Apple Car: Bad Idea After All
mondaynote.com
mondaynote.com
iOS plasters that information all over the place when running on the device itself, so it is not like it is out of character.
I do understand that Apple needs to integrate with hardware from hundreds of different manufacturers and I feel their pain - but nobody is twisting their arm and forcing them into the market.
I'm sure 10% of the time or so the car maker is just being completely incompetent in using incompatible hardware or switching things out at the last minute without warning - but yea, mostly on Apple.
FYI - there are two different audio “sources” at play: “music” and “announcements”. Your “announcements” volume is set to 0.
Not that I have any idea how to change that on your car, but on my VWAG car I can adjust the “announcements” volume by turning the volume dial while it is speaking the directions (or not, in your case)
Like, you iOS doesn’t support my language maybe then just let me read message on that massive screen.
And if my kids want to watch peppa pig - let them? Blocking video from central console is such immature safety feature.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/17/04/27/apples-self-drivi...
I think new ones have more doodads around the fenders.
I think the point is that it was unlikely their intention to be building solely for carplay and an actual car was a bonus. However if they wind down the hardware play of an actual car this could be something that soften those sunk costs.
>Next generation of CarPlay
This next generation of CarPlay is the ultimate iPhone experience for the car. It provides content for all the driver’s screens including the instrument cluster, ensuring a cohesive design experience that is the very best of your car and your iPhone. Vehicle functions like radio and temperature controls are handled right from CarPlay. And personalization options ranging from widgets to selecting curated gauge cluster designs make it unique to the driver.
what would be left? colour of the seats?
no new features until Apple decided it's a time
1. Selling a thing.
2. Selling add-ons and upgrades to a thing.
3. Selling other things to people who bought one of your things.
4. Preventing people who are subscribing to your thing from switching to somebody else's thing.
5. Preventing your competition from commoditizing things and driving prices down.
(There aren't really just five, there is no one "theory of everything," it's just a literary device.)
CarPlay is obviously #1 "Selling a thing," manufacturers license it. But it could also be #4 "Preventing people who are subscribing to your thing from switching to somebody else's thing."
If automobiles all have their own proprietary interfaces or worse, Android Auto, people who drive cars may end up buying phones that integrate nicely with their cars and ditching their iPhones.
If my conjecture is correct, Apple is investing in CarPlay to protect the most profitable product the world has ever seen.
The more reasons an existing user has to value something they already use, the harder it becomes for the user to switch. With few points of stickiness, it's easy for a user to check if an alternative has, say, similarities to features A and B. But if it's ABCDEFGHIJK, the likelihood of that user leaving drops dramatically. It's a common point that Apple does well iterating on its products, but that iteration goes beyond performance and capabilities into areas of stickiness.
If you are selling a lot of phones and tablets and laptops with your apps and platforms as they are, you don't want to invest billions in making them better just to make your existing customers stop complaining. They bought your product anyways, clearly whatever they're complaining about wasn't a deal-breaker.
You only want to invest in your own apps and platforms in areas where improvements would drive meaningful business outcomes. So you need to look at features that would cause someone who would otherwise buy a Samsung phone to buy an iPhone. Or you need to find people who didn't but an iPhone or iPad or AppleTV or OS X laptop and figure out if there is something that can be added to the product to get people to switch.
In the case of a dominant player like Apple, those are hard to find in the mainline product. Big new sources of revenue are most likely to come from entirely new product areas (thus their investment in phones, watches, tablets, and set-top boxes) or from going down-market and making commodity products.
They're allergic to cutting margins to the bone, so we're left with trying to find new markets, and that is why they invest so much in an automobile skunkworks while being much more careful about investing in the products that are already successful.
So, let's say that Honda starts integrating it into their vehicles. In 2020, 1.3mm vehicles. Of course, initially, not every car Honda sells will have CarPlay installed, but a few years out, let's assume every vehicle does.
If Apple got 2% of the selling price of the vehicle. Across all Honda models, the starting MSRP averages out to about $32,091. So, on average, Apple would get $641 per vehicle sold. Over the course of a year (if every vehicle sold with it), just from Honda, Apple would get $833mm. Add in a few more larger manufacturers and it's not a bad investment.
> Whether it costs money to get CarPlay support in your car is up to its manufacturer. While Apple doesn’t charge automakers a fee for the necessary software to integrate CarPlay, there are some costs associated with meeting the necessary hardware requirements.
The only reason an automaker does not include CarPlay is to try and keep their product from becoming a commodity. It was disappointing to see Toyota be stubborn and refuse CarPlay for so many years.
What is then remaining as distinctive feature of a car vendor? The design?
With their custom entertainment system they can confront they driver with their own brand identity and differentiate how they integrate the different features.
But with EVs the engines aren't as different as fossil fuel engines, they don't have their gear shifting with that adjustment anymore. Lots of brand vlauebis lost and becomes obvious to the buyer that cars are 95% the same across brands.
From basic things like a snappy interface and keeping my podcasts in sync, to suggesting the destination based on the recent maps search I did from my phone on the way to the car, the attention to detail makes it a better experience. I don't particularly get any joy out of driving. I just want to get to my destination safely and quickly, and CarPlay makes the process less taxing.
YMMV based on just how old your car is and the type of OEM head unit, but there are kits (e.g. this one for a 2016+ Honda Civic [3]) that allow you to install "standard" head units with a fit/style similar to OEM.
[1]: https://www.crutchfield.com/g_462350/Apple-CarPlay-Compatibl...
[2]: https://www.joyingauto.com/head-unit.html
[3]: https://www.crutchfield.com/p_120957812B/Metra-95-7812B-Dash...
It works perfectly, kept the existing car controls and I still have a car that mysteriously fits your entire apartment inside it while also not being subjected to a CVT.
My current vehicle doesn't have a functional BT connection, because some idiot put it behind a voice activation (and the mic broke).
I don't think this is the long term future, though - I've seen it work really well, if consumers actually start caring about how to connect to their cars it will work better.
BT will always "just work" - Android Auto and Carplay (never used) are enterprise monstrosities you must sign your soul for in blood that don't work on Thursdays, by comparison.
Yeah yeah I'm sure it does some app thing but I honestly don't car, what with cellphones becoming less reliable over time. I only want to play music in my car, BT works great (once it is setup).
In contrast, the BlueTooth in the car that I own typically takes about half a block to a block’s driving before it actually connects to my phone, occasionally refuses to connect or will pair but not send audio. There’s some weird interaction between Overcast and the car’s Bluetooth that means that if I’m listening to a podcast when I turn off the car, I need to restart Overcast before it will send audio to any output (including the car when I get back in).
I don’t understand the “you must sign your soul for in blood” claim, unless you’re an open source absolutist (or maybe Android Auto is really bad, I don’t know), but your claims don’t match my experience.
The new-ish field of screen and cell phone probably has the most differentiation right now.
It’s absolutely order qualifying for me.
It's something I'm going to interact with on a near daily basis, so it's important that it doesn't piss me off.
I did a self install on a 2010 ford Escape after my kids killed the radio (by inserting pennies into the cd slot…). Between that upgrade and new tires it was like driving a new car.
