Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by delecti 29 days ago
I worked at a car company. It's not arrogance, it's greed. They do want their own proprietary infotainment to be good, but it's more that they don't want to abdicate control, both out of a possessive feeling over what you're looking at, and over the potential for selling you access to their own stuff on that screen.
2 comments

Every time I have to cycle through the SirusXM hardcoded ad in the AM->FM->Bluetooth->SirusXM cycle of my car stereo's mode picker, I get angry at Toyota.
Lol, be glad it's not a Subaru. Same issue in the infotainment, but also occasionally shows you a popup box ad that doesn't go away unless manually cleared, which prevents you from using the infotainment or climate controls (since they're part of the screen now). The dealerships also opt your phone number into recieving SiriusXM ads by default.
Ironically, it’s the same greed that has made Apple rich: the carmaker wants to own a platform where the only way onto that screen is by cutting them in on the profits. Of course, on a “much less accessible to small businesses” scale. I assume Spotify or Audible have to pay large annual lump sums just to be there on the GM platform, rather than “just” the 30% shakedown Apple charges. So it excludes any developer who isn’t part of a Fortune 500 company.
It’s also just a much greater cost per head of build / management / maintenance/ transacting to hit a much smaller proportion of users. Build an app for iOS, deal with Apple (or Google…), you’re hitting many many nore people for that effort.