Do You Want to Sell Sugar Phones for the Rest of Your Life?
John:
Margo, you're totally right.
John:
Margo, you're totally right.
John:
Margo, you're totally right.
Casey:
Where does Apple use Core Data, John?
John:
I don't know.
John:
There's question marks after all those bullet points in the thing.
John:
A bunch of people emailed us and told us, and I couldn't find those emails.
John:
So I think this is a follow-up from last week when I think Marco was saying that he didn't know where Apple used Core Data, and this was in response to... Core Data Sync in particular.
John:
The iCloud Core Data Sync that was such a disaster.
John:
Yes, not just plain old Core Data.
John:
And this was in response to the idea that Apple...
John:
Which API is this Apple dog food?
John:
And by the way, we just had someone email us and say, what does dog fooding mean?
John:
I sent him the Wikipedia link, but it just means using your own stuff.
John:
Like if you're making an API in this specific case and you don't use that API yourself, chances are it won't be that great because you won't know the pain of using it.
John:
You'll just be like, we made this API for you.
John:
Go use it.
John:
But we don't know what it's like because we don't have to use it.
John:
Anyway, the suggestions that I think people sent us for Apple applications that use core data iCloud syncing are the trailers app on iOS and syncing for keyboard shortcuts between Mac and iOS.
John:
Was that the only ones we got sent?
Casey:
That's the only ones I saw, yes.
Marco:
yeah and what's funny so so the trailers app uh you know fine that's how much data is that actually syncing between devices and yeah that's okay fine uh keyboard shortcuts sync i've actually heard many people complaining that the shortcuts are not syncing properly so if that is using core data uh icloud syncing that is really not a good recommendation for it
John:
Yeah, I mean, if it's just two obscure apps to that kind of, you know, these exceptions that prove the rule that this is not something that underlies like their major apps, unlike, for example, CloudKit, which they're building major applications like photos and everything on top of where it's like if that doesn't work, people are going to notice.
John:
Whereas if the trailers app or even keyboard shortcut sync doesn't work, maybe someone would be annoyed, but it's not like, you know, it's destroying their family photos.
Casey:
Yeah, when I was... When was it?
Casey:
It was when iOS 8 was in beta, I believe.
Casey:
And I don't even think that I had upgraded any of my devices to the beta at this point.
Casey:
But my keyboard shortcut sync was completely borked until I had everything on iOS 8 and Yosemite.
Casey:
And it was infuriating because I don't know if you notice this about me, gentlemen, but I tend to use emoji occasionally.
Casey:
And I have shortcuts for most of my frequently used emoji, and I felt absolutely crippled without them.
Casey:
It was a dark, dark time.
Casey:
I'm so sorry.
Casey:
Me too.
Casey:
Anyway, all right.
Casey:
So we talked in episode 102.
Casey:
We talked in episode 102 about...
Casey:
An interview with Andy Matushak that was in Objective CIO and Hendrick wrote in and said, man, we should really talk about it.
Casey:
So I guess we didn't really give it enough airtime.
Casey:
And I think one of one of you guys, I guess, John, had written a few things that we should probably also bring up from that interview.
John:
It's just one thing.
John:
And maybe we did talk about I vaguely remember talking about the thing, but I don't remember this paragraph with the highlighted bit.
John:
He's talking about React.
John:
But then Andy used to work for Apple.
John:
uh so he talks about what it was like when he was apple at apple he was there he says one of the complaints i have about my time at apple is that because the culture doesn't value learning nobody reads nobody knows what's going on in the broader community people didn't know about react at all and uh this is a talk discussing react and that reading that doesn't make me feel good because then it's like
John:
The bad ideas I have about any big company, the idea that Apple's filled with all these super smart people making amazing products, but that it's sort of insular, that they're not...
John:
Like they're interested in what they're doing, but not so much interested in what's going on elsewhere.
John:
I don't know.
John:
Like this is just one person's complaint about, you know, obviously one person doesn't work in the whole company.
John:
They work in a small part of the company.
John:
And there's there's obviously evidence that of places where this is not the case.
John:
I would hold up Swift as an example.
John:
It's clear that the design of Swift is heavily influenced by other languages, all of which are being developed outside of Apple.
John:
So.
John:
It's obviously not as completely, you know, inward looking and insular as this complaint makes it sound.