Getting into a car that has a pre-CarPlay infotainment system feels like stepping back decades in time even though the car may only be a few years old. Slow, unresponsive, buggy, and just extremely unpleasant and unnatural to use.
IMO, cars that predate screen-based infotainment systems have aged far better than pre-CarPlay systems. OEMs are just disastrously bad and behind the times at building a quality infotainment system. Mirroring the smartphone that everyone already has is a fantastic solution.
It's a very good thing that CarPlay shifts so much of the responsibility out of the car and into the smartphone, something that is much more easily and frequently upgraded.
- Cost (per unit distance in fuel, maintenance, etc)
- Comfort (which includes integration with other software, ie Carplay)
I don't care about "performance"; I don't even know what that means, and frankly I don't care. The car needs to get from my house to some other point on the map and back cheaply and comfortably.
1. The Android based entertainment system regularly crashes. 2. The non-android based digital center cluster is designed so poorly as to have the date in two to three places and fuel levels hidden by default. 3. Safety systems that will needlessly engage the brakes because it believes that driving past the backed up left turn lane on a gently curving road is an imminent head on collision.
I’ve learned to work around these issues for the most part. Disabling all the wireless hardware reduces, but does not eliminate entertainment crashes. I memorized the steering wheel dial flicks to get the fuel gauge to display. I turn off the safety features.
Most of the car is very nice. The software stack is honestly something Audi should have outsourced to a competent development team elsewhere in the automotive industry.
Fortunately if you also want to prioritize performance, mileage, etc., CarPlay makes it a lot easier to tolerate a lackluster factory interface.
Sometimes the GPS azimuth data gets out of sync, which is annoying. However, the dealbreaker is that the transmission has some software bug where it overheats if you drive for more than an hour or so in certain circumstances. (Turning it off and waiting five minutes reboots it enough to get it to do whatever it needs to do to cool itself off.)
Sometimes we get a dreaded error message like this on the dashboard: "Drive to destination without switching into reverse or turning off. The vehicle might not turn back on.", which means the drivetrain computer cannot talk to the transmission, and it is stuck in a random gear.
Also, there was a safety recall software update. Applying it broke the state machine transitions for the push button ignition switch. (If you see a Ram owner accidentally re-start their engine after parking, this is why.)
Other Fiats (or whatever they renamed themselves to) are apparently on the same drivetrain software platform and have similar problems. All of the above things happened in warranty and none are fixable, from what we can gather.
It also had a bug where sometimes the cruise control wouldn't disengage unless you stood on the brake pedal while forcing the shift knob past an interlock and into neutral. They fixed that with the software update that broke the ignition switch.
We're eagerly awaiting the day when we can upgrade to an EV pickup truck from another company.
The GMC we had before the Ram was even worse. It was even more likely to strand itself, and the ABS / traction control liked to unexpectedly engage. Also, we had many mechanical issues. Like RAM, we had difficulty getting GMC to honor the warranty (with < 100 miles on the odometer).
Anyway, if the radio is buggy, don't buy the car.
> age-old Sienna
Interesting dichotomy there. I have a modern Toyota and BlueTooth works just fine.
TLDR: Toyota removed the physical play/pause button and it's really annoying.
Cars have handling, space, looks... just about everything else other than the dash/touchscreen is meaningful competition space.
Particularly when it seems like none of these bespoke entertainment systems raise the bar, and instead the standard seems to be “not annoying and in the way.”
Depressing if manufacturers and users want more chip/software dependencies after the last two years of supply chain fun.
I've noticed with my previous car (also BMW, E46 that I will remember fondly for the rest of my life as amazing car but not due to this) that if I looked at speed, my peripheral sight of whats happening on the actual road was almost 0. I may notice break lights of car close to me if its newer car, or an atomic blast, but anything else simply no. Just something very bad waiting to happen.
Its such a great safety feature even with minimal info (current speed, current speed limit, and if car navigation is on some basic directions, but maybe thats the key, don't clutter it with too much info) that I would make it mandatory if I were EU and subsidize it.
Some Mazda SUVs (e.g. CX-3) had a HUD starting back in 2018 or earlier.
Around the time the self-driving craze sort of took off, the noise in the echo chamber was that Apple was terribly far behind in 2 main categories: services and AI/ML. Now, they're charging ahead with services and they've got custom ML hardware on every single device they sell. A car seems like too big of a project with too much hype to use as a forcing function for all that stuff.
Seems like there are some strong health and safety plays as well. If you have a watch on, it already can do fall detection. Car crash detection is a logical next step, if all the passengers had watches on, they could start sending real-time telemetry to the paramedics, maybe encourage them to prioritize a passenger that was in greater distress. With the cameras and such, there is absolutely enough processing power in your iPhone to look for drivers falling asleep and with some other data they could probably make a pretty good guess if you're intoxicated.
My concern was that Apple would make a car and it would be a McLaren or something, it would be coveted, look amazing, and be just about completely unattainable. Now if I could buy a Toyota or a Hyundai and just plug my phone in and it became the brain of the car? I'd talk myself in to taking a new car for a test drive to try it.
Apple already does this,[1] though not many car manufacturers support it (BMW and a few models from Kia).
Teslas let you use any iPhone or Android phone as the key. You can also use your phone to turn on valet mode (which limits acceleration and max speed) and track and control the car (turn on heat/AC, lock/unlock, view through the cameras, etc). Lastly, you can book service or request roadside assistance from the phone app. It's all very handy, and I'm surprised more car companies haven't copied these features yet.
Does Tesla make their own sensors and are they "ahead of the curve"?
This... makes sense to me? Physical access and automotive service go hand-in-hand. Over-the-air presents update hell and security issues.
It's not like physical car repair places have some amazing flawless track record either... Physical access and the servicing of electrical devices do not need to always go hand in hand in 2022.
Auto manufacturers are much, much worse than Apple at software, and I suspect they have less confidence all of their embedded electronics work correctly under all circumstances, although that’s just speculation on my part. From what I’ve heard about canbus, it’s a bit of a mess.
Anyway, I can completely understand why traditional auto makers are less comfortable allowing a car to be updated anywhere at any time, and why they might be less competent at securing the update mechanism.
It absolutely causes problems on computers and phones. Windows updates are famous for interrupting/losing work at this point. MacOS upgrades are less aggressive but far more likely to break formerly functional software (and stomp custom configs). Phone security is always an issue if not an outright disaster in dozens of ways. Look up the Qualcomm / MediaTek audio decoder issues from just this year.
Somebody can spy on you and steal sensitive data w/ access to your computer or phone. What can they do with a car?
Have you read the Wired article from 2015 about hackers remotely killing a jeep on the highway?
Some levels of computer security rely on avoiding connecting to public networks. Or any network.
> Why aren't Tesla or Rivian owners collectively going crazy
Just last year there were over the air updates on Teslas where owners reported vehicles stopping without warning. They fixed that promptly with another emergency OTA update, but not exactly a shining example.
Just last month someone I know told me that the performance profile of his Tesla was weird since a recent update.
