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Why Apple's Next Revolution Should Be In Your Car
New submitter eetc writes "This article surveys the sorry state of car makers' stereo and navigation systems: 'It's clear that most of the auto companies that offer more than a car stereo want to lock you into their interface and services — as awful as they are. The rest don't care. The aftermarket stereo and nav systems are no better. Stuffed with even more buttons and light-show gewgaws, they're sure to keep your eyes off the road and may not work easily with your stuff. Add to that mix the split focus of also having to use a separate GPS unit in most vehicles, and you have to wonder what keeps our roads so relatively safe.' The answer in one word: iCar. This is just the sort of broken market that Apple specializes in taking over."
Driver: Siri, why is the car slowing down?
Siri: I'm sorry, but this road has not been pre-approved by Apple for use with your Apple vehicle. Would you like me to suggest an alternate, approved route?
Driver: Wait, you can control my car...the WHOLE car? Which one of these wires will unplug you anyway, bitch? ....Hey, what is that coming out of the air conditioner?
Siri: I've detected an illegal attempt at vehicle modification. This will help you relax while I drive you to the Apple Store for sanction.
Driver: waait..iah...stoppp
Siri: Your end-user license agreement specifically stated at purchase that your Apple vehicle was to be used for the sole purpose of engaging in Apple approved activities. Any attempt to modify this car is a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and may result in penalties from a fine to death.
Driver: deaaathhh?
Siri: Penalty will be determined through third-party mediation, which you also agreed to at purchase. Is there anything else I can help you with today?
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
they said that about the living room a few years ago, what happened there?
Stereo? GPS? Car companies can't even make a cup holder that actually works.
It is strange, because as far as I can tell, people have been taking beverages into automobiles for at least... 12 years... perhaps more? And yet, car companies keep trying to reinvent the cup holder, usually horribly.
WTF? How can it be that difficult to engineer something so simple after so much time?
What's wrong with getting a bit old fashioned - volume control know, tuning knob, slide controls or dials to control the heater (back to the '80's anyone).
Anytime you get buttons involved and a touch screen you need to look at it. Any buttons should have a unique "feel/texture" so you can differentiate by touch without looking.
Wordpress founder Matt Mullenweg in October 2011:
http://ma.tt/2011/10/whats-next-for-apple/
"This is the most far-out, but I think most certain. Voice-controlled search through Siri and Apple Maps provide the hands-free framework for a rich interactive experience while driving. Walk down the car stereo aisle in Best Buy and see what $800 gets you, or a $300 GPS from Garmin, vs an iPad or iPhone. The screens feel like a TI-92 calculator. The typography makes my eyes bleed. I find it morally reprehensible how bad these products are because it’s one of the areas of technology where a bad interface is most directly tied to injuries and deaths. Car folks are making their iPhone/iPod integrations better and better, which may be a glass of ice water in hell, but they’ll never make the jump to providing a beautiful marriage of media, search, and navigation that a great in-car experience needs. Right now you can spend 110k on a Tesla Roadster, a car of the future, and for an additional $4,500 (9 iPads!) get this Alpine head unit. (Watch that video and try not to laugh at how bad the interface is.) Retail it only sets you back 1.4 iPads. That’s just sad."
I think if editors are going to post non-news blog opinion pieces, they have a duty to do a little due diligence--is the argument novel, or have other people made it before? Is it well explained, or not? Is Galen Gruman a heavyweight? Is Infoworld? Are their arguments likely to provoke further discussion amongst heavyweights?
Not to say that the issue is any less germane than it was in October 2011, but just accepting a link because it was submitted and it seems reasonable enough is not good editorial practice.
The article linked doesn't really add anything to the one I just posted, it's split over two pages for extra ad impressions, and the site is incredibly visually busy filled with social widgets and tags and ads and everything, in contrast to the one I posted which is clean.
> It's clear that most of the auto companies that offer more than a car stereo
> want to lock you into their interface and services — as awful as they are.
Uh huh. So if Apple locked you into THEIR interface and services it would be insanely great and you would be lining up for it.
P.T. Barnum was an optimist.
Democrat delenda est
I already have that in my car. anyone that has bought an aftermarket stereo that has a high level of iphone integration already has these features.
Hell Kenwood has one that now mirrors the iphone screen on the dash display, it's been out for a year now... Did the article author even look to se what was already on the market?
What I want is a genuine Android based car stereo. Unfortunately anything out there is all locked down wierd like the Parrot Android car stereo or a complete steaming turd from china running a 500mhz processor and runs WinCE for the nav section.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I don't want integration. I want my radio to be my radio and my GPS (if I had a GPS) to be my GPS. I don't want co-mingling of technology.
Haven't we learned anything from Battlestar Galactica? You don't network everything. You keep things separate.
Or, if you snerk at that example, haven't we learned anything from Unix/Linux where each piece does it's thing, and ONLY it's thing?
