Live data from Hacker News

Mercedes-Benz previews its operating system MB.OS

media.mbusa.com

21–30 of 398 posts

Re: Mercedes-Benz previews its operating system MB.OS

#21

Why does the automobile industry insist on keeping these things in-house when they are clearly terrible at them? I recall an interview with a Ford manager a few years back where they were asked something about adopting Car Play and the response was something like “we have people that can write software for us, so we won’t be using that.”

> The company is confident that this strategic approach to software and hardware development will be the basis for lifetime revenues as well as additional contributions.

I think they're pretty blunt as to "why." What they seem to be hazy on is the "how."

Re: Mercedes-Benz previews its operating system MB.OS

#23
The use of touchscreens has made handling devices and machines a lot less pleasant. We will soon see a reverse movement, where physical buttons become more important again. So much more satisfying.

Of course, this can still be combined with plenty of software.

Re: Mercedes-Benz previews its operating system MB.OS

#24

Yuck: > MB.OS is designed and developed in-house to retain full control You better have some world class software engineers to pull this off, a LOT of them. And retain them. If not, you better go open source. You can still retain full control with open source. Good software is the KEY to good cars, especially electric ones. Why are we inventing 100 different models of cars every year? What a waste of human potential.

I disagree. Sometimes you need to invent things yourself. Mercedes is an absolutely massive company with many subsidiary brands. This is not an automatic bad move.

But they are not a software company at the core. They need to be to pull this off.

Re: Mercedes-Benz previews its operating system MB.OS

#25
post #13
post #7

>Offering flexible upgrades do you want to buy the headlights DLC ($0.9 first month, then $29.9)? Y/n

I'd personally love if manufacturers actually offered upgrades on their older cars. I had an older Mercedes-Benz and I would've absolutely given Mercedes-Benz money if they had a first-party CarPlay solution for my then car.

Fun fact: Porsche offers this for some of its older generation models.

https://newsroom.porsche.com/en_US/2023/products/porsche-cla...

Re: Mercedes-Benz previews its operating system MB.OS

#26
Is this using Jolla's Android AppSupport? https://jolla.com/

I use a Sailfish OS phone and it works amazingly well. I know they have been pushing hard into the auto industry after pulling out of Russia because of the war. I would be very pleased if Mercedes is helping fund Jolla.

Re: Mercedes-Benz previews its operating system MB.OS

#27
Ah, this will be fun to watch. I give this about a 3% chance of producing something the end users will actually enjoy using.

Hardware manufacturers are generally extremely bad at building software teams. It's against their DNA. Their executive leadership culture tends to actively reject people who are good at leading software teams, nevermind how much they want that sweet UI/software. (Yes, Apple exists and they are a hardware company that's pretty good at software.)

Then add a German extremely hierarchical largeco culture to the mix...

Re: Mercedes-Benz previews its operating system MB.OS

#28
post #9

Yuck: > MB.OS is designed and developed in-house to retain full control You better have some world class software engineers to pull this off, a LOT of them. And retain them. If not, you better go open source. You can still retain full control with open source. Good software is the KEY to good cars, especially electric ones. Why are we inventing 100 different models of cars every year? What a waste of human potential.

I’d be surprised if this isn’t just another Android fork.

It's not from what I read. MBUX, the UI is built using Qt.

Re: Mercedes-Benz previews its operating system MB.OS

#30
post #25
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd personally love if manufacturers actually offered upgrades on their older cars. I had an older Mercedes-Benz and I would've absolutely given Mercedes-Benz money if they had a first-party CarPlay solution for my then car.

Fun fact: Porsche offers this for some of its older generation models. https://newsroom.porsche.com/en_US/2023/products/porsche-cla...

Yeah, Porsche is the only manufacturer that I know of that actually cares about older cars they've sold.

They even made an amusing ad to that effect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8-9oIq1hxw

Post reply on HN