These are the realities. There's a ton of evidence.
One simply can't ignore the fact that today, including outside my own home, millions of cars update software just fine every few weeks, without issue. The number of phones or computers managing it is in the billions.
Regardless of what customers desire, auto-makers are in no rush to become just a dumb pipe for apple or google's driving software. So far not one automaker has of yet publicly announced support or plans to support the more extensive CarPlay Apple demoed. I think if it does ship, it will need to support far, far more customization on interface and dial-faces than was shown in the keynote for auto-makers not to feel totally sold out of the cabin.
It was slightly disappointing to me I've only really seen Nilay Patel at the Verge in the media point this out; anyone with experience of the car industry I think will come to a similar conclusion. People may forget, it took a very long time for some automakers to even trust adding the existing CarPlay, partly due to concerns regarding loss of control of cabin features. Old CarPlay is is a far less intrusive system than the one Apple are proposing now.
As a thought experiment - if I personally ran BMW or Mercedes, I would have real concerns about dilution of the brand by adopting a generic industry wide car UI, even if I also think Apple would probably do a great job. Maybe the carrot of Apple solving autonomy as part of the package might be enough to swing the deal, but even there, I think in time legacy automakers will work out who to aqui-hire to build their own systems instead of selling out completely.
> https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/7/23157963/apple-carplay-nex...
Google I'm sure has its own incentives to do this.
Too early to tell if this will be the case or not.
The car makers usually defined the functions in their car and how to split that to the different computers (plus quite a few of this is fixed to specific computers, anyway). They also defined the data going back and forth between these, at least in part. Everything else was defined and done by the suppliers.
This entire approach was upended by increasingly powerful embedded hardware and possibilities resulting from it, which rendered the entire software stacks in the cars so complex, the car makers had to seize control over this again. Someone has to define the larger scale software architecture in a vehicle etc.
Combine that with that juicy lock-in scenario (I mean the big idea is to have cars connected all the time, like your phone), and you can bet on the fact that the car makers are very well aware of the possibilities which come with that (think of all the data which comes with that). And they are not exactly willing to just yield to the likes of Google or Apple because of it, i.e. we are talking really big money here.
How all this will play out in the longer run, lets see. Car makers sit on a lot of cash, so this will be a fight which will be going for a while.
The cellphone carriers and manufacturers wanted control too. They both used to dictate what you did with your phone. Apple wouldn’t be the Apple we know today if it hadn’t up-ended that market.
I can’t really see Apple producing something so good that it makes all other car manufacturers efforts look like crap, but then most people would have said the same about the phone industry.
I dread the day when I end up getting a touch screen car to replace it.
My previous car had a touch screen, and I've used touch screen cars from a dozen vendors. They all suck badly, except Tesla, but they still suck compared to a jog wheel + physical buttons, or even an old fashioned "dumb" car.
Apple's business model is clear; they would hoover up any profits that might arise via new in car software business models. Apple's success in reducing cellular carriers to dumb pipes will be the cautionary tale every car CEO in the world is familiar with.
1990’s and 2000’s mobile in the US was a refugee camp for executives from the Bell Telephone breakup. They were a bunch of dirt bags trying to snap up everything they could, including re-patenting information technology by adding, “but without wires” to existing patents.
The RAZR phone was one of the first times they’d blinked in a while, and Apple showed up in the afterglow.
But I can help but laugh a little at this attitude from carmakers. Modern cars have almost all become the poster child for "bad ui" with their addition of touchscreens that almost universally look dated and run poorly.
The dashboard dials have little left to be optimized. This is separate from the issue of media controls in the centre console.
Given occasional hiccups with CarPlay itself, intermittent dropouts or UI lag because of a flaky cable or an older phone running the last supported OS is intolerable to something as mission critical as the speedo.
If it's actually good, customers will then push manufacturers into it.
I doubt the upper tier of manufacturers would be happy with mere UI skins either.
Cars that are more like appliances, shared cars, with user customization in your phone, maybe that could work?
Do they get Google to implement equivalent Android features just as CarPlay and Android Auto are complementary now? In some ways that makes sense (you get the personal assistant you prefer instead of one provided by the car company) but it means differentiation must be limited because the car can't change too much depending on what phone is plugged into it.
It seems easy enough for car manufacturers to support both.
First, Apple's car project is clearly mostly focused on self-driving (tying into Apple's mapping efforts). To steelman your argument, it's possible that Apple's just trying to develop self-driving software that car companies can just adopt into their cars, but that would be absolutely unprecedented for Apple; they just don't do licensing deals like this. The fact that Apple's developing self-driving AI means that either they plan on rolling out a consumer car, or rolling out a robotaxi service (as a subscription service, which Apple is interested in). It's either licensing, or using it for their own cars; there's no scenario where self-driving is built-into CarPlay, since if you forgot your phone, your car wouldn't work; and it wouldn't work for Android users either. Self-driving will never be a CarPlay/Android Auto feature that "plugs into" a "dumb car". Too finicky.
Second, Apple's clearly investing heavily in car hardware and all related technologies (battery, etc). The most informed people on Apple are Mark Gurman and Ming-Chi Kuo, and they both agree that Apple's developing its own car hardware. See, for example, a 20-year Lamborghini vehicle R&D veteran hired to help design the car just two months ago.[0] That goes far, far beyond CarPlay. Kevin Lynch (who was in charge of Apple Watch) took over the project. There's tons of indications that this is about hardware, not just software.
Personally, I feel it would be better for Apple to design an electric bike than a car; but hey. Car likely comes first, then bike (just like: VR goggles first, then AR/XR glasses). Also far more ways to integrate content consumption (TV, Music) and productivity features in a car.
[0]: https://www.macrumors.com/2022/07/27/apple-car-lamborghini-e...
The iphone is already the self driving bicycle of the mind.
/s
What specifically about Carplay makes it so important, versus the non-Carplay equivalents that other modern cars have?
It also no longer gets traffic updates since the modem is 3G with no upgrade path currently. It does not support AA or Carplay. I hate it but she loves the way it drives, so we'll be keeping it for a while.
Car market has many challenges that cause production and sales to scale slowly. Even if they outsource manufacturing, like Fisker has down with Magna (which no one has done at the many many millions scale Apple would need to).. what about service centers?
Next cars face various tax, tariff and regulatory challenges far beyond any market Apple participates in today. They couldn't simply make the cars in Shenzhen and ship them across easily. Almost certainly some non-trivial amount of assembly would need to happen domestically which means a US workforce and potential union concerns. This is due both to tariffs and to maximize applicability of the new EV tax credit law.
Further, I don't think Apple likely brings any special sauce to ADAS/Autonomy, and its a hard challenge many of the current players underestimate & overpromise.
Oh and repairability and granularity of components/modules. EVs need to be serviceable in ways that phones/tablets/Macs are not. Car needs to be designed for this, and parts supply networks need to exist. This is not an Apple forte.
All this to enter a traditionally low margin, boom&bust industry? No thanks.
