What is Apple's "Project Titan" all about?

Apple is known for its iPhones, iPads, MacBook and the Apple watch. These are the popular brands that not only loyalists but even the layman knows about, what is not popular with Apple is its own car. Yes! Apple, few years, back was rumored to be working on a secret and confidential project called, “Project Titan”. This project was all about Apple creating its own Artificial Intelligent Car Driving System. Yes, this term is popular and known to be just a Tesla thing, but Apple CEO Tim Cook told Bloomberg in 2017:

The statement wasn’t clear about what Apple intended to do with building autonomous system, but he showed his interest towards it by saying that autonomous system of self-driving cars is the most challenging. We clearly know that Apple has been very successful in Siri (AI personal assistant), and it will continue to take part in future AI projects. It has also been reported that in July of this year Apple had obtained patent from California State Department of Motor Vehicle that they want 66 vehicle permits to drive and 111 safety drivers that will sit behind the steering wheel of the autonomous system driver testing for safety purpose.

Doug Field, the previous Vice President of Apple had come back to the company after working for Tesla on Tesla Model 3. This news made it more obvious that Apple might not just want to make a system that will be sold to other automakers but there are high chances that Apple might make its own Apple branded car. This seems more obvious because Apple on its own is an all service plus product company, that makes its own hardware and its own Operating System.

All the Apple loyalists and other tech followers hope to see such an Autonomous Driving System for Cars in the near future by Apple, because it will be a breakthrough in AI sector. As Tesla also has auto drive feature but it doesn’t meet complete autonomous system for driver as it notifies the driver to stay active and also to put their hands on steering wheel for confirmation that driver is consciously active or not. Only time will tell if Apple is successful in this quest.

Apple and Samsung – Planned Obsolescence Giants

Samsung just like Apple has started rolling out its updates that causes its phones to slow down. Last year when Apple started the planned obsolescence, Samsung ensured its customers that such problem will not be faced by its loyal customers but recently Italian government in a lawsuit fined both companies for forcing updates to the older devices that were not intended for the previous devices. 

Note 4 has been provided the android version that was launched for Galaxy Note 7, and Apple provided the same update that was made for iPhone 7  to iPhone 6 which caused significant performance loss thus forcing customers to upgrade to the latest versions of the phone series. Both the companies are fined approximately $5.7 million.

The fact that planned obsolescence is real, can be denied by these companies on the grounds that they roll out the updates and it is up to the user to upgrade. As people are eager to catch up and use exclusive features and performance, these market giants are also liable to make updates because the social media apps are upgrading functions which can only be used on latest version of an operating system. This creates a win-win situation for both the social media companies and the hardware department, as both need to be upgraded to the latest versions by the customers. 

CEO of Apple, “Tim Cook” said that the next iOS update will allow more transparent view of what will be happening to performance of the phone and users will be given option whether to upgrade or not.