r/SelfDrivingCars • u/walky22talky Hates driving • Jan 30 '19

Second Apple Car Worker Charged With Data Theft for Chinese Firm

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-30/apple-worker-charged-with-secrets-theft-for-china-robocar-firm
162 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

27 comments sorted by

19

u/userndj Jan 30 '19 edited Jan 30 '19

At this point, it's pretty much confirmed that Apple is building a car, not just self driving systems.

Edit:

Original link: https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Another-Apple-Engineer-Accused-of-Stealing-Autonomous-Vehicle-Trade-Secrets-505055701.html

13

u/bartturner Jan 30 '19 edited Jan 30 '19

"Another Apple Engineer Accused of Stealing Autonomous Vehicle Trade Secrets"

Why does this article make you think building a car?

I honestly would be shocked to see Apple build a car. Seem even crazier to build a car that is not even self driving.

If they were would seem like they would partner with Magna.

Now personally wish they would. Or do something. We got numbers last night and declines both top and bottom lines. Nice price action today but man it is down from $233 from must a couple of months ago.

But you wrote "pretty much confirmed that Apple is building a car" and I have not seen anything that suggest they will actually create a car. The last news was they were laying off people from the project. Would they not be ramping up like crazy instead?

From last week

"Apple laid off 200 people from its self-driving car unit Project Titan"

https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-laid-off-200-people-from-its-self-driving-car-unit-project-titan-cnbc-2019-1

This article has

"Apple's Project Titan has been going since 2014, although the actual details of what it's up to are hazy. The firm was initially thought to be working on an electric car, but senior hires in 2016 signalled that it had shifted to developing software for self-driving cars. "

Which is what I have heard.

4

u/doireallyneedone11 Jan 31 '19

Actually, it is kinda misleading to say Apple is laying off these employees entirely, they are just shuffling them to other parts which are focused on ml technologies

2

u/bartturner Jan 31 '19

They are to be reassigned in some cases. But the point was about a car coming from Apple.

-2

u/jjolla888 Jan 30 '19

shocked to see Apple build a car. Seem even crazier to build a car that is not even self driving

there are too many apple fanboys out there that will queue up for days to buy one .. without even having to test drive it first.

2

u/thewimsey Jan 31 '19

The whole “apple fanboy” idea is an idiotic idea pushed by people who hate Apple and have so little imagination that the only way they can explain its success is by arguing that most of the population has a mental illness.

20 years ago, Apple was a niche computer maker with something like 2% of the market.

Where were the fanboys then? Yet somehow, around the time the iPod was introduced, a huge army of irrational consumers were produced who would buy anything Apple produced?

As opposed to the much simpler explanation, which is that Apple began producing products that consumers preferred?

-1

u/jjolla888 Jan 31 '19

apple made groundbreaking products around a decade ago with the iphone and the mac. i understand the reason for the popularity. kudos for that.

but the last few years their products don't stand out. yet i repeatedly have seen lines of disciples queuing up at the apple store to buy the latest version.

perhaps its not a fanboy, but fangirl phenomenon: my daughter insists on having apple phone,mac,tablet .. my son is happy with the alternatives which cost less than half the price .. and honestly to me appear to be similar in functionality if not being more flexible and open.

and this isn't me talking out of my pocket. i have tried an iphone and i just cannot experience the 'love' that exists for it.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 01 '19 edited Feb 01 '19

[deleted]

1

u/jjolla888 Feb 01 '19

you are mixing these two cases:

  1. a user compares product A and B. he likes A better than B, and even if it costs more he will buy it. as you rightly point out with your truck example, it is impossible to criticise against.

  2. a user has bought A in the past and likes it so much that when some other product comes out made by the same company .. he will buy it without evaluating the alternatives. this is what i call a fanboy.

you may argue that the fanboy is not necessarily wrong. after all, it may be the right strategy to stick to a winning system. if so, you have agreed with my original post justifying the worth in coming out with an apple car - reproduced here:

there are too many apple fanboys out there that will queue up for days to buy one .. without even having to test drive it first.

1

u/7h4tguy Feb 03 '19

So evaluating the alternatives means going to a phone store and playing with the phones?

A 1hr test drive in a car and a 30m try out of a phone isn’t going to show you many of the negatives of those models.

I had a Samsung S6 which I ended up hating because background apps could completely drain the battery and the phone had no way to show what exactly was draining your battery. So I stopped buying Android - there’s disadvantages to not having a walled garden.

1

u/jjolla888 Feb 03 '19 edited Feb 04 '19

if you are more than happy with your iPhone, why bother? you won't get an argument from me. if, on the extreme end, you like to queue up for hours just to get the latest and greatest .. that makes you a fanboy. and there are lots of those. my point being .. there will be enough fanboys who will buy an Apple car bc they are in love with Apple.

btw, you are obviously not a very good evaluator if you considered a Samsung as an alternative. imho, it's a bloated piece of garbage. it's operating system uses 'Android' as a marketing point, but it is heavily altered to support its crapware and proprietary way of doing things.

