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Comment by tasoeur | Hacker News Reader

From talking to people working on this project, there's always been some sort of interesting paradox in terms of dealing with the potential of bad PR due to accidents and fatalities linked to self driving versus one of Apple’s most valuable asset: its brand. Perhaps they will be some calculated outcome in whatever product comes out of that org, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they end up pivoting to high quality cars with assisted driving (at best).

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I think I would be quite happy to see them as a technology provider. Like cars have Bose or B&O sound, but for the full infotainment, cabin controls, etc.

However I would expect the auto maker to ensure they don’t go too low on buttons.

I honestly have no idea where all this is going. I’m curious. I think it would also make sense if they came up with good self driving stuff to just license that out to people, but that’s not the kind of thing Apple does. At least until now.

I agree with you that Apple would not want the headlines about their cars killing people. The way Tesla has had to deal with (right or wrong).

I don't think an automaker or Apple would ever consider that arrangement. Both of them want to be the primary intermediaries between customers and everyone else, because that's where the money is and it's a rare event when either are institutionally capable of ceding or sharing control of that relationship with others.

But isn’t that exactly the direction they are going with next gen CarPlay?

https://www.macrumors.com/2023/12/22/next-generation-carplay...

It’s somewhat similar.

There’s a very open question of whether any auto maker will actually allow next gen CarPlay to do all that stuff.

That’s what everyone from Alcatel to Nokia said back in 2004: “We are good with programming the UI for our phones, plus we understand our customers better, because we are people persons. We know that our customers want feature phones with more WAP with locked apps from their operator.”

I’m not keen on having to choose between an Apple or Android type of car, but better than the current state of OEM central consoles.

Nokia phones allowed you to install .jar apps that you could download from various websites. Not closed at all.

WhatsApp started as a .jar app for nokia dumb phones.

I think they would have to allow android auto similar to the way that cars with android automotive allow CarPlay to be used unless the car maker interferes.

Would they do that? I would hope so. But I honestly don’t know.

apple already deals with both mobile carriers and multi-national governance bodies.

quite profitably.

I don’t either. But I would like it.

I miss the Bose electromagnetic suspension. I absolutely loathe that they just turned the tech into a truck seat. Who cares if it's slightly more expensive? So's modern-day air suspension.

Isn’t Magnaride effective the same thing, perhaps turned down?

Magnaride looks to be some kind of variable damping. AFAIK, Bose electromagnetic suspension was fully controlled, like the voice coil of a speaker.

Headlines skewing reality is a fascinating topic. Average Joe now thinks EVs are more likely to explode than ICEs, but their newly formed intuition is off by an order of magnitude in the wrong direction.

Apple would have sliding magnetic add hoc buttons, like black polished gravel sliding over a self raking sand garden.

Also everyone can make a car, but then you become a competitor and get locked out of all other cars.

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