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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

#121

Post by MegaDeKay »

r00fus wrote: post #63
RandallBrown wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I am gobsmacked at just how terrible modern vehicles are CarPlay, adaptive cruise control, lane assist, automatic lights (brights, on/off, turning), cameras, remote start from my phone, and lots of other things are awesome modern additions to cars that I wouldn't want to go without anymore.

Lane assist done poorly (seen on my latest Toyota Corolla rental) is distracting and made me want to turn it off. Any advanced features that are rushed or poorly thought out - can turn into liabilities instead of assets.

Lane assist done poorly IS dangerous. Case in point: my 2016 Civic. On the highways around here, they will add pullover lanes on the right hand side so that through traffic doesn't have to slow down if someone ahead is slowing down to turn right. Great. But my car just sees the road as getting wider so it steers RIGHT DOWN THE MIDDLE between the two lanes. I just keep this potentially deadly feature turned off.

And let's talk about the car's adaptive cruise control. It is wonderful. When it works. My drive to work starts with a long featureless country gravel road that is straight as an arrow north / south. Every now and then, I'll be driving along and after 10 km the car will figure "Not much going on here. The radar must have failed. As a safety precaution, I'm just going to beep at the driver and turn off ACC with no error message of any kind that would trouble the driver". Well no problem, I'll just press the button to turn it on again. But how presumptuous of me: the car is smarter than I am because it just beeps and turns it immediately off again. The only way to get ACC back on again is come to a full stop, turn the ignition off and back on again. My dealer was mystified so they phoned the factory. Also mystified. I've taken the car to get it looked at more times than I care to think of and just gave up.

I shudder at a future filled with autonomous vehicles filled with strange bugs like these.

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

#122

Post by LarryDarrell »

HWR_14 wrote: post #112
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?

This is a great question and I actually go back and forth on it myself. I do tend to be harsher to consumers, because that's who I'm around. My friends who work directly at the auto makers or their suppliers like to blame "MBA's". But find me an engineer that doesn't blame it all on MBAs.

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

#123

Post by bradlys »

recursv_thnkng wrote: post #97

Mike is going to be shocked when he learns the majority of GM's software talent are nearing retirement or are fresh out of college with barely any background in programming. The company isn't the best at enticing and retaining software talent.

Somehow doubt he’s unaware of this.

I’m sure this move is primarily a financial one paired with wanting a bit of change from being at Apple. He joined Apple a bit over four years ago. I’m guessing whatever his stock grant refresher is wasn’t worth the stay.

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

#124

Post by bdcravens »

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…

Is that an issue with modern cars, or GM's quality? Overall, American cars have been seen as low quality for decades.

I've had several Toyotas, Hondas, and now a Kia. I know I'm just a dumb guy but they all had "cheap gadgetry". However, what they didn't have was any of the issues you describe.

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

#125

Post by bdcravens »

MrVitaliy wrote: post #85
tonymet wrote: post #80

Quick poll: who here doesn't want infotainment software in their car? How about keeping cars limited to 1990s level logic: basic ICs, fuel / emissions / safety control (abs, airbags). Something like 1990s Mazda with a japanese-size pickup, miata & basic sedan / hatchback.

I don't want to go back to pre-Tesla cruise control. Not the FSD but the basic cruise control they offer that can stop in traffic, keep in the lane and automatically start moving once the car ahead moves.

Those features predate Tesla.

https://www.automoblog.net/brief-history-high-tech-safety-fe...

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

#126

Post by cududa »

bradlys wrote: post #123
recursv_thnkng wrote: post #97

Mike is going to be shocked when he learns the majority of GM's software talent are nearing retirement or are fresh out of college with barely any background in programming. The company isn't the best at enticing and retaining software talent.

Somehow doubt he’s unaware of this. I’m sure this move is primarily a financial one paired with wanting a bit of change from being at Apple. He joined Apple a bit over four years ago. I’m guessing whatever his stock grant refresher is wasn’t worth the stay.

It's going to utterly fail and he'll get very wealthy off of it and I'm sure he's aware of this.

He's not a product guy by any stretch of the imagination and seems to have a disdain for "all that UI fluff junk" (as he once called some of my work in a pitch meeting).

The company was building database access control tools. He was viscerally offended that we deigned to abstract technical concepts into a graphical interface.

Good luck to him on a graphical interface that abstracts technical concepts for cars.

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

#127

Post by steelframe »

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.

I spent a year in Apple Cloud Infrastructure (ACI) during the pandemic. From my perspective, Mike didn't invest in the infrastructure in the ways that he probably should have. I am aware of at least one very senior manager in the org who escalated on Mike for that reason.

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

#128

Post by tgma »

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.

Definitely more than 10 years behind Google and probably going to stay shit for foreseeable future based on their hiring patterns and pay.

Apple routinely claims they can underpay new hires compared to Google and Facebook and they have to accept it because "it is a privilege to work at Apple." Probably you can hire a bunch of cultists with that message to work closer to iPhone and UI but I doubt the hardcore infrastructure folks particularly count "working as Apple" as a special privilege compared to Google and Facebook.

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

#129

Post by LarryDarrell »

caycep wrote: post #117
LarryDarrell wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The 80s were a weird decade. GM didn't want to give up vacuum lines, Ford had electronic fuel injection and little else, and Chrysler had those K-Cars that broke a lot, but they were at least cheap to fix.

Toyotas, Hondas and Volvos of that era lasted a long time, and it would have been simple to predict had you bothered to look. Simplicity + Robustness = Longevity. Because of that equation, the domestic long running vehicles are all pickup trucks.

The last era where we had any semblance of simplicity and reliability was probably the 2000s right up to the recession. Those cars and trucks were just the perfected versions of their 90s version. (Except Chrysler, it's best to avoid all era of Chrysler and I say this as former K-Car and Ram owner.)

Post recession we added turbos to everything. Then came CVTs and variable timing and a slew of new engines. And then came the slow and steady computerization and electric motor actuators for everything. The length of wiring harnesses exploded. Why does my car seat now weigh 300 pounds and have 1200 position settings and climate control, etc. etc.

Simplicity + Robustness = Longevity is true for any era.

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

#130

Post by zen_1 »

tgma wrote: post #128
aaplnisider wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Definitely more than 10 years behind Google and probably going to stay shit for foreseeable future based on their hiring patterns and pay. Apple routinely claims they can underpay new hires compared to Google and Facebook and they have to accept it because "it is a privilege to work at Apple." Probably you can hire a bunch of cultists with that message to work closer to iPhone and UI but I doubt the hardcore infrastr…

I'd prefer working at Apple to F/G because at least Apple pretend to care about user's privacy, and their business model isn't inherently opposed to it.

I'm an android/PC user by choice, so working on the iWidgets doesn't hold much appeal for me.

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