This could be under the usual AI umbrella like other companies, but the fact that there is an AI DR to Tim Cook makes me think self driving is big on the agenda. I"m not sure which other AI effort is so valuable to Apple to warrant a SVP. https://www.apple.com/in/leadership/john-giannandrea/
They probably have a few plans like that.
For me a car is a tool. Aside from playing music, a technology available since forever, I don't expect much. Navigation is a solved issue for the most part. Self-driving cars are far away. An actual HUD is really nice, but many manufacturers already include them. If there is ever a standard, Apple would not be a good custodian.
What did the romans ever do for US? :P
At the end of the day, Apple's contributions to technology aren't chivalric acts of kindness. Their ultimate goal is the same as everyone, running a rent collection business and relying on their services to make consistent income. That's what I think we need to fix. Apple can continue to make phones, we just need to separate their services (the App Store, Apple Music, Apple TV, Podcasts, etc.) from their hardware business. If they did that, I might actually buy a Mac again!
No. Look at what high end "smartphones" looked like before the iPhone. It's a DRAMATIC shift.
> At the end of the day, Apple's contributions to technology aren't chivalric acts of kindness.
What? No one claimed that. The romans didn't build aqueducts and roads because they were nice either. But that's totally irrelevant.
That's the weirdest thing I've read in a while. No one cares about that.
1. more screen
2. smaller phone (unless it contradicts rule 1)
3. longer battery life (unless it contradicts rule 1 or 2)
It's really that simple. Apple fought against this a long time before they gave up and realized the truth. They shipped smaller phones long after Android had moved on to larger screens.
I agree 100%.
I would even say the same about Windows vs MacOS
I'm so fed up with all the hidden gestures. That's all fine, but give me redundant buttons / controls too.
This is on a Pixel 4.
Apple also makes their products to be disposable, seemingly as part of the culture, while a well-made electric car can run to a million miles over 50+ years. That's a very different build philosophy.
The key to me is that Apple presents the image of perfect fit and finish--beyond that their products are not problematic in a lot of ways (ability to modify them, or expand them, or extend them in ways that Apple doesn't approve of...). Some of their tech is cool, don't get me wrong. But it's far from perfect.
I would imagine an Apple car that only supports Apple Maps, Apple Music/Podcasts, and Siri and will only connect to iOS devices...and that costs twice as much as the Tesla for the base model, and more if you want a reasonable range. Pandora? Spotify? Waze? Meh. Sorry. Oh, and don't forget monthly fees for navigation; probably more like the $36/month of the Audi EV than the free navigation for the Tesla.
I'm sure there's a market for it. There are a lot of people who love Apple and who have money.
Serialisation is simply another way for Apple to maintain control. You can now repair a device, but only with Apple's blessing and knowledge. The privacy/safety stories they sell are just that.
Personally, serialization that alerts the user "you have unauthorized parts, if your battery catches on fire or your screen has crappy colors it's not our fault" -> this is good, I am in favor of this, serialization that disables the device or features -> bad.
That helps with two things I don't want: thieves stealing my phone, and unscrupulous repair shops using counterfeit parts.
I didn't buy a macbook because it had Apple logo on it, I bought it because of the M1 chip that was 1 generation ahead of anybody else. Similarly, I bought an iPhone mini because its form factor worked very well for me.
If Apple introduced a VR headset I can already tell you that I won't buy it. If their car is inferior to others on the market then I won't buy it. I think most Apple consumer falls in the same camp as me.
I might if it worked with existing VR games, etc. because the Oculus software on Windows is a shambles. Lost count of the number of times it just plain won't start because it thinks I'm N Windows updates behind (even though I'm not.) Also had to completely wipe and reinstall a few times. Then when it does agree that I have a headset and it recognises that I'm wearing it, sometimes it'll just ... not show anything for a few minutes. Or a game will crash (not always Oculus' fault) and the software will insist I can't start anything else because the other game is still running...
macOS might have its glitches but software just works 99.9% of the time.
I would disagree about Apple making products to be disposable, though! I've found Apple hardware to be incredibly long lasting. Their phones, ipads, and iphones all last years and years and years in my experience.
Bugginess abounds more than ever in Apple's software, and I'd love for them to take a cycle off and just work on fit and finish and bugs rather than features. But to be fair, if you're judging against the experience of using Windows, well let's just say that's a low bar to beat.
As far as Linux desktops go, I think the way they run very solidly these days is phenomenal, but I don't think they solve everyday problems (things that watches and phones and other devices can do) as well as Apple. If you embrace Apple devices and services, you have a whole bunch of tools that work phenomenally together in smart ways. I don't think Linux really can match that whole package anytime soon.
Honestly, even with all the bullshit that Microsoft has been pulling, this isn't really true. I have used all three extensively in the past year (Windows since I was a teenager, switched to Linux only for 1 year, work has had me on an Apple device for 6 months). Linux just works. Windows usually just works, if you can ignore their asinine "features" such as adverts and Edge nags. Apple is by far the worst of the bunch, it feels like the entire platform is teetering on the edge of absolute chaos, held together only by the thankless work of the community (Brew, Co/lima, etc.). A fresh install of MacOS is completely and utterly incompetent.
Ads can thankfully be switched of (at least as of now). As for the Edge nags that's really rich. Especially since it happens in such a slimy way. Indicating in an underhanded way that your browser settings are insecure.
Else than that Windows works mostly fine since XP. Even with Vista I didn't have that much of a hate relationship as the general vitriol would suggest.
Source? Apple currently makes the longest lasting consumer devices with the longest lasting software support, so not sure how one can conclude longevity is not in their build “philosophy”.
>I would imagine an Apple car that only supports Apple Maps, Apple Music/Podcasts, and Siri and will only connect to iOS devices...and that costs twice as much as the Tesla for the base model, and more if you want a reasonable range. Pandora? Spotify? Waze? Meh. Sorry. Oh, and don't forget monthly fees for navigation; probably more like the $36/month of the Audi EV than the free navigation for the Tesla.
Why? All of those apps are usable in every Apple device’s OS today, including Carplay. And Apple Maps has had free navigation since inception.
Also, I can get into almost any recent car and plug in my iPhone or Android phone and have access to CarPlay and Android Auto, and get access to a ton of apps, except in a Tesla. Seems like Tesla is being the more restrictive party here.
That is a big claim, which is completely unsupported by reality. ICEVs do not get recycled because the engine died. Body rot, repairs that cost more than the value of the car, etc, this is why cars are taken off the road.
If anything, the current batch of early generation EVs are probably going to have shorter than average lifespans compared to established ICEVs, not longer.
It would be great to see some statistics but to me most of the cars he picks up require some kind of major repair work making it uneconomical to fix. Often not the engine admittedly, the vast majority can drag themselves onto the back of the truck under their own power (and it's so much faster to do that than get out the winch cable that there is a big incentive for him to try). Usually though they aren't running correctly or have obvious issues with the clutch or gearbox. Almost none of the modern cars suffer any appreciable rot.
On the other hand I've been watching the price of 1st generation Nissan Leafs as I want one as a run around and over the last couple of years there prices appear to have increased. There are a couple of companies who will swap a 40kwh battery pack into a 24kwh leaf making it a very usable vehicle indeed, though the people doing this seem to be doing it for sentimental reason as you can buy a 5 year newer car with a 40kwh battery pack for the same net cost.
