![]() Two weeks ago they bought an autonomous driving technology startup named Drive.ai. In this game, what would Apple’s advantage be? It would seem to make sense for Apple to impose its genius for marrying software and hardware on car design by creating a standard and system of its own for autonomous vehicles that automakers could adopt.Īs it is, Apple finds itself having to buy into the future rather than invent it. Apple has always been a rigorous steward of its supply chain, but alongside the elaborate supply chain of the auto industry it’s like a walk in the park. There is no precedent for a consumer product company getting into an industry as different as the manufacturing of cars on a mass scale. The key question about the Apple project-one that could explain Ive’s departure-is whether they have finally pulled back from the idea of becoming an auto manufacturer. Alphabet has never been secretive about its progress or its future intentions. Sometimes you get the feeling that Jason Bourne must be involved.Īll this cloak and dagger stuff stands in contrast to the self-driving operation run by the Google parent company Alphabet, called Waymo, that already openly operates a self-driving taxi service in Phoenix. There is also said to be a secret lab in Berlin run by a former Mercedes executive. Silicon Valley gumshoes have identified a group of buildings, including a former Pepsi bottling plant, in nearby Sunnyvale as the most likely site. The Apple Car project has gone through cycles of hirings and layoffs, of arriving and departing leaders, but all the while staying alive. This is where Apple’s habitual secrecy about new products has left it behaving like a paranoid version of a skunk works, one of those deep state off-the-books secret military programs. Moving up the chain of consumer products to personal transportation mandates a huge change in scale and the number and kind of skills that are needed to design, produce and market products. And by making that decision Apple has realized that it needs to become a different kind of company. Since 2014 Apple has been grappling with that future by trying to develop something more ambitious than it has ever attempted, a self-driving car. Artificial Intelligence is upping the scale and complexity of many products. (I still cling to an iPhone 5SE because the size and tactile pleasure of it disappeared with the bigger models.)īut future smart devices won’t be confined to those that fit into anyone’s pocket, strap on the wrist, are sewn into garments or sit on a desktop. That vision came encased in one of the simplest and most beautifully crafted consumer products ever seen. It seems so obvious and intuitive now but in 2007 it was the kind of eureka moment that transformed the world. In his most consequential single work, the iPhone, Ive figured out how to make a smartphone much smarter by directing all its functions through a touch screen and icons. Largely due to him, Apple became the first company to be worth a trillion dollars. More than anyone of his generation, Ive proved that fastidious industrial design can lift a consumer product above all its competitors. The whole relationship between people and devices is changing fast, in a way that goes well beyond the kind of products that Ive oversaw. The reality is that the world has changed for Apple. Williams himself demonstrates that-as well as overseeing Apple’s suppliers he helped to incubate and promote the Apple Watch, which after a slow start is catching on. It abhors silos and preaches cross-departmental thinking. In some corporations that change could sound sinister, but Apple isn’t just another corporation. Now they will report to Jeff Williams, the chief operating officer. Under Ive the product design team enjoyed unusual independence and influence. “It makes me queasy to see that Apple’s chief designers are now reporting to operations,” wrote John Gruber on his blog, Daring Fireball.
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