a first gen iPhone. It's home screen has a grid of 3x4 icons of apps and general works very analogous to the iPhone. Apple did an amazing job of polishing the PDA but they made an incremental jump being at the right place at the right time with affordable cellular data and capacitive touch and an amazingly well designed ui

it sounds like they we're doing much more with their car efforts

[rimliu]

   > capacitive touch

Without this I do not thing anything qualifies as "acts like first gen iPhone".

[threeseed]

> For all intents and purposes my 1998 Windows CE Casio PDA looks and acts like a first gen iPhone

I assume you also think a Hyundai looks and acts like a Ferrari.

Because that is what you are saying. I owned that PDA as well as the Treo 650 which was far better and the iPhone isn't an incremental jump. It was a complete revolution.

[danmaz74]

All technologies used in the iPhone were proven - what Apple did right is to combine them in a much better way than the previous iterations.

With self driving cars, it's not about usability/utility, it's still about having the basic tech work.

[dkonofalski]

That's like saying that the first mobile phone used technologies that were all proven and that the inventors just combined them in a much better way because radios and phones existed. The combination itself is exactly what made it an invention and a revolution. Nearly every technology right now that's a revolution (Uber, for example) is a revolution precisely because it did something that's never been done before by standing on the shoulders of what came before it. The difference is that the combination and or features gained from that combination allowed the invention to leap frog over what existed before it.

[function_seven]

I don’t forgive you for reminding me of that hobbled abomination.

Though I guess it serves as an example of unchecked carrier power. Something to point to for today’s net neutrality arguments?

[r00fus]

Moto ROKR was a stalking horse to give Apple intel on how the carriers worked.

100 songs? It was designed to fail.

[Shivetya]

reinventing the wheel and more changes to how current equipment works, in particular viewing aids, would bury this car in regulatory hell. it would take years to get permission for it to be on the road. figure it this way, if it takes many years just to get permission to change headlight technology can you imagine the time it would take to adjust to what Apple was proposing?

phones are dead simple compared to cars because phones NHTSA and Insurance issues to face up to

[dimillian]

Good question: Is the iPhone a side effect of the iPod touch or the iPod touch a side effect of the iPhone?

[gambiting]

Wait, what was wrong with the ROKR? I had the E1 and it was a fantastic phone for its time.