We've seen what an absolute shitfest things become when we try to make things "new and improved", "Now with more features you have to look at and try to decipher while driving!" Hey Ford, how's that wonderful technological tour de force radio and navigation interface working out?
Engineers and developers need to get their heads out of their asses and go back to the ultimate rule: KISS
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I'm not entirely sure you understand the difference here. You do realize the auto company interfaces don't have images of fruit stamped into them? Right?
My honda CR-V EX-L has a USB port. i plug my iphone in, pick a playlist and let it play. i can use the steering wheel buttons to skip songs. also works with pandora and slacker radio. spotify is a little buggy.
it also works with Zune and plain USB flash drives. android not so good because it's a plain vanilla micro-USB port on their phones
and i'll take my iphone GPS over a car GPS. Waze on iphone is free, not $2000. and free traffic info.
I have ford SYNC (microsoft SYNC), and it's fucking brilliant.
I never touch my stereo, between the 4 steering wheel controls (volume,next/prev,voice command,hang up) and the frankly kick-ass voice control I just never need to.
I never have had it misdial, only very occasionally does it have trouble when I ask for a specific album (and then only when it's not a native language name) and generally just had it be all sorts of awesome all the time.
So no, Apple can sit this one out (and this is coming from someone who's entire computing existence is apple, I own the iphone/ipad/appletv/macbook/imac). Microsoft has done a great job already.
Ford Sync is great.
They realize that your car is around a lot longer than your phone so in a lot of ways your smartphone is really the brains, the car is just the interface. The voice works surprisingly well. They have all kinds of API's that let apps on your phone be controlled by your voice via the Sync. I know that Microsoft designed it, but I like it a lot. 2011 Ford Fusion SE is the car I have.
K Man
I'd like to see the dock connector updated so that the entire iPhone display and touch interface could be used on the car's in-dash display, reformatted and enlarged if necessary to fit the screen's native display resolution and orientation, along with all the other expected integration like phone, audio and video.
Apple could license this interface to car makers for free and then help them create apps specific to the car, binding the carmaker to Apple and making consumers shop for iPhone integration specifically.
It would also get Apple closer to the point where the iPhone was really a portable computer that could be docked and then taken anywhere.
I've thought many times that there must be a huge, untapped market for a line of electronics for grown ups. Try searching for a shelf stereo system, for example. Most of it is garish crap, burdened with all kinds of obscure functionality most people will never use. There are systems more minimal and adult-looking, but "minimialist" doesn't mean "user-friendly." What I'm talking about is a system that looks nice, is of relatively good quality, and for which you never need to read the manual. It's just obvious how to work it.
Car stereos are the same way. They almost all sacrifice function for style.
And alarm clocks. How about an alarm clock with a panel that you flip open, and behind it is a simple, phone style number pad. To set alarm 1, you press
[Set Alarm 1] - [7] - [3] - [0] - [am] - [Enter], then turn a little analog dial to set the volume, and flip the panel closed.
Done.
lllll Alaska Jack
Apple's speciality is in seamless UI's. While people seem to like this for mobile phones and tablets, it's not the right solution for a car. Cars require tactile interfaces so that they can be navigated using touch while the driver keeps his eyes on the road. Apple has the potential to bypass this concern using Siri, but that comes with additional problems.
Siri and the maps used by Apple for GPS navigation are both delivered via cellular connection, which would imply that a driver would lose all voice recognition while driving outside the range of cellphone towers--e.g. through the mountains. The GPS navigation is a similar problem. Since the navigation data is delivered via cellular data, you would lose navigation in the mountains.
Much as I hate to admit it, I would prefer the Microsoft self-contained automotive voice recognition system to getting Apple iCars. Ford has demonstrated those in the past. I've also seen a reasonable implementation (non-Microsoft) on an Acura about five years ago. I'm not sure that this is a market where we should care about fragmentation. Just don't buy a car with a UI you don't like.
>"offer more than a car stereo want to lock you into their interface and services"
>"The answer in one word: iCar."
Yeah right. Because Apple is a paragon of openness and anti-lockin combined with low prices and choice! No thanks.
How about at least AndroidCar? Or maybe LinuxCar. Perhaps then at least other manufacturers can be involved.
How is this insightful? Funny? Yes. Insightful? No.
"Insightful" gives a better boost to Karma than "Funny" so a lot of mods use "Insightful" in its place.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
no, they'll say you were holding the steering wheel the wrong way
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
Microsoft's already there. It's known as Ford's MyTouch and Sync.
Yes, the market is ripe for revolution, but it won't happen unless Apple convinces the car makers to let them do it, or build their own car.
The percentage of people who replace factory stereos today is the lowest it's ever been, and that's because the quality and features included in factory stereos has never been higher. Also thanks to integration game, most factory stereos do more than just play music. If you remove your factory stereo you might lose other important features in the process.
Unless Apple makes a move to offer a scalable, mufti-function OEM solution that car makers can customize and ship with pride, the best that's going to happen is people will continue to use the iPod/iPhone integration already included in many factory decks.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.