[abalone]

It's a car and it's not a "pivot". The Mac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and Watch are all about apply the same philosophy to new product categories and then tightly integrating them. At the core of it is fundamentally rethinking the interface between user and machine.

With cars it makes perfect sense as long as you do one thing first: throw out everything you've read about fully autonomous cars being right around the corner. If instead we're facing a future of semi-autonomous capabilities which still require a human to oversee and guide -- much like the autopilot controls of airplanes -- then there is a massive opportunity to rethink the automobile interface from the ground up around this new hybrid approach.

You can be sure that Apple's car will not just be a Jony Ive designed Tesla. It will involve a rethinking of the user interface. Apple likes to make a 10X difference when entering product categories and that's been the key element. Effective autopilot assistance features can plausibly get us to 10X improvements in safety and convenience.

Apple's functional organization is one of its secret weapons in applying this philosophy consistently across so many consumer categories and creating a halo effect. I would be very surprised if they changed that for computers-with-wheels.

[petra]

First, Apple's historic design advantage is probably gone - since the competition has greatly improved. For example, the watch didn't offer something significantly different(10x) than other smartwatches.

But i can see your second point being true, maybe full-autonomy will take a long time. So even if Apple will design a great interface, it would probably be copied by competitors fast enough, unless there's some big barrier to copying that interface like the phone had in apps. What could that barrier possibly be ?

The only exception i can think of:

The addition of radio for most cars was an important invention.

So let's go wild - what if Apple succeeds in making siri a true AI, with a great personality, someone you'd have great fun driving with, everyday to work ?

[abalone]

No, think the fundamental cockpit driving control interface. Not just the entertainment system (although that will be a nice synergistic element).

Btw I agree about the watch, but it's also early days. The iPod might not have seemed as radical an improvement on other MP3 players either, at first. In retrospect the details made the difference between the product category working for people and not, and blew the category wide open.

[petra]

OK, let's talk about interface. The major problem such interface has to solve - is how keep the driver aware enough of the road at times he needs to(legally, at all times) , while making it more FUN for him than regular driving, otherwise, why bother ?

That's why i believe entertainment in some form, is critical.

So maybe that siri personality is also built in such a way to enable all-time awareness by the driver, effortlessly ?

Or another option: maybe they use some kind of brain monitoring machine like eeg, and together with music put you in some kind of meditative state fit for driving, yet very enjoyable ? but doing so in a subtle way ?

[abalone]

10X safer and/or less stressful would be more than sufficient to revolutionize cars. I think the notion that the only thing you can improve on is fun/entertainment is kind of stuck in traditional car thinking. Making cars safer and more convenient via autopilot features is where you get a 10X leap.

I doubt there will be anything like a "meditative state" -- that's dangerous. On the contrary a goal of the UI would be to keep the driver highly engaged with the vehicle computer at all times.

[Eerie]

>So let's go wild - what if Apple succeeds in making siri a true AI, with a great personality

With human rights?

[jernfrost]

Agree, Apple is not going to get into cars unless they can do something fundamentally different. But I do think it is a problem that the car industry already has a sort of Apple Company, Tesla. A lot of what you could have done different has already been done by Tesla. A lot of guys at Tesla are from Apple so that is perhaps not odd.

However do think there are some fundamental differences between Tesla and Apple. Tesla is far more into performance than it is likely Apple ever will be. I think the sporty aspect will not be present with an Apple car. The seating arrangment for kids in the trunk in the model S, is more in line with stuff Apple would have done.

I think Apple will spend a lot of time investigating the current method of controlling and interacting with a car and looking at a way of improving that.

I think Apple will try to make a very pretty car but I can't imagine them going for the almost sports car look of Tesla.

[abalone]

> A lot of what you could have done different has already been done by Tesla.

Not at the software interface level. Tesla has done incredible work at the hardware level transitioning to electrics but the UI is still pretty old school. I.e. your parents could step into a Tesla and not know that there was anything different about it. Apart from having to plug it in, which you tell them is a Good Thing. That and some snappy performance.

If you think just a little bit ahead about where the next user-facing innovation is, it's autopilot. And the big thing to "get" is that it's not going to be some switch you hit that makes the car magically fully autonomous and you just sit back and take a nap. Rather to go beyond very limited scenarios and actually function on the real world road network and weather conditions, it's going to be about the human-computer interface.

