There must be a rule about how the more billion a company make , the more bad decision they take: google glass, metaverse, tesla screen, windows8...
'Bout friggin, time why add unecessary distractioncs distractions? My life is full of them Touchscreens are analagous to Ford20 Years ago agotelling us," Check out our "advanced changing dash board funtion labels! " what is currently your A/Cbutton may be your seat heater in ten minutes! Consumers would nave called it bullshit nonsense on the spot.A waste of time an energy to drive my vehicle. Piss off with your horrible displays. We need a dashboard oriented Steve Jobs to simplify this B. S.
A brief rant on the future of interaction design That GM piece is a peach: I have never in my life met anyone who has ever paid for OnStar. The idea that GM has decided that my contacts and playlists are less important than their contacts and playlists is going to absolutely decimate their sales.GM alone hopes to grow its subscription revenue more than tenfold to $25 billion per year by 2030.
Here's a problem I guess they're trying to solve: I have a GM truck. On this truck is a touch screen. On that touch screen is a native Google Maps app. That Google Maps app takes up the whole screen, is large and beautiful, and responds to hand gestures in the same way that your phone does (e.g., zoom, moving left right, etc.). If I want to use that native app, I have to be a subscriber to OnStar or pay for their WiFi or whatever. It's like $30/month. Alternately, I can use CarPlay and use Google Maps or Waze or whatever via that route. When I do it that way, the map is a lot smaller on the screen and isn't gesture responsive, but I can still turn on and off directions, which is the main function you need. So you get 98% of what you want with 0% of the (significant) cost. GM is like, fuck you, we built this beautiful map feature and you won't use it. And the consumer is like, fuck you worse, because why would I pay for something I can get 98% of at no additional charge. I assume GM can do a good job designing software at this point, because they have already demonstrated that they can. But I also assume that no one will give a fuck, because who wants to pay $30/mo for something they already get for free? They already tried making consumers buy OnStar Lite (at I think $10/mo) for the ability to start your car remotely by the app, but I don't know anyone who has bought. It was great when it was free, but it's not that great. My guess is that this is destined to be a bad choice, and that if they're smart they'll just build it into the price of the car rather than charge a monthly fee. It will probably cost the same to consumers, but if it comes down to an F-150 vs. a Silverado, and you have to pay $30/mo to access Maps in the Silverado while the F-150 is free all but the most dedicated GM fans, a vanishingly small group of people, are going to go F-150. Maybe GM is betting that all the other car companies are going to follow suit eventually since literally no one is going to cede instrument clusters to CarPlay, and that's apparently the direction Apple is trying to drag the industry.
Oh I know exactly the problem they're trying to solve. It's the same problem most auto manufacturers solve by making sure their car stereos are absolutely nothing like DIN-sized: "you will pay through the fucking nose for something you don't want because swapping it out for something that doesn't suck atrocious balls will cost you thousands and thousands of dollars, pay up fuckball." See, I stopped using Google maps cold when it started telling me "hey get off at this exit now get right the fuck back on again theoretically you'll save 31 seconds which we'll round up to a minute." Apple maps and Google maps suck equally hard in Seattle so there's no performance penalty there, but Apple doesn't try to "optimize" down to 30 seconds by rerouting you for no good goddamn reason. So I give no fux how beautiful Google Maps is on my truck, I ain't gonna use it because it's a wretched piece of shit that I hate. It's the archetypal GM/Ford/Stellantis hubris: "we know cars better than you, otherwise you wouldn't have bought our product. Therefore, we know better about absolutely everything between the tires and the sunroof, pay us $400 a year for OnStar." And they do it because Recurring Monthly Revenue counts for oh so very much more than non-recurring revenue under GATT accounting rules so they're not selling cars, they're selling mobile subscription generators. Li'l story. My wife drives a 2009 Honda Fit with like 150k miles on it. It's fine. The steering wheel looks like foam now because the outer layer has rubbed off? And there will come a time when it needs to be replaced? So I said "you know, the Mazda EV would be great if it weren't such a piece of shit but believe it or not, the 'Ford Mustang' is kind of compelling...?" So we watched a review and got to this: "No. Never. Not in a million years." _________________________ People used to ask me all the time "what car should I buy?" I would tell them "decide what features matter to you and buy on those features. I don't care if it's cupholders, just know what you want and shop for it." There was a time I did eight engine swaps in a week? And I could not tell you the difference between an F150 and a Silverado these days. If I needed one? "fuckin' $30 a month to use directions" is really fucking compelling. That's the thing American auto manufacturers don't fucking get - the dipshit who puts a giant "MOPAR" sticker on a Mexican-built Italian design is a tiny portion of the market. It's mostly normies, women and people buying on value and appeal and "we can out-phone your phone" is the most arrogant, tedious bullshit an auto manufacturer can pull. GM feels deeply entitled to their business. They always have. This is a decision that comes from a place of "people will never stop buying GM products for any reason" and they're mistaken. It's fucking amazing that they're looking at a demographic that's ambivalent about driver's licenses and going "you know what? Yeah they're totally paying for OnStar."It will probably cost the same to consumers, but if it comes down to an F-150 vs. a Silverado, and you have to pay $30/mo to access Maps in the Silverado while the F-150 is free all but the most dedicated GM fans, a vanishingly small group of people, are going to go F-150.
The thing about GM that many people don't understand is that while it's very modern and cool for Tesla to say, "We're a tech company who makes cars," GM is and has been since the days of Alfred P. Sloan a finance company who makes cars. Ford's essential business since Henry Ford founded it was to make money by making cars. Ostensibly that's how GM's forerunners thought, too, but Sloan came in as a guy who knew next to nothing about the car business but had ideas about management and finance in the days when that was cutting edge, and he convinced the board to hire him on the theory that he would turn GM into a financial giant first and foremost. And he did. "What's good for GM..." and all that nonsense. That ethos has never really left, as evidenced by the fact that the GMAC sub-prime debacle was what really fucked them in 08 (Ford never took a bailout because they had mortgaged their corporate logo and Chrysler is just a shitty company who makes shitty cars, but the Feds couldn't justify saving GM while fucking Chrysler, I guess). So if I had to guess I'd assume they've focused grouped, forecasted and modeled this move every which way they can think of and are still left thinking it's a good idea. But I don't see how. Fun fact I just got done having lunch with 4 car GM designers, 3 of whom are late millenial to early gen Y, and one of whom I'm married to. I asked if they were aware of GM killing CarPlay, and my wife, the dinosaur of the group had not heard that, while the other 3 said, "Yes, what the fuck do they think they're doing?" We'll see. At least for now my Sierra still has buttons and dials (the screen is for nav and radio and nothing else). I will never drive an iPad on wheels or whatever.
The thing That blows MY FUCKING MIND Is from the get-go, any goddamn speed part you want from Chevy they'll sell you. You want a crate motor? No problem. Transmission upgrade? gonutz. A hood scoop for a nine-year-old Camaro? Get down with your bad self. ...a better stereo for your Chevy Bolt? crickets General Motors has always been a company that will cheerfully encourage you to change your cam timing but will stop at nothing to keep you from adding an aftermarket bluetooth receiver for your fucking phone. It's unreal. "Whatever you do, make sure a double-DIN will never fit" is Detroit's whole thing and I don't fucking get it. It's clearly a choice. Clearly, the gearheads will protect goddamn camshafts with their lives but "protect the dealerships against the aftermarket at all costs" has been the driving force of "infotainment" since the dawn of the CD player. It has nothing to do with the finance arm. It's entirely about the fact that if I wanna put an Alpine in my hot rod? That hot rod better be fuckin' German or Japanese.