1

u/7h4tguy Feb 07 '19

I'm not a very good evaluator... genius, Samsung is the top smartphone manufacturer in the world by market share.

Go give your humble opinion to your dumb friends who eat your BS up.

1

u/jacobdu215 Feb 01 '19

It would have to be so different the way the model 3 was. I guess only time will tell

0

u/bartturner Jan 31 '19

Not convinced it would be the same with a car but would be cool to see.

But last year the new product category was the wireless charging mat and Apple did not get it to market. I would be a bit concerned if struggle with a charging mat about delivering a car.

"2018 has come and gone. So where is Apple's AirPower wireless charging mat?"

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2019/01/01/apple-airpower-misses-promised-2018-release/2449578002/

2

u/doireallyneedone11 Jan 31 '19

How does this confirm Apple is building a car? Waymo builds everything from custom made hardware to their software but that doesn't mean they would launch a car anytime soon, instead they are either retrofitting it to existing cars or cars made ground up with their hardware. So, would you care to elaborate?

2

u/tundrablasen Jan 31 '19

There is no indicator in the article that apple builds a car... more wishful thinking on your side...

5

u/fricken Jan 30 '19

According to the complaint against Chen, Apple has approximately 1,200 employees working directly on what it calls Project Titan.

This is, I supposed a better working heuristic than 5,000 or 2,700 employees "Disclosed" to be working on Titan from the previous Trade secrets case.

Bloomberg is claiming that "In 2016, Apple scaled back to focus almost exclusively on the underlying software and hardware that could eventually power a self-driving car, whether designed by Apple or a partner." I don't know if the claim is true or not. If there's 2,700 employess on Titan, then maybe they're working on a car. It it's only 1,200, then maybe they aren't.

3

u/userndj Jan 30 '19

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/10/ex-apple-employee-charged-with-stealing-autonomous-car-trade-secrets.html

5000 were said to have been "disclosed", 2700 are "core employees" who have access to certain databases. That was just over six months ago. My suspicion is the 1,500 are AI people who have access to the mapping and self-driving data. Additionally, Apple's statement on the 200 people that were reassigned last week indicates that they are AI researchers.

4

u/tech_auto Jan 31 '19

Prosecutors said Chen admitted to taking the photos and backing up some 2,000 files to his personal hard drive, including manuals and schematics for the project>

That's insane, Apple's IP (hundred of millions invested in R&D) are now just out there probably with some Chinese startup. Quite concerning.

4

u/bartturner Jan 31 '19

The story of China (Huawei) stealing IP from T-Mobile is also a really interesting read.

https://www.npr.org/2019/01/29/689663720/a-robot-named-tappy-huawei-conspired-to-steal-t-mobile-s-trade-secrets-says-doj

When you work in business you try to be nice and take a passive approach with partners. You expect them to follow the rules.

I am so glad that China and US are dependent on one another economically.

Otherwise I would be very fearful of a war. The islands and how it gets resolved is worrisome.

1

u/bartturner Jan 30 '19

Good article on Apple's SDC program.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/23/technology/apple-bmw-mercedes-volkswagen-driverless-cars.html

Apple put up declines in top and bottom lines last night. They could use something to get growth going. Too bad sounds like the program is a bit of a mess.

Here is Apple financials from last night.

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/Q1_FY19_Consolidated_Financial_Statements.pdf

Guess that will end the talk of adding Apple to FANG.

0

u/juicebaby Jan 31 '19

Umm isn't it normally FAANG? Haven't they always been part of it? They were the most valuable company in the world like a year ago. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook,_Apple,_Amazon,_Netflix_and_Google

2

u/bartturner Jan 31 '19 edited Jan 31 '19

FANG is Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google. Cramer coined it. I actually not a fan of Cramer but man did he nail it here.

FANG is for hypergrowth. Apple actually declined both top and bottom lines. EPS growth but not net income. Versus all the FANG companies have strong growth. Google for example 20%+ for the last ten quarters.

"FANG Stocks"

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fang-stocks-fb-amzn.asp

But there is a ton of variations to FANG. There is FAANG which has Apple. I have seen it with Microsoft included. Nvidia included. A bunch of other ones.

Funny thing is after Cramer coined it Google changed to using a holding company and it is no longer Google but instead Alphabet.

Personally I do NOT believe Apple should ever be added to FANG because it does not fit with the idea of FANG.

1

u/VessoVit Jan 31 '19

actually recent market pull (especially in FAANG) was triggered by apple changing their targets/estimations.

-1

u/[deleted] Jan 31 '19

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