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Ex-Apple VP Mike Abbott Joins General Motors as Exec Vice President, Software

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Re: Ex-Apple VP Mike Abbott Joins General Motors as Exec Vice President, Software

#111

Post by jjoonathan »

aaplnisider wrote: post #87
spacedcowboy wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is utter bullshit, as a cloud Apple employee. Mike was an excellent leader in iCloud, championed a whole bunch of new tech, and took a failing business and made it massively profitable. I don't think anyone in Eddy's org was happy to see him go.

I was an engineering manager in Mike's org. I liked him on a personal level but he was thrown a lot of legacy services from other orgs. Cloud services is just not Apple's forte. The internal tools/infra feels 10 years behind Google (based on friends who've worked at both). I too heard that he was pushed out.

2013 Google tooling was pretty decent. Does WebObjects still haunt Apple's cloud services?

Re: Ex-Apple VP Mike Abbott Joins General Motors as Exec Vice President, Software

#112

Post by HWR_14 »

LarryDarrell wrote: post #26

The 2022 Chevy Silverado I rented died at 488 miles on the odometer. The roadside assistance mechanic said the transmission "lost data connection to the engine". Later, a tow truck had to drag it onto it's flatbed as the rear wheels were locked up. Also, apparently the tailgate is electric now. And for some reason it stopped working when the transmission died. Also also, there is no way to turn the truck off? When it…

> I know customers are dumb and are easily impressed by cheap gadgetry, but why did we have to throw the baby out with the bath water?

Are they impressed by cheap gadgetry? Or is it just no one makes cars without it?

Re: Ex-Apple VP Mike Abbott Joins General Motors as Exec Vice President, Software

#113

Post by lallysingh »

olliej wrote: post #57

The problem isn't "can GM make software" (though that is of course _a_ problem). It's "can GM continue to produce updates to a car's entertainment system for years after it was released, including matching new features from Android Auto or CarPlay". I'm not even sure it's a "will", I think it's legitimately a "can they" - the benefit of Android Auto and Car Play is that if a new feature requires improved hardware som…

I don't see why they would do that. Outside of safety or security updates, why would they? Updated infotainment is a feature of a new car.

Re: Ex-Apple VP Mike Abbott Joins General Motors as Exec Vice President, Software

#114

Post by manicennui »

spacedcowboy wrote: post #29
raincom wrote: post #7

Mike Abbott was kicked out of Apple where he didn’t make any meaningful contribution. Why GM is picking him up? Another wasteful move.

This is utter bullshit, as a cloud Apple employee. Mike was an excellent leader in iCloud, championed a whole bunch of new tech, and took a failing business and made it massively profitable. I don't think anyone in Eddy's org was happy to see him go.

Do you think that iCloud is excellent?

Re: Ex-Apple VP Mike Abbott Joins General Motors as Exec Vice President, Software

#115

Post by justin66 »

LarryDarrell wrote: post #26

The 2022 Chevy Silverado I rented died at 488 miles on the odometer. The roadside assistance mechanic said the transmission "lost data connection to the engine". Later, a tow truck had to drag it onto it's flatbed as the rear wheels were locked up. Also, apparently the tailgate is electric now. And for some reason it stopped working when the transmission died. Also also, there is no way to turn the truck off? When it…

> I am gobsmacked at just how terrible modern vehicles are.

Okay, but in fairness to modern cars as a whole, how long has it been since Chevrolet was considered a high-quality brand by the market? Forty-five years?

Re: Ex-Apple VP Mike Abbott Joins General Motors as Exec Vice President, Software

#116

Post by caycep »

LarryDarrell wrote: post #26

The 2022 Chevy Silverado I rented died at 488 miles on the odometer. The roadside assistance mechanic said the transmission "lost data connection to the engine". Later, a tow truck had to drag it onto it's flatbed as the rear wheels were locked up. Also, apparently the tailgate is electric now. And for some reason it stopped working when the transmission died. Also also, there is no way to turn the truck off? When it…

This brings to mind the CANBUS hack article on HN a few weeks ago...horrifying but fascinating to think you can steal a car by attacking it's IoT headlight..

Re: Ex-Apple VP Mike Abbott Joins General Motors as Exec Vice President, Software

#117

Post by caycep »

LarryDarrell wrote: post #109
germinalphrase wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there many new vehicles that satisfy your conditions, or are you in the vintage camp?

I have a friend who has been a Automotive Engineer for 20 years and we have this conversation all the time. If I were to distill all our conversations down to one take away it would be this: There was a paradigm shift sometime shortly after the Great Recession. Before then, vehicles operated and degraded in expected and manageable ways. I'm in the vintage camp at the moment. I just replaced the Chrysler ignition syst…

Is there a sweet spot between parts commonality/compatibility and proper reliability engineering? I get the feeling that cars before the 90s had parts commonality but reliability was more of an afterthought.

Re: Ex-Apple VP Mike Abbott Joins General Motors as Exec Vice President, Software

#118

Post by tmpz22 »

rqtwteye wrote: post #98

Reminds me of JCPenney hiring the Apple Store guy. They seem to think that a big name from a functioning organization like Apple can fix their own dysfunctional organization. And pretty much always the new guy will fail because he can’t do miracles in a bad organization.

> And pretty much always the new guy will fail because he can’t do miracles in a bad organization.

Or the individual only appeared talented as a result of the structural support from their original organization.

Re: Ex-Apple VP Mike Abbott Joins General Motors as Exec Vice President, Software

#119

Post by tmpz22 »

paganel wrote: post #55
spacedcowboy wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is utter bullshit, as a cloud Apple employee. Mike was an excellent leader in iCloud, championed a whole bunch of new tech, and took a failing business and made it massively profitable. I don't think anyone in Eddy's org was happy to see him go.

Sure hope iCloud is “massively profitable”, they’ve been spamming me non-stop with their messages both on my phone and on my laptop ever since my cloud hardware disk space there (which I had never asked for in the first place) got “full” or such some time ago. Otherwise great hardware products, both the Apple phone and the Apple laptop.

Hey /u/paganel your 256gb iphone is out of storage due to your 20gb of photos! This is because we defaulted all your photos to icloud to achieve this result. Would you like to pay us $60/yr to remove this static notification from your settings page? You can also pay us $120/yr if you want.

Re: Ex-Apple VP Mike Abbott Joins General Motors as Exec Vice President, Software

#120

Post by robszumski »

gowings97 wrote: post #11
altairprime wrote: post #3

Presumably related to: GM plans to phase out CarPlay in EVs, with Google’s help https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35389021 (38 days ago, 377 comments)

Kind of, but not really. What GM is proposing here goes even deeper. There are three current solutions - - (2018 -> Today) Some existing solution that runs QNX as the base OS, that runs Android Auto / Carplay as an Application - (2023 - > Today) A new based OS that is a skinned version of Android Automotive OS (AAOS / https://developers.google.com/cars/design/automotive-os ) that runs both Android Auto Carplay and Ca…

Red Hat is also making a move here, not at the UI layer but supporting RHEL in an automotive environment. It could be interesting to make these systems accessible to more software developers and appear a bit closer to cloud/web service/AI software stacks.
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