So what does that look like? Is it just a flat panel screen in the center console next to your big steering wheel? Is that how the car is going to deliver safety-critical information to you that you need to supervise and potentially respond to within seconds? And how are you going to respond to them, through taps on screen dialogs?

Probably not. And there is where Apple will compete with Tesla, in the human-computer interface, as it did with the Mac, iPhone, iPad, etc... Even though they all had great hardware too, it was software that made a 10X breakthrough.

[bendbro]

I know people have said this before and been very wrong for it, but I just don't think there's much in those constraints to innovate (read Blackberry). Unless you change the only fundamental aspects of owning a car (driving, parking, and maintenance), all you're doing is polishing a turd.

If Apple is just building the car, and fully autonomous transport is out of the picture, then all they can hope to do is make it electric and install all kinds of shiny gizmos inside. Battery tech won't advance on their doing, so we can't expect their "revolutionary" change to involve any actual gain in commuting, but we can expect to be inundated with a lot of beeps and boops. Oh and maybe your Apple watch will unlock the doors.

[abalone]

You mentioned Blackberry. Pre-iPhone, the world probably would have said there isn't much you can do to innovate on smartphones. They will always need keyboards so the screen has to be small, etc.

With cars I want to underscore what I said about a "10X" improvement in safety and convenience. That is not just polishing a turd. What does it take to actually get to a car that largely drives itself, on myriad roads and conditions? It is wishful thinking to believe cars will do this all by themselves without drivers anytime soon.

Instead, think of a UI that is much more about "mind-melding" with a human driver. Letting them know exactly what it is planning to do, how it intends on navigating that stretch of Highway 1 without driving off the cliff. THAT will probably require fundamentally rethinking the cockpit. You will be mostly focused on "driving by instruments".

If they can achieve that, then we get cars that really do save thousands of lives and make the journey much more relaxing.

[matwood]

One of the biggest innovations around the iPhone was the unlimited data plan and removing phone control from the carriers. IMHO, that is what changed everything. People could get a smart phone AND finally use it. SJ basically willed the change onto the phone industry. Does Apple have a personality who can do something similar again?

[iSnow]

>Unless you change the only fundamental aspects of owning a car (driving, parking, and maintenance), all you're doing is polishing a turd.

I guess the real disruption in the automotive sector would be a focus on mobility instead of owning a car. Have a smartphone app where you could call a shared car from wherever you are whenever you wanted. It appears 10m later, takes you to your destination and then goes back into the pool.

At least in the big cities, a whole lot of people would forgo car ownership if such a service was available.

[abalone]

That service is available. You've exactly described Uber.

Driverless cars would be (further) disruptive but only if driverless cars are actually possible. That is mostly a tech press peak hype cycle fantasy right now. Even Google made a public statement throwing cold water on that, saying it could take 30 years.

Meanwhile the disruption we could actually face is with 10X improvements in safety and comfort via semi-autonomous driver assistance features. A car that mostly takes care of itself, but still requires a human pilot that remains engaged, aware and alert, particularly in situations that are more dicey. You know, like how airplane autopilot works.

[greedo]

Careful, your karma might not take the hit from the autonomous driving crowds at HN. I keep looking at the state of the art systems for autonomous vehicles, and shake my head. I don't expect to see them in use in the US in any serious numbers before I die. The obstacles are just too complex/difficult. We always denigrate people's intelligence, but the human mind is pretty incredible at processing things spatially, even when distracted in a minivan hurtling down an Interstate.

[jjuel]

"Effective autopilot assistance features can plausibly get us to 10X improvements in safety and convenience."

So similar to the autopilot feature that Tesla already has in their cars? Plus it isn't going to up safety until there is 100% acceptance in this autopilot feature. Sure your car might be driving safer, but the other people who don't have these features will still be a danger to you.

[illumin8]

Tesla's autopilot can and does increase safety even with unsafe vehicles on the road. Look at this video of a Model S moving out of the path of a truck changing lanes into it's space. The car moved before a human driver might have even had time to react.

https://www.inverse.com/article/14393-elon-musk-shares-video...