2024-03-02 13:30:00
Last Tuesday, Mark Gurman (from Bloomberg) reported that, “to the surprise of the 2,000 employees involved in ‘Project Titan’”, Apple had decided to end the initiative. I was wondering how many of those 2,000 employees were truly taken by surprise by the decision.
Since the project began in 2014, it has always seemed to occupy too peripheral an area of Apple’s operations to really make sense. 1It is true that the same might be said — and it was said — regarding the iPhone before 2007, but a phone has always been closer to a computer than a car, right?. Still, the promising sense that fully autonomous car driving technology was on the verge of being mastered by humanity was interesting, and it might be argued that Apple would have been remiss if it no had investigated it in some way.
Quick note: Apple has never publicly confirmed the existence or recent cancellation of the “Project Titan”. To make life easier, we will take these facts as true throughout the text, based on everything we have seen reported over the last decade. More efficient than writing “supposed”, “said” or equivalents for each statement, agreed?
In that same 2014, for example, Elon Musk these in an interview with CNN that already in 2015, cars from Tesla they would be able to run 90% of the way on their own. In the same year, Travis Kalanick, then CEO 2Chief executive officeror executive director. and Ubercaused controversy when saying which planned to replace its drivers with autonomous cars.
If you followed the world of technology closely in those years, you’ll probably remember that optimism regarding our imminent dominance of truly autonomous automotive driving was everywhere. The problem is that, nowadays, the impression is practically the same: it seems like little is missing, but it seems like the same little is missing for at least ten years.
It is clear that we have seen progress in this interval. But it is undeniable that programming a car to drive itself within a 15-block radius in San Francisco, or on I-5 in Los Angeles, is quite different from the general expectation of having a truly autonomous car under a wider variety of conditions and conditions. of land 3And especially across a wider variety of road patterns around the world.. But that topic is for another day.
The $10 Billion Learning
From Stoicism to Buddhism to the scientific method, a rare (almost) universal truth is this: every failure is useful.
In the case of “Project Titan”, it is obvious that not all of the estimated US$10 billion invested over the last decade will go down the drain. Experiments with materials such as glass, plastic, metal and carbon, as well as computer vision technologies or environmental mapping and even investigations into new battery technologies they can They will certainly have practical applications in future Apple products, including new versions of existing products.
From an even more practical point of view, considering that Apple has invested more than US$160 billion in research and development since 2014 and, considering that it accumulated US$107 billion in cash in 2019, these US$10 billion from the “Project Titan” until they seem small in comparison.
Under this spectrum, it would have been more irresponsible no spending a few billion on “Project Titan” investigations than spending it to see what might happen. Has it expired and should it have been canceled much earlier? Undoubtedly. But this does not invalidate its origin or the fruits it will bear in the future (although without any relation to the automotive market).
E o CarPlay?
Well then. This is a subject that has been discussed little over the last few days, which in itself is perhaps a good indication of the relevance (or lack thereof) in Apple’s operation as a whole.
Along with the progress of “Project Titan”, Apple has also been evolving CarPlay. In the United States, the company itself says that a significant percentage of the public already considers CarPlay as an important item in the decision process of purchasing a vehicle.
Behind the scenes, Apple has partnered with multiple automakers to essentially allow CarPlay to take control of the vehicle’s display interface, including the information provided by the RTOS. 4Real-Time OSor real-time operating system, responsible for controlling critical vehicle tasks.. Other automakers, however, decided not to adopt CarPlay, having seen it merely as a kind of Trojan horse, designed to collect data and inform the evolution of “Project Titan”.
Instead, these automakers have decided to make their own CarPlay competitors, and are fooling themselves with the argument that all they need to do is develop an interface, couple it with a subscription to entertainment and navigation services, and that will be enough. GM, for example, said it expects to earn US$25 billion annually with its competitor’s CarPlay subscription until the year 2030. I have yet to meet anyone who has believed this.
Well, now that “Project Titan” no longer exists, it is possible that Apple will start paying more attention to the evolution of CarPlay, including delivering what it promised at WWDC22 and which was far from what we saw “reaching the market” at 45 minutes of the second half at the end of last year.
From a practical standpoint, given the volume of current and potential CarPlay users, it offers an opportunity for ongoing revenue huge through services that Apple already monetizes directly (Apple Music, Apple Maps, Apple Podcasts, Apple Books), or indirectly (through 15% or 30% commission from competing apps).
What is interesting regarding the new scenario is that, in an unprecedented way since its launch, the evolution of CarPlay will no longer be partially linked to the “Titan Project”. What this will mean for the platform, only time will tell. But expectations are positive.
OK. But and now?
A question that a lot of people asked themselves over the last few days was something along the lines of: with the launch of the Apple Vision Pro and the cancellation of “Project Titan”, what will be Apple’s next chapter? What will she do next? What will be the next big product? Could it be the one with the ring? 5Spoiler: no.
Actually, I don’t think these are the right questions. Maybe the next big thing isn’t necessarily a product, in the sense of a new category of smart or connected physical device. Maybe the next big thing will be Generative AI. May be spatial computing. Maybe it’s a mix of these and more things, or maybe it’s none of them.
My point is: perhaps this is the perfect time to rethink whether the meaning of technological evolution in 2024 necessarily needs to be linked to the invention and uninterrupted expansion of new categories of products and services, forcing all technology companies to also be film producers, game developers, car manufacturers, music labels, health monitors, social media moderators, environmental saviors, news curators, search engine providers, manufacturers of headphones, keyboards, computers, phones, laptops, watches, smart speakers, virtual assistants, immersive glasses and FineWoven cases.
Certainly, Apple has been investigating a multitude of products that will likely never see the light of day. The website Patently Apple let him say it. All of these initiatives corresponded and will continue to correspond to the other 95% of R&D expenses, which were not allocated to the “Titan Project” in the last ten years. Maybe we’ll see some results from this, and maybe one of them will actually be this next big thing that the world can’t wait for. Or, in the words of Caetano Veloso, maybe not.
For me, the good news represented by the end of “Project Titan” is that, for the first time in a long time, Apple seems to be in a very privileged situation of being able to invest a large part of its efforts (and talents, following all, a good part of 2,000 project employees will continue in the company) in the evolution of the products that already exist, and it is impossible for all of us not to benefit as a result of this. Anything beyond that is profit. Profit for Apple, of course.
Footnotes
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