The price for a full 24kwh battery appears to be in the £2-4k range as even with 20% degradation it's still a huge amount of stationary storage.
Of the two vehicles with any noticeable rust, one is a '05 Mercedes Sprinter, these seem to be predisposed to rust. The other was a T registered (1999) Land Rover Discovery but even that has obviously been modified for off-road use so it's hardly fair to include it.
I wonder if this is climate related or US cars are not built with the same rust treatment.
https://insideevs.com/news/559261/tesla-models-p85-1500000-k...
https://twitter.com/IovePianoBlack/status/155158555774626201...
The battery pack was recalled and its replacement has logged 1,000,000 km.
Similarly, three of the four motors were all recalled at the same time, the fourth one wasn't and made it to 1,000,000 km, possibly 1,500,000 as well, the article says they don't know.
Parts which are recalled and replaced by the manufacturer say something about reliability, but nothing about durability: reliability tends to improve.
Regardless, my point is the engines were 3/4 replaced once, not replaced three different times. The battery was also replaced twice, but that's because the interim was a loaner, not because it failed twice.
Not sure how you read that as 3 motors where replaced at the same time. It would be somewhat pointless given that the Model S only has a single motor. Three were replaced before 680,000km and the final replacement made it to 1,000,000km.
The word recall doesn't appear in the article. The first battery had a fault. By the sounds of things Tesla may have found a design fault which was then fixed because of the investigation into that particular battery but that interpretation is reading between the lines.
Accordingly, I'll grant that this isn't a good example of an EV making it past the million-mile mark. I've made the case elsewhere for why it's not such a crazy thing to expect.
What impact this would have on the battery is an interesting question but with modern temperature control and BMS systems it may not even be a deal-breaker.
I'm trying to decide if this is something you actually think or is incredibly thick hyperbole. Why would you say a well-made electric car could run that many miles rather than the 200k+ mile cars that actually exist?
The transmission, for example, can't break, because there isn't one.
Getting the equivalent of a million miles in RPM out of electric motors is utterly routine.
They also wear brakes substantially less because of regeneration.
There are a lot of reasons to believe they'll last a lot longer than ICE cars.
That remains to be seen.
You mention Tesla as an alternative, but they're well-known for their fit and finish and repairability issues.[1][2]
Apple's software fit and finish has taken a dive. My Tesla isn't much better. (ex: I couldn't move my headrest for a month.) Poke around teslamotorsclub.com and you'll find all kinds of silly bugs that drag on.
> free navigation for the Tesla
Tesla builds 8 years of connectivity into the initial sticker cost, after that they will be charging.[3] Apple will probably charge too if it also includes network connectivity.
> Pandora? Spotify? Waze? Meh. Sorry.
Apple is especially bad about lock-in. I understand Pandora, Spotify, and Waze are installable on CarPlay (I haven't tried them), but there's still plenty of walled garden stuff going on elsewhere.
[1]: https://www.thedrive.com/news/34144/the-tesla-model-y-is-alr... [2]: https://www.thedrive.com/news/41493/teslas-16000-quote-for-a... [3]: https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/27/23281022/tesla-standard-d...
EDIT: Add bit about software quality.
And for what? What could Apple do that GM, Toyota, or Tesla couldn't? Maybe a better UX for the dashboard. And while many car UXs are absolutely terrible, improving them isn't some insurmountable challenge for existing manufacturers. And besides, Apple could just expand carplay and partner with car manufacturers, which seems like it would work better for everyone involved.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/06/09/apples-2023-carpl...
Seems like there's quite a few cars out there with Android Automotive?
Everything is being run the cars ECU, all of those gauges are servo driven, all of them are getting their data in the form of discrete digital values. That’s assuming your car even has physical gauges, and not just digital gauges on a screen.
Sensors have redundancies and detections in both sensing and communications so that the receiving end knows when there is an issue and doesn't display false information, resulting in an error code being thrown and displaying a "check engine light".
What's the seating like? Is the suspension firm or soft? How big are its blindspots? Can it make it over a grass median without bottoming out? What about a snow bank? How well does the frame cope with rust? Can you manipulate its doors with a hand full of groceries? Do the brakes fade when fully loaded? Does it oversteer or underwater under hard cornering?
There's so much more to a car than its dashboard and powerplant, but I feel like 90% of SV think all you need to do to disrupt the auto market is bolt an iPad to a motor
>And for what?
Control over the entire driving experience. Just like they are obsessed with controlling the experience of a phone or a tablet and refuse to relegate aspects to partners.
>improving them isn't some insurmountable challenge for existing manufacturers
You say this but yet car manufacturers continue refusing to do so. It's been years already and sluggish screens are still normal, a bunch of weirdly placed knobs that offer no substantial tactile feedback, wheels that are horrible to hold, here are 3 different screens for some ungodly reason, and list goes on. Now this doesn't mean Apple will get everything right, but their attention to detail isn't something to overlook here and it's a huge advantage in a field where manufacturers have largely gone stagnant.
Apple can expand carplay while also manufacturing their own car. Actually, that would be one of the greatest forms of advertising their own car. Here's the pure experience, whereas you're using something tainted by GM.
To note, I'm not convinced the Apple Car will happen, but I'm frankly confused by people with the perspective that they have no leverage and nothing to offer here. A car with the Apple brand and nothing new will likely push more units than several new carmakers.
The laziness of auto manufacturers is so apparent these days, seeing reports of auto features being turned into subscription-based offerings. I just bought a brand new car that has a fair amount of sensor tech, which makes it difficult to mount 3rd party devices to the windshield because they obstruct the optical sensors. A service I would absolutely (and begrudgingly) pay for would be a built-in dash cam with a cloud integration. They already have all of the tech and expertise in-house. They would make a killing and I'm sure insurance companies would get on board too. But no, let's attach a monthly fee to heated seats instead.
Ford's market cap is $47b. Apple has more than that free cash on hand. I suspect Apple would 'partner with', then eventually just subsume, an existing card company, if they really wanted to get in to this. You're buying a lot of existing infrastructure (dealers, parts, distribution, warehouses, etc) that would take a long time to replicate.
Apple will likely string along a partner while they pull off another Motorola Rokr - i.e. get their feet wet on manufacturing/regulatory environment, mine for information and get the names of key employees to poach for an independent follow up project where the manufacturing is contracted out to Magna Steyr or Foxxcon
Impossible. The driving experience is also controlled by other road users and traffic laws, for example.
> To note, I'm not convinced the Apple Car will happen, but I'm frankly confused by people with the perspective that they have no leverage and nothing to offer here.
The Apple Watch looks sexless. Most people don't want a car like that.
All I hear is people complaining about how all cars today look exactly the same, so it doesn't seem to be a huge impediment.
People here are delusional when they go oh, Apple can make a better Carplay integration and easily outsell Ford and Tesla.
