Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple Car: Bad Idea After All

mondaynote.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 407 posts

Re: Apple Car: Bad Idea After All

#61

Post by ghaff »

bergenty wrote: post #43
dzhiurgis wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seeing how boring Carplay has been so far I’d have my doubts about skunkworks. That said it makes sense they might be working on exclusive operating system of sorts. The way car systems (100s of suppliers and their implementation) work nowadays is insane.

I don’t know what you mean by “boring” but CarPlay is fantastic. It works really well and covers most things I’d like to do with a central console.

"Boring" is good compared to most of the systems the car manufacturers came up with. A some of them still manage to screw up the integration of CarPlay with their own infotainment systems which often don't seem to want to get out of the way.

Re: Apple Car: Bad Idea After All

#62

Post by mardifoufs »

paxys wrote: post #52
fdye wrote: post #26

So I've always wondered if Apple actually building a 'car' was ever really the goal. It seems like a skunkworks where they try crazy things and then incorporate into Carplay. Future seems to be ever expanding Carplay support. I use it and probably would not buy another car that did not have it integrated. I imagine car manufacturers are somewhat tired of always building HUDs and in vehicle control systems. So gradual…

Can't say about building or selling an entire car, but they did have a massive self driving division which went nowhere.

Is their self driving division still active?

Re: Apple Car: Bad Idea After All

#63

Post by dylan604 »

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #23

Given the number of times I've seen a reported, verified bug in OS X be "fixed" by hiding the bug from the public tracker and marking it "will not fix," I would have a hard time ever trusting a car made by Apple. 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…

>while a well-made electric car can run to a million miles over 50+ years. That's a very different build philosophy.

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?

Re: Apple Car: Bad Idea After All

#64

Post by ghaff »

duped wrote: post #55
hbn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They already showed off giant carplay updates at WWDC this year. They showed a car where the entire dash was a giant wide screen, where it even handled the speedometer, odometer, fuel level, etc https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/06/09/apples-2023-carpl...

That terrifies me

Of course, like it or not, you're describing how Tesla does it and again, like it or not, it's probably the direction that a lot of car controls are headed.

Re: Apple Car: Bad Idea After All

#65

Post by abrichr »

tialaramex wrote: post #47

HN seems like the sort of audience who can tell me. This is a serious question: Why would anybody listen to Jean-Louis Gassée? 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 ?

This is not uncommon amongst executives. It’s often described as “failing forward”.

Re: Apple Car: Bad Idea After All

#66

Post by rootusrootus »

paxys wrote: post #49
ARandumGuy wrote: post #8

A full Apple Car has always seemed unrealistic to me. Cars are a fundamentally different industry then consumer electronics and software. Apple would be starting from scratch, and facing a lot of entrenched competition with huge budgets and infrastructure. 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, improvin…

The biggest reason that cars have horrible UX is that consumers don't care about it. No one is buying one for how good the speedometer looks. Give me a good performance and MPG. Make the components last long and be serviceable. Make it look good on the outside. Put advanced safety features. Perform well in crash tests. A hundred more of these and maybe the car will be worth buying. People here are delusional when the…

> 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.

Re: Apple Car: Bad Idea After All

#67

Post by randomdata »

bergenty wrote: post #43
dzhiurgis wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seeing how boring Carplay has been so far I’d have my doubts about skunkworks. That said it makes sense they might be working on exclusive operating system of sorts. The way car systems (100s of suppliers and their implementation) work nowadays is insane.

I don’t know what you mean by “boring” but CarPlay is fantastic. It works really well and covers most things I’d like to do with a central console.

The display of outside temperature is a curious oversight. That's the one thing I find myself regularly toggling back to the native console for.

iOS plasters that information all over the place when running on the device itself, so it is not like it is out of character.

Re: Apple Car: Bad Idea After All

#68

Post by MBCook »

tialaramex wrote: post #47

HN seems like the sort of audience who can tell me. This is a serious question: Why would anybody listen to Jean-Louis Gassée? 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 ?

That never stopped John C. Davorak.

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.

Re: Apple Car: Bad Idea After All

#69

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

lisper wrote: post #9
bushbaba wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn’t people have said the same with mp3 players back in the day. 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

> the biggest challenge will be manufacturing 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.

It took Tesla a decade to learn this. And they’re just getting around to the ideas that the industry had 100 years to develop and refine.

Re: Apple Car: Bad Idea After All

#70

Post by dylan604 »

duped wrote: post #55
hbn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They already showed off giant carplay updates at WWDC this year. They showed a car where the entire dash was a giant wide screen, where it even handled the speedometer, odometer, fuel level, etc https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/06/09/apples-2023-carpl...

That terrifies me

You are not alone. I like the idea that gauges are connected directly to the thing they are measuring. However, I may be disconnected from modern reality in that what might look like a "traditional" gauge might already be connected to the car's computer rather than direct measuring. I'm just not a grease monkey to know the inner workings.
Post reply on HN