AudioGuy writes:
"Adrian Perica is a very busy man. Over the past 18 months, the mergers and acquisitions chief at Apple has been scouring the globe looking for deals, snatching up everything from search engines and data analytics to mapping software and motion tracking chips.
A source tells The Chronicle that Perica met with Tesla CEO Elon Musk in Cupertino last spring at around the same time analysts suggested Apple acquire the electric car giant.
The newspaper has also learned that Apple is heavily exploring medical devices, specifically sensor technology that can help predict heart attacks. Led by Tomlinson Holman, a renowned audio engineer who invented THX and 10.2 surround sound, Apple is exploring ways to predict heart attacks by studying the sound blood makes at it flows through arteries.
Taken together, Apple's potential forays into automobiles and medical devices, two industries worlds away from consumer electronics, underscore the company's deep desire to move away from iPhones and iPads and take big risks.
Good grief. Is the 'iTesla next in the 'i' line?"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by TrumpetPower! on Wednesday February 19 2014, @08:12PM
When a company strays as radically far afield as Apple is doing, it's a sign of desperation, or boredom, or something equally deadly.
Apple has lots of money and lots of well-entrenched products to keep it going for a long time; just look at Google or Microsoft or IBM.
But this is definitely a mid-life crisis for Apple, and a sign that their days as the cool kids are over. They're growing up, in the sense of a flabby pencil-necked geek in his 40s or 50s starts going to the gym and hitting up all the 20-something women there.
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by SpallsHurgenson on Wednesday February 19 2014, @08:49PM
They have no Steve Jobs to provide them direction and - as importantly - stop them from wandering down every path. There's no vision at Apple anymore. It's increasingly becoming a company fixated on profits, where growth is more important than the actual product.
There were a lot of things not to like about Steve Jobs - not least was his obsession with form over function - but he knew what he wanted Apple to be and made sure it moved in that direction. Apple is beginning to flounder like too many other tech companies. Perhaps in a few years they will invite John Scully back as CEO; it wouldn't surprise me.
(Score: 5, Informative) by furiousoyster on Wednesday February 19 2014, @09:27PM
The Tesla meeting happened nearly a year ago, and nothing has come of it. It seems a bit premature to say that Apple has drifted radically far afield, don't you think?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by AlbertMaurice on Wednesday February 19 2014, @10:54PM
And considering that they have VERY deep pockets they will get sued from here to eternity by every dumbo who totals their Tesla or has a heart attack while using their tech.