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Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start

arstechnica.com

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Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start

#661

Post by rswail »

brokenmachine wrote: post #595
null_object wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the Apple Car actually materializes, I fear this will become the new standard. All cars come with all bells and whistles, but you have to pay monthly fees in order for them to function Wow I have NO IDEA how anyone managed the jump from this story about Toyota to a totally imaginary anti-Apple rant. Writing this on a 2013 Apple iPad Air that has not cost me a single cent to use every day for the last 8 years.

>I have NO IDEA how anyone managed the jump from this story about Toyota to a totally imaginary anti-Apple rant Because Apple are the nickel-and-dime masters . From removing headphone sockets in order to sell stupidly expensive wireless headphones, to stupidly overpriced soldered memory and storage upgrades, to the 30% appstore fee scam, to disallowing local backups to promote their iCloud storage racket, to unrepair…

LOL, as someone that adopted/adapted to the Apple world when I moved from a Linux laptop to an Apple Mac Mini (for development), this is nonsense.

The removal of the headphone socket, from their perspective, was to move people to wireless headphones. Yes, it was a move everyone hated, but it didn't drive people across to Google/Samsung.

The 30% app store fee is a problem for the developers, not the consumers.

I can make local backups of my iPhone still. I don't have to use iCloud.

Unrepairable devices where you can't even replace a battery (I assume you mean iPhones) is to reduce their manufacturing cost and to make the device more reliable. Same nonsense about the displays. The displays include the facetime cameras and infrastructure, which is intimately tied to the security enclave. Having those two bound together makes the device more secure.

Should they offer the software to every 3rd party repairer? No. Should they make it available along with spares and an online service to bind the two elements? Yes. That way, the service can be done by a 3rd party, but the security remains with Apple. I don't want people to be able to hack the facetime/SE.

Calling disallowing WebGPU as somehow creating "victims" is nonsense.

Apple produces products that people like and pay for. I have a 2014 laptop that still gets (free) upgrades, I have a 2019 iMac that has the best display ever released in consumer desktops. It also allowed me to upgrade the memory. I have an iPhone 12 mini that is great, my iPhone SE is a great remote control and Siri interface and also still gets upgrades.

Will I be able to upgrade RAM in an Mx series Apple product? No, because the memory is built into the SOC. Will Apple overcharge on that RAM? Probably. But on the other hand, having the RAM available to both CPUs and GPUs directly is obviously more efficient in both power and performance that it's worth it.

Will I pay that "tax" to get everything else that comes with the product? Yes. It's worth it in the longer term of a 5 year life of an Apple product.

Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start

#662

Post by dotancohen »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #233
moooo99 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Toyota wouldn't be doing it to cover costs, it would be there to generate profits. I wouldn't even mind if the app is good. We have a BMW with connected drive, the connectivity included is basically useless. It has a latency of around 2-3 minutes, depending on your cell signal. The price of a service rarely does reflect the actual cost of providing the service, especially with SaaS margins. And $8/mo is not a whole l…

Yes, I understand that people will charge what the market will bear, and in this case Toyota has decided they can charge a lot -- because you bought the car and now they have you at their mercy. I was responding to the GP poster who explicitly justified it by the cost of operating the service. This might not be a big deal if Toyota was the only company contemplating this business model (what's $8/mo, after all?) but…

People are already getting normalized to this.

I paid a few dollars for a better dialer, because the Samsung dialer is garbage. Another few dollars for a good calendar app, again because the Samsung dialer is garbage. Hell, I'd gladly pay for a decent web browser. And I say that as a happy Ubuntu user who has been coding for over two decades in VIM, I know my way around FOSS software.

Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start

#663

Post by rswail »

DocTomoe wrote: post #634
xyst wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the Apple Car actually materializes, I fear this will become the new standard. All cars come with all bells and whistles, but you have to pay monthly fees in order for them to function. - Want heated seats? $1/month - Want remote lock/unlock? $2/month - Want to remove rate limiting? $5/month - Want GPS in your car? $10/month - Want to use your "frunk"? $10/month - Want Apple CarPlay? $15/month - Want to activate h…

> Public will buy into it because the cost of the car is significantly less than their competition. That's not the Apple Way. Cost will be significantly higher than the competition, but it comes with a shiny, large apple on the engine hatch, and celebrities will make it a lifestyle choice product. Having an AppleCar will be the economically and technologically inferior, but socially "more acceptable" option. And by t…

Except that the EU, which is taking up EVs at a faster rate than US, has consumer protections and is starting to plan for and enforce EV charging networks.

The people that currently have "Apple fuel stations" is Tesla. So I'm not sure why you're blaming Apple for something that already exists.

Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start

#664

Post by rswail »

akudha wrote: post #223
zeroflow wrote: post #6

That is just bullshit. A $8/mo charge for a app based remote start? I could live with that. Servers need power, the app needs updates etc. A $8/mo charge for something which does not incur costs for Toyota? Hell no. It seems like bit by bit - every single industry is going down a fucked up route. TVs with built in ads? Cars with pay-by-month features? DRM locked coffee machines? I really hope, there is some sort of e…

They are simply copying software industry. Tableau, Jetbrains... none of these need to be subscription based, but they are. They weren't, until a few years ago. I wonder whats next? My toilet won't flush unless I pay $5 for it, in addition to the water bill? It would be hilarious if every single item at home was subscription based, lol

Our water rates include a supply charge, a disposal charge, and a usage charge. Only the last one is dependent on the volume of water consumed.

So in a way, we already pay a subscription charge for flushing the toilet.

Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start

#665

Post by csomar »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #101

I don't know how could anyone think it is a good move inside toyota. $8 falls in the range that it is irritating for consumers yet the lifetime revenue per car is probably 1% of the average car value(5 year lifetime with 2 years free means $250 lifetime revenue). Is it worth it for 1% increase in revenue.

If Toyota margins are 1%, however... they are doubling their profit.

Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start

#666

Post by thesmok »

brokenmachine wrote: post #553
ceejayoz wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What monthly fees of this nature are required to use other Apple products? OS updates are free. The basic version of iCloud is free. "Find My iPhone" is free. Apple Maps is free. The App Store is free. Hell, CarPlay is free on the Apple end of things; it's some car manufacturers who've been charging for it. "Public will buy into it because the cost of the car is significantly less than their competition." Are we talk…

>What monthly fees of this nature are required to use other Apple products? Apple conveniently disallows people from making local backups encrypted with your own key, which means in reality you need to pay a monthly fee to store them on iCloud.

I'm backing up my iPhone to a Mac and these backups are encrypted with a password. And then I'm backing up that Mac to a hard drive, and those backups are encrypted with a password as well. All using standard Apple software.

If I wanted to back up into iCloud I would have to pay, which is fair. Instead, I'm using my own hard drive.

Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start

#667

Post by zerocount »

zeroflow wrote: post #6

That is just bullshit. A $8/mo charge for a app based remote start? I could live with that. Servers need power, the app needs updates etc. A $8/mo charge for something which does not incur costs for Toyota? Hell no. It seems like bit by bit - every single industry is going down a fucked up route. TVs with built in ads? Cars with pay-by-month features? DRM locked coffee machines? I really hope, there is some sort of e…

Just what we need, 300 million people locked out of their coffee machines. Thank God that didn't happen during Covid lock-downs! :)

Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start

#668

Post by mPReDiToR »

plattenbau wrote: post #625
servytor wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unrelated, but one of my favorite quotes from PKD is this one from Now Wait for Last Year: --- “All right," Eric agreed. "If you were me, and your wife were sick, desperately so, with no hope of recovery, would you leave her? Or would you stay with her, even if you had traveled ten years into the future and knew for an absolute certainty that the damage to her brain could never be reversed? And staying with her would…

I think I'd like to unsubscribe from all the "Unrelated, but ..." distraction top-level replies to top comments. Please just stop.

Opposite reaction.

Something that pings a neuron in another brain may be the second step in a chain to me which leads me to interesting and unexpected lines of thought.

If it bothers you, depending on your client, theres a "collapse" button at the bottom of posts so you can personally skip on entire threads as soon as you know it's not for you.

Other people have different values so I, without rancour, say "carry on" to grandparent.

Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start

#669

Post by rightbyte »

mdp2021 wrote: post #240
dharmab wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, Private Police by Fry and Laurie https://youtu.be/vLfghLQE3F4

In the sketch, the "client" states that he called the police and all he could get was on-hold music. I am afraid one can inform the international public: in some countries, this is exactly what happens, since years.

There are two cops were I live. I guess they don't always pick up. Or do you mean 911?

Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start

#670

Post by anktor »

david-gpu wrote: post #647
edanm wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny how taste works - I feel the opposite. In the case of a disease, there's really nothing she can do, and iirc the film implies the hard choice here was to decide to have a child even knowing that will die. In the car of an accident, there is the feeling that she could literally have prevented her daughter's death by preventing the accident, but "chooses" not to. The free will implications of that are much more i…

> the hard choice here was to decide to have a child even knowing that [they] will die Knowing that my children will suffer and die is the main reason why I didn't want to have any. Now I have two. Funnily, it's the same reason my own mother didn't want to have kids either. Yet, here we are. I suspect it is a pretty common feeling.

I logged in just to tell you thank you for sharing, sometimes the right comment at the right time means a lot, and this is my case now it appears, so thank you.
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