John:
But the idea that that could exist at all inside Apple is kind of disappointing to me.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And, you know, this is a fairly credible and relevant statement because, you know, Andy Matushak was on UIKit in, I don't know exactly what capacity, but I think a pretty high one.
Marco:
So he was right where the discussion of React would be most relevant, in UIKit.
Marco:
That's exactly where this is important.
Marco:
He was there, and he is, as far as I'm aware, pretty well respected.
Marco:
So I wouldn't take this comment lightly.
Marco:
In fact, when I first read this, I was really surprised that it didn't get more attention, because to me, it's kind of a bombshell.
Marco:
To say that because the culture doesn't value learning, nobody reads, nobody knows what's going on in the broader community.
Marco:
Those are big statements to make, especially from somebody like this, who like, I don't think he goes around like throwing around phrases like that lightly.
John:
But they're also made by somebody who left, right?
John:
And the person left probably because they weren't getting enough of like, you know, there was new interesting novel things happening outside of Apple.
John:
And Apple, in some respects, has to be more conservative because, you know, it's a big
John:
They've got a big operation going on there.
John:
They can't just be chasing after the newest shiny thing in all sorts of directions.
John:
And as we've discussed on past shows, it seems like the technical resources at Apple are fairly overextended in terms of like it's very hard work.
John:
There are tight deadlines.
John:
They're expected to do amazing things and put in long hours.
John:
that doesn't leave that much time left to be sort of reading blogs about interesting new technology that may or may not influence.
John:
And really like it ends up, if it's a personal interest, you read about it, but like how relevant is it?
John:
Because it's like, what if you just come in one day?
John:
Oh, I have an idea guys.
John:
Let's forget about this UI kit thing.
John:
Let's do something that incorporates some of the ideas that I've seen elsewhere by reading these programming blogs and looking at other frameworks.
John:
they don't go great that's great let's let's all replace you i can let's go do that right uh that's not something that happens so if you're just doing it on your own like the people who are super interested in that i would imagine leave apple because you're not going to get to do that stuff at apple very few people are going to get to make that kind of radical decision and have it take place again swift as the the example of it actually taking place because a very important person had uh you know
John:
an idea influenced by lots of other languages and managed to get done.
John:
And even that was a fairly large effort over a long period of time.
John:
And that's a,
John:
situation that's probably not going to repeat itself.
John:
Say Andy really loved React and the idea is inherent in it.
John:
What could he do with those ideas at Apple other than leave Apple and pursue something elsewhere where he can use the stuff that he learned?
Casey:
One of the things that's really tough about consulting is that if I do some sort of self-directed learning outside of work, because goodness knows I'm not going to have the time at work unless I'm
Casey:
quote unquote, on the bench and not billing a client and not earning money and generally a waste of space.
Casey:
Wait, did they actually use that phrase on the bench?
Casey:
I do.
Casey:
I think it's a common phrase.
Casey:
That's certainly something I've always said, which is funny because I'm not much of an athlete and it comes from sports, but whatever.
Casey:
I don't know, maybe that's bothersome to most.
Casey:
To me, that's not as bad as circle back and keep me in the loop and all the other god-awful corporatisms.
Casey:
Parking lot.
Casey:
Parking lot, exactly.
Casey:
But anyway, so if I do some self-directed learning, let's say, I don't know, maybe I learn a little bit about Node for whatever reason.
Casey:
The likelihood that I'm going to be able to bring that back to the office in a direct way is virtually non-existent.
Casey:
Now, there's a lot of ways in which I can bring it back to the office in an indirect way.
Casey:
For example, a more robust knowledge of JavaScript is going to serve me well when I'm writing JavaScript for a web browser.
Casey:
But the likelihood that I'm ever going to be asked to do a node project for work is virtually nonexistent.
Casey:
And that's a bummer, and that sucks.
Casey:
And it's not that we don't learn at work, but it's hard...
Casey:
It's hard when what you're learning is so far removed from what you're doing day to day.
Casey:
And I could make, and I think John was making, a pretty solid argument that React, well, yes, it's all UI, but the mechanisms are so far removed from what Apple does in UIKit.
Casey:
How do you really apply that if you're a UIKit engineer?
