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Apple Car: Bad Idea After All

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Re: Apple Car: Bad Idea After All

#201

Post by r00fus »

scarface74 wrote: post #179
munk-a wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla definitely has some smoke and mirrors going on and is clearly overvalued but I feel like calling them a meme stock at this point is pretty inaccurate. Teslas are on the road doing things and the company is selling them in pretty serious quantities... all against the seemingly iron willed determination of Elon Musk to bankrupt the company by creating a PR nightmare and wasting money.

Compare their sales and profits to other car makers. They are grossly overvalued

Overvalued, yes. Completely? Hell no.

Re: Apple Car: Bad Idea After All

#202

Post by bumby »

drewzero1 wrote: post #161
bumby wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I forgot where it was exactly, but I remember a discussion on a podcast about how auto manufacturers deliberately price their replacement electronics to force planned obsolescence. The example brought up was an SUV that has a large display that controls everything from HVAC to the radio. The screen had an expected service life of something like 7 years, but a replacement price of something like $7k. The thought was t…

Could that have been 2.5 Admins episode 78? They were discussing the incident where a radio station broadcast a corrupted image file that bricked Mazda radios that received it.

I don't think so, I'm not familiar with that particular podcast.

Re: Apple Car: Bad Idea After All

#203

Post by strulovich »

pryelluw wrote: post #188

I don’t see the point of them selling a car. Expanding CarPlay is more realistic. Let the automakers produce the vehicle code and apple takes care of the screens and what nots. I’d love to be able to build iOS apps for my car. Though as someone who values consumer and ownership rights, it might not be a great idea after all.

Tesla has a $886m market cap as of today, that’s a third of Apple’s.

There’s money to be made selling cars, a lot of money.

If all Apple does is CarPlay, they don’t get that money.

Re: Apple Car: Bad Idea After All

#204

Post by cercatrova »

r00fus wrote: post #187
dmonitor wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that as if it were a bad thing. I'd rather a good entertainment system than the shite that Toyota puts the bare minimum effort into.

Toyota are so glaringly bad these days. Their horrible BT implementation on our age-old Sienna really ticks me off on a daily basis.

> these days

> age-old Sienna

Interesting dichotomy there. I have a modern Toyota and BlueTooth works just fine.

Re: Apple Car: Bad Idea After All

#205

Post by sytelus »

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…

HUDs are the small part of the story. far more important thing is what sensors you have access to and what can you control? Car manufactures are notoriously behind and bad on properly expanding and standardizing both sensors and controls. So, it is impossible to deliver consistent experience and capabilities. Even in 2022, most manufacturer haven't still figured out how to do firmware update without using USB drives. You can't even use phone to unlock cars. These are not hard things, but car manufacturers just can't get around to do it given their ancient and inefficient supply chains and factories which are only optimized for price wars, not leap-frogging experience. CarPlay is great for music and may be some cute graphics of basic gauges but the real value ultimately lies in some level of self-driving, assisted features and holistic integration which cannot be enabled without having complete control of hardware.

Re: Apple Car: Bad Idea After All

#206

Post by a4isms »

boringg wrote: post #96
xxpor wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you have that much cash on hand, is it really?

I mean how much of a return can carplay generate on an initial investment of 8 billion and on-going OPEX even if selling to all the manufacturers (which it isn't). 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.

The five pillars of revenue are:

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.

Re: Apple Car: Bad Idea After All

#207

Post by zamalek »

logicalmonster wrote: post #78
dilap wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fit and finish has absolutely collapsed in recent Apple software. Glitches and bugs all over the place. It's almost enough to tempt one to see if this really is, finally, the year of Linux of the desktop. Almost. 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 exper…

> Fit and finish has absolutely collapsed in recent Apple software. 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…

> judging against the experience of using Windows, well let's just say that's a low bar to beat.

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.

Re: Apple Car: Bad Idea After All

#208

Post by chroma »

TheCondor wrote: post #174
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…

Making the iPhone more sticky seems like a solid play. Use the phone in place of a key. Keep maintenance records on the phone. Tap a few buttons on the app and give the dealer a virtual key to the car so you can get it serviced. States are already putting IDs in to apps and the wallet. etc.. Maybe use the phone for various road passes and such, that seems like an easy and natural extension. Around the time the self-d…

> Making the iPhone more sticky seems like a solid play. Use the phone in place of a key. Keep maintenance records on the phone.

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.

1. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211234

Re: Apple Car: Bad Idea After All

#209

Post by smoldesu »

boxed wrote: post #163
pGuitar wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple always had anti-consumer rules for their products... not sure why it finally took off.

Besides them inventing the modern smart phone and revolutionizing an industry? What did the romans ever do for US? :P

All Apple did is commodify the industry, and that business model has proven to be successful for them (same as it was with the iPod).

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!

Re: Apple Car: Bad Idea After All

#210

Post by dmitriid »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #154
MDWolinski wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's take a look at it. I'm sure Apple is getting paid in some way for CarPlay integration. Now if the next generation has higher level of integration that car manufacturers use it instead of their own built software, there's certainly money flowing to Apple. 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…

https://www.macworld.com/article/233855/carplay-faq.html > 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…

That, and greed. Looking at how many features car manufacturers keep behind absolutely meaningless arbitrary levels and packages, it's just ... argh
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