apple inc

A Timeline of the Tesla Autopilot Crash Investigation

A Timeline of the Tesla Autopilot Crash Investigation 0

by • Cars • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

This image taken from a video shows the scene of an accident involving a Tesla Model X on March 23.
KTVU

March 23: Walter Huang, a 38-year-old Apple Inc. engineer, dies after his Model X crashes into highway barrier in Mountain View, California. 

March 27: The NTSB sends two investigators to the crash scene and notes on Twitter: “Unclear if automated control system was active at time of crash.”

March 27: Tesla releases its first blog post, “What We Know About Last Week's Accident,” saying it hasn’t been able to retrieve computer logs from Huang’s vehicle and blames the damaged highway safety barrier for the severity of the crash. Tesla also claims the U.S. government found a year ago that Autopilot reduced crash rates by 40 percent, a characterization of data from a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration report that some safety experts call misleading. “Out of respect for the privacy of our customer and his family, we do not plan to share any additional details until we conclude the investigation,” Tesla writes.

March 30: Tesla releases a second blog post late on Friday night that acknowledges its driver-assistance software, Autopilot, had been engaged at the time of the crash. “The driver had received several visual and one audible hands-on warning earlier in the drive and the driver’s hands were not detected on the wheel for six seconds prior to the collision,” Tesla writes.

April 1: An NTSB spokesman tells reporters that the agency is “unhappy with the release of investigative information by Tesla.” The agency’s protocols require companies who are a party to an agency accident investigation to not release details about the incident to the public without NTSB's approval. 

April 2: Tesla CEO Elon Musk discusses the investigation on Twitter: 

April 9: NTSB discloses agency Chairman Robert Sumwalt spoke to Musk over the preceding weekend. An agency spokesman said Sumwalt described the conversation as “very constructive.” 

April 10: Tesla puts out a statement that faults Mr. Huang and denies moral or legal liability for the crash.

“According to the family, Mr. Huang was well aware that Autopilot was not perfect and, specifically, he told them it was not reliable in that exact location, yet he nonetheless engaged Autopilot at that location. The crash happened on a clear day with several hundred feet of visibility ahead, which means that the only way for this accident to have occurred is if Mr. Huang was not paying attention to the road, despite the car providing multiple warnings to do so.”

April 11: Tesla says it has withdrawn from its party agreement with the NTSB: “We believe in transparency, so an agreement that prevents public release of information for over a year is unacceptable.”

April 12: NTSB releases a statement saying it had removed Tesla as a party to its crash investigation. “The NTSB took this action because Tesla violated the party agreement by releasing investigative information before it was vetted and confirmed by the NTSB.” The agency also releases a letter from its chairman to Musk. 

April 12: Tesla releases another statement, again claiming to have withdrawn from its agreement with the NTSB.

“It’s been clear in our conversations with the NTSB that they’re more concerned with press headlines than actually promoting safety. Among other things, they repeatedly released partial bits of incomplete information to the media in violation of their own rules, at the same time that they were trying to prevent us from telling all the facts. We don’t believe this is right and we will be making an official complaint to Congress. We will also be issuing a Freedom Of Information Act request to understand the reasoning behind their focus on the safest cars in America while they ignore the cars that are the least safe.  Perhaps there is a sound rationale for this, but we cannot imagine what that could possibly be.” 

Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-12/a-timeline-of-the-tesla-autopilot-crash-investigation

Apple Turns Up Audio Ambition With High-End Headphones

Apple Turns Up Audio Ambition With High-End Headphones 0

by • Cars • Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Apple Inc.’s AirPods earphones have been a surprise hit. Now, the company is planning a push into the high end of the market.

The Cupertino, California-based technology giant is working on noise-canceling, over-ear headphones that rival headsets from market leaders like Bose and even the company’s own Beats by Dre brand, according to people familiar with the product’s development. The company plans to launch the headphones as early as the end of this year, but has faced development challenges that might push back the release, the people said.

Work on the Apple headset has been on-and-off over the past year. The company encountered similar problems with the HomePod during its development, including multiple redesigns, according to the people. It’s possible Apple will redesign the headphones again before launch, or scrap the project altogether, they warned, asking not to be identified discussing private development work.

An Apple spokesman declined to comment.

The latest plans call for headphones targeting the high-end of the market, replicating Apple’s approach with the $349 HomePod speaker, released earlier this year. In addition to noise-canceling capabilities, Apple plans to include similar wireless pairing functionality to the AirPods, according to the people familiar with the product’s development.

This would be the latest in a long line of music-focused products and services from Apple. The iPod and the iTunes Store revolutionized how music was consumed — as digital downloads rather than physical CDs. The company’s largest ever acquisition was the $3 billion purchase of Beats in 2014 — a deal that got Apple into high-end headphones and music streaming. The HomePod’s sound won glowing reviews this year and Apple is already preparing other audio accessories like upgrades to AirPods that add water-resistance and a new wireless chip that enables “Hey Siri” voice activation.

So far, the AirPods have been a key driver of newfound success for Apple’s Other Products segment. The category, which includes AirPods, Beats headphones, the Apple Watch, Apple TV and iPad accessories, generated more than $5 billion in revenue for the first time in the company’s fiscal first quarter, representing 36 percent year-over-year growth. Within that category, wearable product sales, which include the Watch, AirPods, and Beats headphones, surged 70 percent last year, Apple said on a recent earnings call.

Inventec Corp., the Apple manufacturing partner that builds HomePod speakers and AirPods earphones, may miss out because Apple is likely to work with a different supplier, the people said. Primax Electronics Ltd. and Shin Zu Shing Co., current Apple suppliers, are likely to partner with Apple on the new headphones, KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo wrote.