OTOH, why do most people buy a Tesla right now? "How good the speedometer looks" is a pretty good description. Performance is good, reliability awful, UI usability awful unless you like fancy computer graphics. As a car, a Model 3/Y has a lot of compromises and lacks many features other cars have. But that computer screen...
To be fair, "image seekers" (traditional automotive terminology) most likely comprise the vast majority of Model 3/Y buyers at this stage. This is an area where Apple has a strong history of success.
But I don't think it's a good fit, making cars is expensive and completely different from everything else they do.
But your list of good/bad didn’t include a single word about the Supercharger network, which is the #1 reason people who want electric vehicles choose Tesla, in my experience.
I agree that the big screen is annoying, but I put up with it so I can go on road trips and not rent a car or limp around searching for charging.
1. The Supercharger network means you can take them on road trips without worrying. This isn't the case for other EVs which use the Electrify America charging network.
2. They're basically iPhones on wheels.
Unlike every other car manufacturer, you get constant software updates and improvements. Since I bought my car, software updates have increased its power by 5%, improved its range estimation, increased charging speeds, and it now drives itself on surface streets (originally it only self-drove on freeways). The UI has also been improved. Similar to iPad OS's dock, frequently-accessed apps are automatically shown in one area. I can also pin apps (or menus within some apps) if I want. A ton of new features have been added. I much prefer the current UI to the version that my car shipped with.
This reminds me of the debate over physical keyboards on phones. For years after the iPhone came out, some people swore they'd never give up their physical keyboards. And yes, physical keyboards (just like physical buttons) do have a lot of advantages. But you can't change them with a software update, and you can't change them depending on context. For most use-cases, that flexibility outweighs the lack of tactile response.
I think a lot of the downside of the screen interface could be solved if they included some haptic feedback in the screen.
For me, a good example of this is recent BMWs. The instrument cluster on 2 and 3 series models is hideous -- misshapen dials, poor color choices, bling where there should be understatement. The days of simply communicating only essential info elegantly are long gone. I simply would not buy a car with a dashboard that ugly. (These insights should matter to BMW since I've driven and loved their cars for 30 years, but oddly they haven't sought my opinion. Alas, it shows.)
Bad UX is indeed important to some of us.
See smart tvs and good luck finding an old dumb tv these days.
That’s not to say I don’t agree with your conclusion. Apple has to do a lot more than make the best dash app ever to sell cars. But then again, they don’t manufacture anything themselves as is and do just fine. I’m sure they could find a Foxconn like partner in the automotive space.
But comparing the UX of two cars' built-in systems when you're test-driving them for 15 minutes is hard, and reviews usually gloss over it, maybe mentioning how laggy it is or isn't and what whiz-bang new feature it has that nobody is going to use.
Unless you're Apple, it's hard to sell UX. But Apple is, well, Apple!
It's kind of an interesting dichotomy. You can look at Toyota, GM, Tesla, etc. and say why would Apple be interested in those profits. But then you look at Tesla's market cap and then it's obvious why Apple would want some of that.
Ultimately I think the Apple car (and Tesla) is a long term bust. Automotive manufacturing is a well trod industry with, frankly, too many companies as is. I don't see how they could ever generate the sort of profits long term that the market caps imply.
Apple isn’t going to get that type of added market cap based on adding an addition $3 billion in net profit (what Tesla made)
Adding another 4 billion in profits when it already makes around $19.44B is not going to get the market to value its stock higher anymore than Disney adding streaming helped it to be worth the multiple that Netflix was.
But the market can stay irrational longer than most people can stay solvent
In what rational world should Tesla have a PE of 20x GM?
I think they filed some patent that revealed their competitive advantage was based on the premise they were uniquely capable of extracting range and charge out of batteries via optimizations and their experiences building consumer electronics. If they delivered somehow an electric vehicle with much better UX across the board they could build a healthy car business.
So I feel like they probably could throw enough money at the problem to come up with a solution of some kind but it also just feels like a waste to me.
Apple or any other company that wants to step in the EV market can be huge, if they focus on build quality and user experience, and by user experience I don't mean just the UX dashboard.
There is a huge room for innovation in the automotive industry, I argue that we still haven't saw the next Model T 100 years later, and the industry grew a lot.
Give the people an affordable well build, reliable, easily serviceable car, and you might outsell Toyota Corolla.
Apple started from scratch with the ipod, iphone, watch. Can they do it and with a car, I don't know they certainly have the budget, they certainly can find the talent, the only question is do they have the vision.
I imagine some of that expertise would play well in the car market, but I'm certain much as Tesla did, they may hit road bumps along the way, however its not completely out of their DNA to handle this sort of thing.
They had the chance to buy a cellular carrier, but chose not to, because it's low margin. Instead they make a phone that works on any carrier.
Cars are a low margin business. But a car add-on could be a high margin business. They already have CarPlay, but I can see them making a hardware add-on for cars.
Porsche sells hundreds of thousands of vehicles per year with something like $20k profit per car on a $90k average selling price. There could be big demand for an innovative Tesla equivalent that didn't have so many build quality issues.
And Foxconn is desperate to get an Apple car contract. Car companies really screwed themselves by outsourcing everything to suppliers (who have much higher profit margins than the car manufacturers at this point) except the internal combustion engine which is losing importance fast. What I am seeing here for Apple is big demand, low barrier to entry, and high profits.
Which begs the question why there is no Apple gaming console, an Apple TV (as in an actual TV). Instead what we got was a rather underwhelming Apple TV thing that isn't very good as a gaming console and more of a chrome cast substitute aimed at people who want to experience a very watered down Apple experience on their non Apple TV. And we got the streaming service which so far isn't making too much of a dent in Netflix.
What's weird is that they've had a great chip for many years that is perfectly capable of running lots of games. A lot of their mobile apps are in fact games and they run great on IOS. And the M1/M2 chips are pretty decent at running GPU accelerated software as well. But what they did not do was open up the platform to games. They have a few game ports running on mac OS and the Apple TV is technically an IOS device and even has some games. But it's so crippled that that is very much a side show of a side show. The Apple TV itself is of course a side show and playing games on it is very much an afterthought; that's not what it's for.
Cars are much worse for Apple. They could do one on paper but they'd have to partner with someone on all the car bits, which is uncomfortable for Apple (it means they don't control the platform) because they don't have a lot of in house experience building cars. And there are a lot of new companies focusing on making great cars right now (Tesla famously being labeled the Apple of cars, for example). And, car ventures are very capital intensive. You'd need many billions of investment to produce even a small number of cars. Tens/hundreds of billions to scale up; like Tesla has done. That makes it a very risky business.
So, they did Apple Car play instead, which seems the closest Apple will get to the automotive experience and it's similar to the Apple TV in the sense that it's a watered down experience that only makes sense for existing Apple users. It expands their reach a little and it brings in some revenue. But it's not an Apple Car.
The vehicle market is full of bullshit. Tesla took the same tactic and has knocked it down considerably, but there's still the rest of the market.
The only car manufacturer that is "no more bullshit" would be Dacia and that's not the same segment. But they are indeed doing really well!
