&quot;Has Apple&#x27;s research focus changed?&quot;<p>If it has, honestly, it&#x27;s because they don&#x27;t know where to put their money <i>or</i> they&#x27;ve put it all in one thing.<p>You more or less say the same thing.<p>&quot;hey&#x27;ve loosened their research focus and now have a lot of people doing whatever the hell they want, much like MS, just because something useful might someday emerge.&quot;  (This is we have no idea what to spend our money on).<p>&quot;Perhaps we&#x27;re not seeing some monumental project in the works, although an autonomous car would be pretty big.&quot;  (This is we are betting big on this one thing we think has huge potential).<p>The other option apple has not been fond of is large investments in a small set of things, each of which may be a potential big future.<p>The first would be quite concerning.  If you have companies with large research budgets, and they have no idea what they should spend money on in order to make the next big thing happen, that does not bode well.