Apple receives permit to test self-driving car

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...roval-to-test-self-driving-cars-in-california

I heard about this on the news this morning. It looks like Apple is now wanting to join the trend of other tech/automobile companies out there to begin testing on self-driving cars. So what do you guys think of this? Is Apple going in the right direction with advancement in technology, or should they perhaps stick to mobile devices and computers?

The car business would make sense for Apple. A new car model every year or every other year, just like phones.

I think it certainly helps to have more people going for it in this area - eventually as we get closer to them being ready to hit the roads for real, a lot of the competitors will fall by the wayside and hopefully their advances will be incorporated into the designs of others (without a monopoly occurring).

I do think though that outside of Tesla which is actually doing cars as its primary business, all the other tech companies are going to lose out to the car companies on account of their experience in actually building cars, as well as their production capacity when it does come to making self-driving cars publicly available.

I wonder if at this rate self driving cars will be mainstream during my lifetime?

I just hope they aren't powered by Apple Maps.

Radiating said:

I wonder if at this rate self driving cars will be mainstream during my lifetime?

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very likely. other companies have had self-driving cars for ages and they've performed near-perfectly. even if they're not 100% perfect they're still way better than humans, so I see their adoption as something that will happen pretty soon - certainly within the next few decades.

Radiating said:

I just hope they aren't powered by Apple Maps.

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lmao they will be. trust me

So you'll have to replace it every few years, it'll get lost with apple maps, not drive if you hold the steering wheel a certain way, cost more than any other car, require an adapter to use standard tires, and only park in your garage if you have a mac?

Incineroar said:

I feel that Apple is very late to this game. Google has been doing this for many years and probably has leaps and bounds on them.

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Even then, I'd still look at the overall pool of manufacturers moving forward with developing self-driving cars, and not just the tech-manufacturing companies. There are still several companies out there looking to develop a self-driving car, and I'm sure there are many, many more to follow after Apple's announcement here.

apple would probably charge alot more than other self driving cars just like they overchage on the iphone

Maki-Nishikino said:

apple would probably charge alot more than other self driving cars just like they overchage on the iphone

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Well, we'd have to wait and see.

Apple "overcharges" on their products because they are completely proprietary, unlike with other manufacturers.

Tsutarja said:

Well, we'd have to wait and see.

Apple "overcharges" on their products because they are completely proprietary, unlike with other manufacturers.

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That's not an excuse really, especially given Apple's lack of meaningful improvements recently (I like them, I have both a Mac and an iPhone and I can't replace them because they're being so user-hostile). SpaceX got into the rocket-building business and decided to create everything themselves which made them pound-for-pound the most cost-effective rocket launches in history.

I've seen mention occasionally in tech blogs about how self-driving could become some sort of subscription service where you pay for a certain amount of access - If they go the way of their Apple Music pricing they won't be that bad. The other option for self-driving is going to be for manufacturers to become taxi companies, in which case who knows?