Not having to deal with dealerships, actual software updates instead of just abandoning software (BlueLink anyone?), pushing maintenance from every 6 months to ~2 years
I don't own or want a Tesla, but its certainly different from the rest of the industry
Apple won't be following the model of the existing car makers. They WILL NOT sell cars direct to consumer. That's the key insight. They will not have showrooms, sales teams, or public service centers. You won't buy their cars directly at all.
Instead, they are going for the end goal: Fully autonomous electric vehicles on-demand. This is the holy grail Tesla and others are going for. I don't know why this isn't obvious to everyone. Most of us are still stuck in the old paradigm. Apple is thinking bigger.
The Apple Car will not have a steering wheel. Complete Level 5 autonomy is not some add-on feature, it is the key enabler that allows the entire product the exist. You don't need public service centers, because Apple will manage their own fleet, manage their own charging infrastructure, etc.
The user experience is simple. You tell Siri I want to go to X by X time. The car arrives, it drops you off. That's the end. No bullshit. Fewer features. Less hassle. And in the end, less cost for the end user. The perfect UX. That's the Apple vision.
Note, this is also Tesla's vision. But the other makers don't see this yet, and as a result will likely be bankrupt within 10-15 years.
It's not that we are all "short-sighted" when it comes to views on an Apple Car. It's that many of us have come to the realization that level 5 autonomy as you describe it will require something very close to AGI, and it ain't coming anytime soon.
Re: Apple Maps - I don't use it. However, it's safe to say the only two players in maps are Google and Apple. Same for ML, generally, and probably autonomous cars.
"It just works" is a fine motto, but a lie. Devices often need intervention to work properly or to work at all. Laptops and phones generally require a lot less intervention than cars. Some of us are happy to outsource that labour to others. Some of us are fascinated with how things work and prefer to at least try fixing things ourselves. I have learned from personal experience that Apple is outright hostile to the latter form of folk.
I fully expect an Apple car will have all manner of non-standard screws, fasteners, and parts. It will be technically possible for third party mechanics to deal with, but letting one breathe on your iBug will void the warranty. Just opening the hood will, no doubt, require special tools and break multiple tamper-proof warranty-voiding seals.
If you're happy taking your iBug into an Apple store every time you hear a new noise, you'll be fine with an iBug. If you're the sort who wants to pop the hood and try to track down the problem yourself, then beware!
There is so much more to consider - progressing Carplay integration, demand for processing/sensing, partnerships, building knowledge, etc. Take the Sony Vision S for example, that was never intended to be a produced vehicle.
I’ll take any car with CarPlay over the Tesla interface.
Toyota is the largest car company in the world and makes the most reliable vehicles in the world, but they need that extra touch to take them to the next level.
Just as I would never by a phone that is not an iPhone, or a laptop that is not a MacBook, I would never buy a car that is not a Toyota. But Toyota does have some room for improvement.
Also, an Apple-Toyota partnership would make Teslas look pathetic in comparison.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/toyota...
So Toyota makes a strange bedfellow for Apple here.
At least with something open source they retain some control. Besides Toyota has already got you and me both because they're who they are - and part of that is they are actively involved with their suppliers and even own them in part.
Tesla is an amazing company because they achieved it.
Apple's expertise is in making software and tiny electrical gadgets. How they thought that would translate into expertise in making cars is beyond me. It makes about as much sense as diversifying into making jet engines.
Is there any concrete statement/"evidence" that they ever seriously intended to "make cars"? Media reports always talk about "Apple cars", but the concrete visible bits I've seen also fit a software/computer-angle. But "Apple is dabbling in self-driving tech like any other large company with lots of money and an AI/ML-department" isn't as catchy a story.
The "PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in." line aged poorly extremely fast.
But you know that, everybody knows that. And Apple has the capital and the Tesla blueprint.
So, why really not? (genuine question, I'd like to pick your brains on that)
That looks similar to the state of MP3 players before the iPod, or smartphones before the iPhone. I think a self-driving car with a car-width display and hifi stereo (or better) could be a huge success, even if the self-driving only works on highways, as with the latest Mercedes.
> It's not an industry one can just "switch into."
Reminds me of https://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-should-pull-the-plug...:
“Now compare that effort and overlay the mobile handset business. This is not an emerging business. In fact it's gone so far that it's in the process of consolidation with probably two players dominating everything, Nokia Corp. NOK, -0.68% and Motorola Inc. MOT
During this phase of a market margins are incredibly thin so that the small fry cannot compete without losing a lot of money.
As for advertising and expensive marketing this is nothing like Apple has ever stepped into. It's a buzz saw waiting to chop up newbies
The problem here is that while Apple can play the fashion game as well as any company, there is no evidence that it can play it fast enough. These phones go in and out of style so fast that unless Apple has half a dozen variants in the pipeline, its phone, even if immediately successful, will be passé within 3 months.
There is no likelihood that Apple can be successful in a business this competitive.”
Of course, that doesn’t imply the car industry is similar or that Apple can find the magic that cracks open the market, but they may think making a side bet of a few billion (Apple’s problem is that their MVP is larger than what the CEOs of most startups can only dream of) to see whether they can is a good idea.
None of this is true for cars! Apple's production, design, marketing, etc. have no overlap with how cars are made or sold -- and no amount of wishing or money will give them that overlap. It's not that it's a new business for Apple, cars are completely unrelated to anything Apple has ever made or done. No business in history has ever pulled off a switch like that. It's the reason that railroads never became airlines, for example.
Even with unlimited capital, Apple lacks the mindset to produce and market a car out of thin air -- a task which is difficult even for those entrenched in the industry.
There's certainly enough people outside of Apple wondering if "cars are just computers now with wheels" that maybe Apple isn't entirely crazy if they think it is an adjacent market they might compete in.
And all of that's before buying into any hype about "self-driving" and "AI cars".
Associating yourself with automobiles doesnt feel exactly the same, but there's a similar jist to me. Cars have some very obvious bad impact on this world. Supporting & selling them is a pain. Trying to keep yourself as a loved respected treasured company would be much more difficult, quite likely impossible.
A casual look at the numbers doesn’t explain much. But if you look at that 7% margin, and realize that Tesla is nearly doubling that with carbon credit sales which are 100% margin. It changes the picture.
Anyone else has a car they make 7% minus buying credits to be able to sell more in California. Tesla sells a car they make more. Without the carbon program Tesla would drastically have to change its model, which will be interesting because everyone is selling their own EVs and won’t need to buy as many credits soon.
It makes no sense for Apple to get into vehicles for 20 reasons, this is just one. They’re way too late.
Honestly the biggest challenge will be manufacturing. Apple likes to surprise folks, how do you surprise them when you’ve got to build massive new factories
Don't underestimate the challenge here. Making an MP3 player is not that different from making a computer. Making a car is very, very different.
With cars that’s not possible.
I agree but Apple is never first to the table, they always take others inventions and improve them. Apple also charges an insanely high profit margin so they might get by with or without the credits....
But I agree this is dumb for Apple to pursue.
What I see is a career of failures, at Apple, at Be, at Palm, JLG was dealt good hands and some bad hands but played each indifferently. Did I miss something important ?