John:
And all this is kind of so discontent and agitation like boy if you're really turned on by these exciting developments that are happening elsewhere and then you go back to work and realize I can't like forget about it direct application of the knowledge like I could do I get to write node but like I can't even incorporate these ideas into my work.
John:
to the degree that i think i should be able to like we get some ideas some ideas are small i'm like yes i can apply them to what i'm actually doing in this new ui kit framework but some ideas are large and it's like this idea only makes sense at the scale of like how is the api designed how is what is the model of ui interaction and like the model of react is just so much different than the model of ui kit it's such a
John:
It's such a big idea that, you know, it's like structure, not like details, that how do you apply that if you're not going to say I'm going to make some whole new, you know, UI paradigm, and then that's just not something you get to do.
Marco:
yeah all right uh do we want to do a quick word from a friend and then we can talk about some car related stuff our first sponsor this week is our friends once again at cards against humanity now last last time they sponsored us they sent john a toaster to review instead of doing a typical ad read i actually have no ad copy for them they didn't give me any
Marco:
So, this week, they have sent John another toaster.
Marco:
John, what did you think of your current toaster?
John:
All right.
John:
No context for this one.
John:
If you want to know why the hell I'm talking about toasters, listen to the last episode.
John:
This toaster is the Panasonic NBG110P.
John:
Great names to have these things.
John:
I haven't listened to my old Hypercritical Toaster episode in a long time, but my recollection is that
John:
Something that I talked about on the show was the idea that I had seen toasters that seemed to use different technology to heat the food.
John:
And I was like, boy, this is great.
John:
I bet these are going to heat up faster and heat more evenly.
John:
And pretty soon all toasters will be like this.
John:
uh and but when i went to go buy toasters i looked around i didn't see any of these high-tech toasters like maybe i was just imagining it that was just a fad in the 80s or 90s and i just forgot about it but all the toasters were back to the same old you know designs that i'd seen in the past well this panasonic toaster is very close to those sort of futuristic uh you know advanced toasters that i was thinking of that i thought all toasters would be like it has a heating element on the bottom it looks sort of normal but it's got a heating element two heating elements on the top one of which is near infrared and one of which is far infrared
John:
uh one of them someone in the chat room tell me which is which i'm assuming it's the near gives off lots of visible light so it's almost like the toaster has a big light inside it but that's actually part of the heating element anyway bottom line is this thing makes toast really fast it was like a minute and 30 seconds faster than my big expensive toaster wow and that's like that's like double the speed right and it was fairly even there's only one element on the bottom and two elements on the top so if you put
John:
if you put four slices of toast in there it's not quite as good as having two elements heating them but wow is it definitely fast is that faster than a slot toaster at making toast because that's one of the advantages that the slot toaster people usually cite is that slot toasters apparently make toast faster maybe i don't know i don't have one to time it against i just timed it against it in my other toaster um but in other respects this toaster is weird like as you expect from a toaster made by panasonic which is not sort of a kitchen appliance brand at least not in this country like
John:
It's very vertical and upright.
John:
The controls are below the door instead of to the side, so it's like saving horizontal counter space.
John:
The cord comes out of the front right corner of the toaster.
John:
I don't understand this design.
John:
Maybe it's meant to be tucked into something, but I don't think you're supposed to have walls close to it.
John:
It's very confusing.
John:
um and like it's got a power button on it have you ever seen a toaster with a power button not like a power button to turn on to toast food but a power button as in now the toaster is on now you can use the controls that are on the toaster like it you know it's on and off and so you need either you either need to remember to turn it off or maybe you don't remember to turn i don't know it was like it does it have parasitic power loss if you don't turn the power off it's very strange and the controls in the front this is big on having presets and
John:
where it's like instead of it does have controls for temperature and controls for time, all of which are digital.
John:
And the temperature settings are like five or six little different settings that you can set and you don't have to do each time.
John:
But
John:
It also has buttons for various types of food.
John:
And if I had to guess what these, you know, what kind of buttons you would have on a toaster, there are six of them, I would not have guessed.
John:
The first one is toast.
John:
Fine, I guessed that one.
John:
Second one is waffle, frozen waffle.
John:
Yeah, Eggos.
John:
The third button is a roll, and it also says reheat.
John:
So I guess you're reheating rolls.
John:
The fourth one is frozen pizza.
John:
Fifth one is quick reheat, and it shows a chicken leg.
