EDIT: Since I keep getting the same replies, I'm gonna edit it here too:
1. When you are in maintenance mode and you still manage to introduce more bugs than you are fixing then your are doing something wrong (usually that's a result of limiting the budget of a department and as a consequence hiring less experienced developers)
2. Every new feature the last few years has been ported from iOS and without much care. I still can't believe they have yet to make Siri and Spotlight one unified product (at least make Spotlight more powerful, I can't even set a timer with it).
And to add to this, being in maintenance mode doesn't have immediate effects. If Apple continues like this somewhere down the line macOS is gonna end up quite behind (and a big mess due to points 1. and 2.)
They are referring to the fact that Apple portables ship with soldered memory and max out at 16GB while PC manufacturers are shipping systems which support 32 and even 64GB in laptop/mobile workstation form factor.
So they are referring to the physical memory (RAM) limit of Apple devices, not any logical limitations of the OS.
That's a false dichotomy. Do you really believe they are the only options?
2. Every new feature the last few years has been ported from iOS and without much care. I still can't believe they have yet to make Siri and Spotlight one unified product (at least make Spotlight more powerful, I can't even set a timer with it).
I agree, but I think their approach is flawed. A car is more than an AI with wheels and a seat. Tons and tons of engineering expertise goes into making a roadworthy car, and even more goes into making a truly good car.
Apple quite simply does not have automotive engineering experience, and the jump from computers to iPhones pales in comparison to the jump from consumer electronics to automobiles.
Cook has never struck me as a man with a vision. I think this is just Keeping up with the Joneses.
I agree with you, and I think Cook and Apple do to! The article just says they're focusing on "an autonomous system." When asked if they were going to commit to a full automobile:
> "We’ll see where it takes us," Cook said. "We’re not really saying from a product point of view what we will do."
In other words, they're not making a car, just the AI for it.
Granted, Apple rarely makes 'components'; they make Products. It doesn't really jive with the Apple we know to make part of something without making the _whole_ thing. But I think these comments from Cook are telegraphing that they are--at least for right now--just making a component.
edit to clarify: Based on this and previous rumors, I think the "Apple Car" project (that totally existed, no joke!) has been refocused on the autonomous AI project. Cook and Mansfield realized that a car was big and complicated, and the market was inevitably moving toward self-driving cars. In realizing that without the self-driving component, they wouldn't have a car at all, they refocused the project to see if they could even build such a component. Once they have that, they'll go from there.
It seems to me domestic/concierge/robotic/secure IoT AI is a much bigger and uncontested market.
What specifically does building an automotive AI give Apple that a more general robotics and/or concierge AI project doesn't?
But the way Tim is framing this, they're looking at it as an AI problem. He doesn't go into the feel of driving or the wonderfully bad user interfaces of current cars, he describes it as "the mother of all AI projects." So while this is "something that's never been in [their] wheelhouse", they're approaching it from the AI side. And AI, given WWDC, is something they are very much trying to make their wheelhouse. And it sounds like they're doing it in a very Apple-like way: work on the hardest problem they can, then take what they've learned and apply it.
Even if they don't make a car, or even a driving platform they can sell, the AI things they'll learn will show up in Siri, iOS, and everywhere else.
So yeah, I want them to focus on Mac hardware. But I also want them to learn and grow. And I think they might, might, be starting to do both.