Apple's Other Sales Boom

Other Products category is Apple's fastest growing division thanks to devices like AirPods

Note: Other Products include AirPods, Apple TV, Apple Watch, Beats headphones, accessories.

When the company acquired Beats Music and Beats Electronics in the 2014 deal, Apple executives said the successful Beats by Dre headphones business was one of the drivers.

Apple-branded headphones would seemingly cannibalize Beats headphones, although Beats also sells lower-priced wireless headphones that probably won’t directly compete with the new product. Athlete-oriented wireless Beats earphones still seem to be selling well despite the popularity of AirPods.

Apple previously discarded the Beats Music streaming name when it launched Apple Music in 2015. However, given the strength of the Beats headphone name, the company will likely keep that brand while developing a different new one for the new headphones.

Beats, Bose, Sennheiser, Sony and Skullcandy are the leading players in a headphone market that will generate $20 billion in annual revenue by 2023, nearly doubling this year’s projected sales, according to Research and Markets. Researcher NPD Group said last year that sales of AirPods and Beats headphones gave Apple 27 percent of the wireless headphone market and almost half the dollars spent on the category.

Pricing will be key for the new Apple headphones. The HomePod is priced more than $100 higher than its main voice-activated competition from Sonos, and $200 more than an Amazon Echo, but $50 less than a competing Google Home Max. Beats and Bose both charge $350 for their high-end wireless headphones, while Sennheiser prices range from $100 all the way to $500.

Apple’s cost for each $349 HomePod is $216, resulting in thinner profit margins than typical Apple hardware products, according to TechInsights. AirPods have been tricky to assemble and use unusual design tricks, likely making them expensive to produce. The Apple headphones will likely use similar audio technology, driving up costs.

For more on Apple, check out the podcast:

    Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-05/apple-is-said-to-turn-up-audio-ambition-with-high-end-headphones

    The iPhone X reveals why Tim Cook was so mad about Palm

    The iPhone X reveals why Tim Cook was so mad about Palm

    by • Cars • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

    At the unveiling of Apple’s new flagship smartphone yesterday, the iPhone X, CEO Tim Cook said it was something the company’s staff had been working on for a decade.

    The new premium handset with its edge-to-edge display (minus one unfortunate top notch) does away with the physical home button entirely and makes greater use of gestures for controlling the UI.

    The new interface for multitasking looks fluid and intuitive. But it also — if you’ve been smartphone watching for long enough — engenders a distinct feeling of déjà vu…

    Specifically it looks rather like webOS running on the Palm Pre — a handset that was announced in 2009, after Jon Rubinstein, former SVP of Apple’s iPod division, had been lured out of retirement in Mexico by Palm: A mobile device company with a (very) long history, and enough self-perspective to realize they needed an experienced product designer to help them surf the next wave of mobility: touchscreen computing.

    Rubinstein, who had left Apple in spring 2006, clearly possessed the sought for design chops. Palm execs flew down to Mexico to woo and win their man.

    By the start of 2009 Rubinstein was on stage at CES to announce the Palm Pre: A high-gloss, pebble-shaped slider smartphone which deployed multiple gestures in the UI making the most of a touch-sensitive area that extended below the display and onto the bezel itself.

    It wasn’t just the scroll-flicks and pinch-to-zooms already on the iPhone and Android devices of the time that Palm had brought over to its next-gen smartphone hardware. It had something else up its sleeve: Its webOS UI incorporated a deck-of-cards activity interface to be the driver for low friction mobile multitasking.

    Palm showed how users could easily swipe between and tap on the cards to switch apps. How the order of cards could be rearranged with a finger press and drag. And how individual cards could be flicked off the top of the screen when the user was done with a particular app or task. Cards showed fully active apps. It was simple and elegant.

    “Now how’s that for some real newness,” said Matías Duarte, Palm’s senior director of human interface and user experience, with a pretty sizable smirk on his face as he wrapped up that part of the Pre’s CES demo.

    (Duarte now works on Google’s card-like Material Design design language, which extends the card motif the company first used in Android, for Google Now, in 2012; and he went straight from Palm to being a VP of design at Android when the feature was being developed.)

    In an earnings call later the same month in 2009, Cook was pressed by analysts about how quickly the iPhone’s competitors appeared to be elbowing into the market — and asked how Apple would be able to sustain its leadership.

    “We don’t mind competition, but if others rip off our intellectual property, we will go after them,” he responded in a comment that was picked up on and interpreted at the time as a pretty stark warning shot across Palm’s bows.

    When pressed again specifically on the Palm Pre, and how the device seemed to “directly emulate the iPhone’s innovative interface”, Cook doubled down on his implied accusation of IP theft: “We don’t want to refer to any specific companies, so that was a general statement. We like competition because it makes us better, but we will not stand for companies infringing on our IP.”

    Of course this is all water under the bridge now, as Palm’s dreams of successfully surfing the smartphone wave ended in abrupt disaster — burdened by ongoing legacy software challenges, wrong-footed by carriers’ marketing decisions and ultimately saddled with an unloving acquirer in HP — and the Palm Pre had a cruelly short lifespan for such a forward-thinking device.

    I remember how fresh the interface felt in 2009. How hugely advanced vs legacy smartphone players like BlackBerry and Nokia — which, although they were still minting huge revenues back then, were also clearly failing to come to terms rapidly enough with the paradigm shift of touchscreen mobility.

    Whether the Palm Pre was truly ahead of its time, or whether elements of the interface had been plucked out of a carefully planned Cupertino 10-year roadmap will be a story for Valley historians to unpick.

    But in the iPhone X it’s clear you’re looking at a little ghost of the Pre.

    Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/13/the-iphone-x-reveals-why-tim-cook-was-so-mad-about-palm/