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Comment by legitster | Hacker News Reader

> 2016 - First Casio outdoor watch to run Android Wear OS

Could you imagine the situation they were in as the most high-tech watch company in the world? For mainstream relevance you now have to anchor yourself to a smartphone platform that is either a) hostile to your very existence or b) completely abandons their platform and leaves you and your customers out to dry.

I know people complain about car manufacturers being hostile to CarPlay and Android Auto. But I think in the long run, the executives are being smart. Looking down the history of other companies that turned over responsibility of their user experience to tech companies - there's not a good track record of long-term successes.

I still think about the way the CEO of Nokia back in 2010 described what it would be like for them to abandon their in-house OS for Android: "Peeing yourself to stay warm".

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>know people complain about car manufacturers being hostile to CarPlay and Android Auto. But I think in the long run, the executives are being smart. Looking down the history of other companies that turned over responsibility of their user experience to tech companies - there's not a good track record of long-term successes.

Car infotainment is full of examples of why the car manufacturers can't be trusted to have *short term* success. Garbage UI, constantly charging huge money for obsolete-before-you-get-them updates. The Google Graveyard looks like a fertility clinic compared to the car entertainment systems put out by GM/Ford/BMW/Toyota/Everyone

> Looking down the history of other companies that turned over responsibility of their user experience to tech companies - there's not a good track record of long-term successes.

We’re talking about the same auto executives that would sell you a $100k+ car and then try to charge you $200/year for map updates so that the built in navigation wasn’t out of date 1 year into ownership? Those are the guys worried about the tech stack in your car being “abandoned”?

Apologies if I’m skeptical that that aren’t just hoping to use the infotainment as another source of recurring revenue. Especially when they’ve said as much in earnings calls.

> I still think about the way the CEO of Nokia back in 2010 describing what it would be like for them to abandon their in-house OS for Android: "Peeing yourself to stay warm"

This has intrigued me because eventually that’s what they ended up doing - although with two major caveats.

Firstly, the mobile space did not have room for 3 players - MS tried very hard and their Nokia phones were pretty good. But it was just one platform too many. They just couldn’t find a niche for itself as Android was being used everywhere due to their open source branch. Proves the point made by you though, there wasn’t space for a second Android if MS were to embrace open source. Nokia tried hard with Meego - I loved the UI but the market was moving at light speed back then.

Secondly, HMD started by branching off from the Nokia of yore and their Android devices are also very good.

I’ll always miss my old Nokias, they were the duopoly with the BlackBerry in the pre-smartphone era.

The tiles UI was simply not good.

The phones themselves were very good. I have a functional Windows phone in a drawer, that I sometimes charge (and it still works!), but after playing with the tile UI for few minutes... eww

Absolutely LOVED the tiles UI and so did everyone I know that gave Windows phone a shot. By far the best mobile experience I've had outside of a few apps I wanted missing. I really miss the OS. I think in general though the other commenters were correct that there was already too much market share coming from iOS and Android.

Agreed, for what we had in 2012, it was absolutely wonderful UI.

Also agree. Windows Phone 8.1 and 10 were great smartphone interfaces.

Would have been great if it had apps, too.

As an absolute harbinger customer, I wholeheartedly agree. I also think iPhone Air doesn't look so bad.

I absolutely loved the tiles interface and held onto my Windows phone for as long as I could. I eventually had to switch to Android when apps I depended stopped working on Windows phone.

> I know people complain about car manufacturers being hostile to CarPlay and Android Auto. But I think in the long run, the executives are being smart. Looking down the history of other companies that turned over responsibility of their user experience to tech companies - there's not a good track record of long-term successes.

No car manufacturer suffered that badly from using standard-sized single-DIN/double-DIN radios for a couple of decades. CarPlay/Android Auto are just software versions of those. It's a way to let your car stay more relevant 3, 5, 10 years down the line.

But that conflicts with short-term revenue optimization, data gathering, advertising, etc.

By 2016, Garmin was already building smart watches using their own proprietary OS that wasn't anchored to any smartphone platform. Casio could have done the same.

Suunto, Polar and probably a lot of others were doing the same. Android was attractive because it would be a huge saving on software development costs, have maps out of the box and allow third-party apps.

At least Polar had a watch that would run in low-power mode by default and had a separate CPU that could run Android Watch when needed but that would drain the battery quickly. They had the sense to not make it the flagship model and it looks like the current models don't have anything like that.

I think automakers can still find a happy medium, providing a fully functional vehicle that doesn't require CarPlay or Android Auto, but still supports them for customers, since they do exist right now and are extremely helpful.

The automakers should seek to win over customers by making the better experience, not by excluding the other options.

Casio were decidedly not the most high tech watch company in the world in 2016. The Apple Watch had come out in 2015 and Android watches had been around for years before that.

They maintained a crucial lead in watches that could run for more than 18 hours.

> "Peeing yourself to stay warm".

Which in-house OS this was about? For Symbian, "burning platform" was at least honest.

> Looking down the history of other companies that turned over responsibility of their user experience to tech companies

Just.. mirror my phone onto the display. I don't need a car companies 10 year old ideas of "user experience." Just give me a few knobs for the climate controls and then get out of my way.

I, as the user, am happy to "take responsibility" for this.

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