[nozzlegear]

> They shouldn't be strong arming [...] the entire automotive industry.

Yes they should, the automotive industry is much shittier. I have a 23 Chevy Bolt EUV with wireless CarPlay. Chevy/GM have been emailing and snail mailing me relentlessly trying to get me to pay for their $150 update to my car's navigation maps, which no longer work in my vehicle (presumably because they're out of date). This is quite the deal, according to their marketing materials, but I won't be paying for it because I've never used those maps thanks to CarPlay.

With all this emphasis they're putting on upselling these $150 map updates, it doesn't take a genius to understand why GM is no longer making vehicles with CarPlay or Android Auto.

[xp84]

Why can’t we hate both greedy and shitty GM, and greedy and shitty Apple and Google?

Both infotainment and phones should be open to run the software users choose. The biggest problem with tech today is how everyone with control of some kind of choke point expects everyone else to pay them to “allow” the user to use anything that isn’t in the first party’s strategic interest.

We saw this when Apple violently crushed that Android-compatible iMessage solution a couple years ago. It was portrayed as that developer “hacking” Apple - not as the users of the iMessage service choosing a different client than Apple likes. This shift in thinking is wild.

Since the AT&T breakup the phone company was forced to allow customers to choose their client hardware (phones). Now in the modern day critical infrastructure, we’re back to the same old tricks where powerful parties (platform owners) want to dictate the hardware and software customers are allowed to use based purely on their own greedy interests.

[echelon]

> With all this emphasis they're putting on upselling these $150 map updates, it doesn't take a genius to understand why GM is no longer making vehicles with CarPlay or Android Auto.

Because cars are a low margin, high capital business with ruthless competition.

Because a trillion dollar duopoly gets to spend a billion dollars on mapping software and give it away completely for free as part of an ecosystem / platform play, which they then use to strong arm automotive manufacturers. If you had to bear the true cost, it would be $150. More car companies should ban Apple and Google.

Fuck Apple and Google. They are not the heroes in this story. They're not Robin Hood here, even if that's what they're masquerading as. They're the child-enslaving "Land of Toys" from Pinocchio - they're using you and lured you in with a promise of freedom, but they have an ulterior motive.

All of that "freedom" just gets added to the purchase price of your car, and you don't even realize it. You also get Google ads for McDonalds and shit.

[lwkl]

Before CarPlay and Android Auto we had TomTom for $130 and map updates costing about $40. The map updates from car manufacturers were always sold at a premium.

I bet Google Maps pays for itself through ads alone. In addition Google Maps gains a lot of invaluable data from its users like new businesses, reviews, pictures, updated opening times, traffic data and more. So no Google Maps isn't really "free" it's paid for by its users with ads and free labor to improve the mapping data.

Having the users split between different navigation software is a worse user experience because the mapping data will be worse. So I welcome a monopoly in this case.

The hard work of mapping is done by the government in most countries and paid for by the tax payers. So you are just paying the car company to convert the mapping data you already paid for into their proprietary format.

[nozzlegear]

CarPlay doesn't show me ads for McDonald's, it doesn't show me ads at all.

[saagarjha]

Yet :(

[DANmode]

Fork.

[f33d5173]

When companies compete, consumers win. Don't make the error of thinking that because they're doing it for selfish reasons, it doesn't benefit you.

> If you had to bear the true cost, it would be $150.

That might be true, but it probably isn't. A larger company can spread the cost out over a larger number of customers, meaning the cost per customer is lower.

[yourusername]

When standalone GPS units for $500 were popular the big car manufacturers were still trying to sell GPS as a $2000 option. We've seen time and time again car companies will charge whatever they can get away with. So i'm very skeptical that maps actually cost $150 for the companies that charged me $800 to enable bluetooth calling.

[daedrdev]

> Because cars are a low margin, high capital business with ruthless competition.

Then why are they making such terrible carplay systems?

[ralph84]

The EU mindset in a nutshell. It doesn’t matter how shitty and expensive the solution is, as long as they get to say they owned big tech.

[echelon]

Okay, so you're a hyper capitalist. Good, I dig that. Me too.

Big tech is literally a machine putting a ceiling on your ability to build.

They tax and control everything, lock down distribution, prevent you from operating without rules.

If you get big enough, they self-fund an internal team to compete with you. Or they offer to buy you for less than you're worth. If you don't accept, they buy your competitor.

Capitalism should be brutal. Giant lions that can't compete should starve and give way to nimble new competition.

You shouldn't be able to use your 100+ business units to subsidize the takeover of an entirely unrelated market.

They are an invasive species and are growing into everything they can without antitrust hedge trimming. Instead of lean, starving lions, they're lion fish infesting the Gulf of Mexico. They're feasting upon the entire ecosystem and putting pressure on healthy competition.

