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Comment by jagger27 | Hacker News Reader

To me it doesn't seem likely that Apple can do to the car what they did to the smartphone. It is such a strange "me too" move that it's almost as if a big shareholder or some exec saw one of those Apple stickers in a car's rear window and decided it would look better as a real badge. Apple's value add isn't immediately clear, that's for sure.

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Apple's value add is the same as it has been since the very first iPod: User Experience. Apple is a UX company; they've been successful because everything they did was laser focussed on the UX.

Right now buying and operating a car kinda sucks in a lot of ways [0] because GM doesn't have anyone whose job it is to subordinate all business functions to UX. Steve Jobs did that at Apple and maybe today somebody is still carrying the torch. The fact that Apple has a culture of design and implementation oriented around UX is the value add.

Imagine the process of purchasing and repairing your car feeling like an Apple store. Imagine Jony Ive designing the fit and finish of the car hardware, inside and out. Imagine a center-console human interface that was designed by someone with taste [1]. All of this is going to be packaged seamlessly with that beautiful attention to detail in subsystems integration that makes my grandma want an iPad, just because it feels amazing, even though it does literally nothing useful.

Obligatory disclaimer: For political reasons I strongly disagree with Apple's walled garden philosophy, and it makes me so angry that the best laptops available run closed source OS's natively. But I have to admit that Cupertino's hardware, shopping process, and unboxing experience is beautifully designed, and that their focus on UX does lead to a nice experience if you stay within their ecosystem.

[0] e.g. http://blog.dilbert.com/post/147352433956/how-not-to-buy-a-c... but really just talk to anyone who has been near a dealership or repair shop

[1] We have been stuck in the center console design dark ages for decades, even in luxury automotive.

> and unboxing experience

I'm trying to imagine what the unboxing experience of an Apple car would be like. :-)

One thing is certain: it will not look anything like going to a Toyota dealership.

Or Tesla dealership, for that matter.

My user experience when I step into any future autonomous car will be the same as it is in the present autonomous (or non-autonomous) Uber - my smartphone.

"GM doesn't have anyone whose job it is to subordinate all business functions to UX."

They've had such people. Read "Car Guys vs. Bean Counters" by Bob Lutz.

Around a decade ago when I was an Apple intern (pre-iPhone) we got to go to a Q&A session with Steve Jobs. One of the questions was something like "What other products do you think are badly designed / could be improved?" and I remember him mentioning two products, phones and cars specifically. I don't really have any idea what Apple plans to do there either, but at least the interest there probably isn't new...

Apple has never been the first to a field - they just tend to get more right on their first go-round with it.

The iPod seemed like a strange and expensive me-too product even after it was unveiled.

iPod was a initially a failure. Only when they created iTunes it became successful.

It is strange to think that a piece of software lots of people hate so much was so decisive in turning around Apple.

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