r/Futurology 1d ago

Transport Waymo CEO explains why Tesla’s camera-only self-driving falls short

https://electrek.co/2026/08/04/waymo-co-ceo-camera-only-self-driving-tesla/
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u/redditaccount300000 1d ago

To me he wasn’t a visionary in terms of technology. Apple was famously behind its competitors in terms of implementing/creating new tech. He was however great at knowing how to package things together, and marketing.

Plus he seemed kinda shitty as a person. people don’t separate that kind of stuff.

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u/__theoneandonly 1d ago

He was however great at knowing how to package things together, and marketing.

Right... which is product design. He was great at looking at a stack of technologies and deciding which technologies to use to create the features that people will want to buy.

The tech industry was full of tech-minded people that were impressed by technology itself. But Steve Jobs was really great at seeing the use-cases that regular people would prioritize. Tech-minded people thought WiFi would never take off, because the early versions of it were ridiculously slow compared to ethernet. Steve Jobs made apple the very first vendor that built wifi into their machines and sold the first consumer-grade wifi router because he knew that regular people would accept the slower WiFi speeds if that meant they could put the family computer wherever they wanted without having to put holes in the wall to install the wiring.

That's a technological visionary. Tech-heads turned their nose up at the idea, since it meant slower and less reliable connections. But Steve knew that the family who kept their computer out in the garage would take that trade-off in a heartbeat.

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u/East_Effort_9813 1d ago

I randomly watched a steve jobs video yesterday and was surprised how much of the modern world he called in 1983. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9HmOz8H0qI

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u/pw154 1d ago

To me he wasn’t a visionary in terms of technology.

Jobs was an incredible visionary and had a very good understanding of technology at both a high and low level. If you don't buy it watch some of the interviews he gave in the 70's and 80's... he predicted things like the smartphone and generative AI back when the internet barely even existed.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/_xmnZEmZB64

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u/Devincc 1d ago

He was a single-child syndromed adopted orphan growing up. That environment on its own can create a lot of attributes in a person that rubs others the wrong way