Your own capital rewards are cut short because of their scale.

Do you like not being able to write apps and distribute them to customers? It's okay to pay their fee, jump through their hoops, be locked to release trains, pay 30%, forced to lose your customer relationship, forced to use their payment and user rails, forced to update on their whim to meet their new standards - on their cadence and not yours?

Do you like having competitors able to pay money to put themselves in front of customers searching for your brand name? On the web and in the app stores? So you have to pay to even enjoy the name recognition you earned? On top of the 30% gross sales tax you already pay? And those draconian rules?

That's fucking bullshit.

We need more competition, not less.

Winning should not be reaching scale and squatting forever. You should be forced to run on the treadmill constantly until someone nibbles away at your market. That's healthy.

Competition from smaller players should be brutal and unending.

That is how we build robust, anti-fragile markets that maximally benefit consumers. That is how we ensure capital rewards accrue to the active innovators.

Apple and Google are lion fish. It's time for the DOJ, FTC, and every sovereign nation to cull them back so that the ecosystem can thrive once more.

[senordevnyc]

Do you like not being able to write apps and distribute them to customers? It's okay to pay their fee, jump through their hoops, be locked to release trains, pay 30%, forced to lose your customer relationship, forced to use their payment and user rails, forced to update on their whim to meet their new standards - on their cadence and not yours?

Most of this isn’t even true. It’s 15% for most app sellers, you don’t have to use their user auth, you can maintain a direct customer relationship just fine, you’re not locked onto a release train, you only have to update when things change if you want your app to work (like literally any platform).

[roenxi]

> They tax and control everything, lock down distribution, prevent you from operating without rules.

You seem to be arguing that the EU should be doing that though. What about those of us who quite like the way Apple does things right now? I'm happy to pay extra for a lot of your dot points, I quite like someone to be acting as a firewall between my device and the unfettered soup that is stuff out on the internet.

Apple's product is a well curated walled garden. I certainly understand why there are a lot of people on HN who don't like that - they see 30% that they can't claim. But one of the reasons Apple is so successful is because they know how to create a great phone experience.

[scbzzzzz]

>> Apple is so successful is because they know how to create a great phone experience.

I disagree, may be they were at some time. Now they are successful because the walls of the well are so high. It is insanely difficult for us frogs to jump. Happy that governments are trying to bring those walls down

>> I am happy to pay extra for a lot of your dot points. Good for you because you trust them. Problem is I am not. I dont trust apple/google to make that decision for me. But they dont give that choice. They are making you sacrificing freedom, choice by masking them self as secure. But underlying motive is profits and control.

I heard a story that apple asked meta for comission on ads , when meta rejected they introduced features to remove access to usage metrics to 3rd party apps. If meta agreed , you might never see the privacy features app introduced.

The security you are thinking is a believable mirage. There are several users who have lost thousands of dollars to scammy appstore in app purchases/subsciptions and apple is doing shit to stop this.

[roenxi]

> The security you are thinking is a believable mirage. There are several users who have lost thousands of dollars to scammy appstore in app purchases/subsciptions and apple is doing shit to stop this.

And the plan to make this the consensus view is to ban Apple-style curated app stores. That seems to be cheating. When Apple convinced me their App store model was better than the alternative they had to use, y'know, persuasion.

Nokia sorta died, but at the time back in the 2000s Apple had to get through the entire phone industry to establish the iPhone. If the Europeans had any idea how to manage this sort of ecosystem they'd still be running the show. They had an amazing market position to begin with. They flubbed it because no-one in the entire continent seems to know how to run an app store! Now they're legislating their bad ideas in. It is a very European approach to commercial innovation and success.

[throw10920]

> Okay, so you're a hyper capitalist. Good, I dig that. Me too.

Nothing in GP's comment gave any indication that they were a "hyper capitalist". You're just being emotionally manipulative, disingenuous, and acting in bad faith. This is categorically inappropriate for HN.

[frank_nitti]

Hmm well I certainly inferred the same from their comment: it casts “big tech” as the victim of the government, because the latter forced as “overpriced and shitty solution”

It’s possible they’re not a capitalist and just extremely sympathetic to Apple and/or Google specifically, but that seems more of a stretch than what that commenter (to whom you’re replying) has inferred IMO

[throw10920]

Your assumption is equally incorrect, because the poster factually did not say anything like that. You can be upset at the EU for making performative regulation without addressing "real issues" or writing the regulation well, and yet still support strong regulation. The implication that criticizing the EU is equivalent to being a "hyper-capitalist" is such an insane belief that it borders on being farcical.

Assumptions like this are what lead to political polarization. Don't do it. Read what the poster wrote, don't try to read their mind, and use your brain responding.