JLG is known and was at Apple. That makes him incredibly qualified. Somehow.
I don’t know. He doesn’t seem worse than many other random columnists.
The "you can't cook/compose/etc, how dare you criticize the food/music/etc" line is rather crass.
Even with Google helping on the software!
Even now I'm stuck on 2.0 for some reason (2.2 is the latest in the UK). No idea why. Cant face the call to Polestar support and the inevitable reply of "Take it to a vovlo dealer".
The car itself is an absolutel monster. Love it to bits. The software not so much.
The curves of how much power the car applies to an EV motor become software: everything about the "feel" of the acceleration pedal and even some of the "feel" of the brake pedal (because of regenerative braking) are software-defined curves. That's why EVs often give you multiple "Driving Modes" to explore to find the driving curve that feels the most fun for you to drive, or gives you the most ludicrous performance, or saves you the most battery power, or lets you do everything with a single pedal.
Some of that is that people are just so use to driving ICE vehicles that manufacturers feel the need to make EVs drive like ICE vehicles for comfort and familiarity, even though they don't have to (there's no transmission gears to physically shift).
Modern EVs are software-defined cars.
Being frustrated by the driving experience and trying to solve that problem is in that category, being focused on the sort of annoyances that people spending huge amounts of time driving to Cupertino would have.
Meanwhile city governments around the US and the world are trying very hard to reduce the amount of cars on the road.
Would be nice if Apple were thinking ahead and not contributing to the entrenchment of this 20th century technology.
It just could be that. But that would depend on the car manufacturers giving up on their own software so easily and it would be a completely new strategy for Apple. They love to control the whole stack. Even in cases, where they entered a market with a collaboration - the early iPod Phones come to my mind - they later switched to their own product.
Also, the rumor about an Apple car does keep coming back. And they spend a lot of money on what ever they are doing. So while the play on just Car Play might be strong, they do have something brewing in case car manufacturers don't just jump onto it. My favorite theory though is: they are building something which will be a "car" but as different from current cars as the iPhone was from mobile phones of its day and age. I would be really curious to see that.
I was having a discussion over the weekend over where Apple goes next with respect to hardware. I think my money is on AR if the many technical limitations can be overcome. There are also the social issues but as with many other things, I suspect a lot of people would be willing to put up with even more ubiquitous cameras in exchange for convenience whether you like it or not.
As you say, technical is a huge caveat. But it's pretty easy to see that IF we could have glasses that could overlay/enhance/record/etc. there are so many possibilities in a way there aren't with VR for example--for both consumer and commercial uses. By contrast, VR seems pretty limited; immersive gaming and virtual tourism just aren't that interesting for most people. And people don't want immersion in a lot of circumstances.
When you can envision a clear market based on "just" relatively straightforward (if significant) extrapolations of technology that seems something worth paying attention to.
That said, I can just as easily identify any number of social/cognitive/cultural "diseases" or abuses of that world. Should the transition happen (and all signs point at the big players /trying/ to make it happen), we will have some gnarly traps to avoid - and I'm not very confident that we will do so with grace.
Let someone else take the depreciation and find out how they hold up in the long term. Does Apple have any history of supporting its hardware for that long?
I look for local private sales, not dealer cars. You have to be both patient and ready to pounce when a good deal comes up.
With vehicles incorporating more technology, I'm concerned they might stop lasting long enough for rust to be an issue. Tech companies have already perfected a model of planned obsolescence. If cars start becoming obsolete and unusable as fast as tech products do, they won't have a chance to depreciate enough for me to afford one.
0: https://ihsmarkit.com/research-analysis/average-age-of-vehic...
Maybe I'm just a curmudgeon but that would all but guarantee my new model wasn't bought from the same manufacturer.
There’s money to be made selling cars, a lot of money.
If all Apple does is CarPlay, they don’t get that money.
They can make a car if they want to make a car. They could also make nice planes and boats...
The question is, how competitive can they be in this market?
I think they are too fat.
Originally, Apple desired to make the Apple TV (hardware) the complete replacement for all your TV viewing needs. And for all the streaming services to just be dumb content pipes connected through a common / consistent Apple TV (app/software) UI.
Then Apple realized the Netflix's of the world are not going to give up the user experience, let alone the direct relationship with the user.
So Apple then pivots by making Apple TV just the platform for some other company to deliver their stream service through (like the Apple CarPlay).
They then refine their strategy to come around to realizing, they need to make their own content (the new Apple CarPlay HUD / instrumentation).
Hipsters, college students, high school students, and suburban folks needing to drive everywhere would love it - and it would be reducing the amount of dino fuel burning vehicles on the road. The battery could be easily removable and carried in to charge in your house/apartment/dorm without any special equipment. Apple could absolutely kill this market.
I can't see scooters being a big market at all, at least not at the margins Apple likes.
It's alarming that the media doesn't call this what it is: a sell signal, and a clear sign that stock buybacks, collusion, and scared FTC beauraucrats who aren't willing to throw down the antitrust flag are making a sick economy sicker.
The bondi blue iMac, on wheels so snug in their wells they couldn’t turn more than a few degrees, standing on a white polished surface that it couldn’t drive on without unsightly black streaks, with a clearance so low it needs that polished surface to drive on. The most impractical car design, but quintessentially Apple.
It is part homage and part diss at the same time. I love it.
Instead, they are going for the end goal: Fully autonomous electric vehicles on-demand. This is the holy grail Tesla and others are going for. I don't know why this isn't obvious to everyone. Most of us are still stuck in the old paradigm. Apple is thinking bigger.
The Apple Car will not have a steering wheel. Complete Level 5 autonomy is not some add-on feature, it is the key enabler that allows the entire product the exist. You don't need public service centers, because Apple will manage their own fleet, manage their own charging infrastructure, etc.
The user experience is simple. You tell Siri I want to go to X by X time. The car arrives, it drops you off. That's the end. No bullshit. Fewer features. Less hassle. And in the end, less cost for the end user. The perfect UX. That's the Apple vision.
Note, this is also Tesla's vision. But the other automakers don't see this yet, and as a result will likely be bankrupt within 10-15 years.
Might just work.
I have seen some comments here saying that all the money in the world can't buy you a better mobile phone. If Apple is able to generalize that to another product class, the world might really change for the better.
Lol. At a minimum, I’d rephrase that as:
> a company who’s sense of fit and finish, its attention to the user’s experience is antagonistic
<fun>A phone from Mercedes</fun>
<fun>A CPU from Ferrari</fun>
1. Apple is worth $2.44 trillion USD; pay off the whole $240 billion USD debt owed by the Philippines.
2. Establish Apple HQ facilities in the Philippines and employ the vast majority of the country's talented software engineers there.
3. Take advantage of the cheap labour, low costs, and high standard of living to ride the wave of unending profit.
This is how you turn things around and switch the lightbulb.
Why do this?
I certainly feel for the people of the Philippines, and setting up a major Apple HQ there would likely improve their opportunities somewhat, but as long as Duterte or anyone like him is in charge there, there are just so many reasons not to make any significant commitments to the Philippines.