John:
and the last one is hash brown it shows frozen bread waffle roll pizza chicken hash brown like i don't i don't these buttons confuse me i feel like if they were just gone and you just had to use the normal controls it would be better um but anyway this is a very interesting toaster i think this was the sweet home pick for the best toaster it toasts bread really fast it's kind of small you can't fit four full-size pieces of bread into it the tray does slide out when you open the door
John:
It has a lot of things to recommend.
John:
It's not bad, but it's pretty darn weird.
Marco:
It seems like it might be... Do you think it would be a fair pick if you had, like you do, concerns about counter space usage?
John:
It's very high, though.
John:
The thing is, I'll give up.
John:
It's just about...
John:
half an inch or an inch too narrow to put two slices of bread side by side in it and it's frustrating you know like if you try to put it says a four slice toaster but you gotta have some pretty darn small bread you cannot get four full size like and it's it's frustrating when you get something that's like just a little bit like because you can fit them in there if you kind of wedge it and smush them together and that that just doesn't feel comfortable so
Marco:
i wouldn't sacrifice i would i would give up that extra inch of counter space easily just be able to fit four slices of toast in it but can't argue with speed super fast the bread slice count that a toaster advertises they can toast at once is kind of like the number of people that tents advertise they can sleep sleeps four hobbits like you basically always have to like add two yeah
Marco:
John, how do you think this toaster ranks among the other now two that you have?
John:
It's tough because it has a lot of things to recommend it over the previous toaster, but the previous toaster is just so much more normal.
John:
Like it's slower, but I think the previous one did a better job at four slices of bread.
John:
It actually fit four slices.
John:
It seemed to heat them more evenly.
John:
The controls were definitely more conventional.
John:
I would probably pick this weird, crazy, fancy toaster over the previous one just because at least it has some headline advantages.
John:
The other one is like just...
John:
does everything okay i think i would i don't know it's a tough choice i think i would probably just keep wedging the bread in there and just be happy that it toasts really fast as opposed to the other one which is just kind of like you know the dials and all that business this one doesn't have the dial problem you set the you only have like six settings to set it but once you find out which of those six settings works best for your bread you don't have to change it you just hit the power button hit toast i think i'd go with the fancy one although i would i would have complaints about it all the time
Marco:
you yeah unlike my fancy toaster which the only complaint to have about it is a stupid spring in the door which apparently is only on my particular unit nice all right well thanks a lot to cards against humanity for sponsoring our show once again check them out cards against humanity all right that was i love this i love this series this is so good i hope it never stops
Marco:
Can all of our sponsors do stuff like this?
Casey:
I hope so.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
Casey:
That's a Star Wars reference, John.
Casey:
I can't take myself seriously.
Casey:
We started a car-themed podcast called Neutral.
Casey:
And at first, everyone was like, yay, Marco and John are back.
Casey:
And there's that other guy.
Casey:
And then after a few episodes, they were like, yay, why are they still talking?
Casey:
But all of a sudden, like a phoenix, except not really at all.
Casey:
the neutral is kind of coming back from the dead because here it is on our apple themed technology show there is humongous talk these days that apple might make a car i don't know about you two but i'm feeling pretty darn smug right now how about you guys
Marco:
oh i'm i'm scared that they're actually gonna do it i really i really don't think they should i mean i not knowing anything about whether any of these rumors are credible uh i mean there's to me there's so many reasons why this might be a terrible idea well let's look at the sourcing here let's see where you know i have put a bunch of links in there where who is saying that apple is doing anything having to do with cars uh well nine to five mac
John:
Right.
John:
So a nine to five max says something.
John:
They're talking about who they hired.
John:
Hired the head of Mercedes-Benz R&D.
John:
I think he did like the interactive, like the, you know, the screen type stuff in size Mercedes-Benz and their R&D thing.
John:
It's like, all right, whatever.
John:
Like, I mean...
John:
We know they have CarPlay.
John:
That's not like a secret.
John:
And you hired a guy who does the CarPlay-ish stuff for Mercedes-Benz.
John:
Fine.
John:
And it's on 9 to 5 Mac.
John:
It's probably credible.
John:
This probably happened, but it doesn't make us freak out too much.
Casey:
But then the Wall Street Journal weighs in on the whole issue.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Then the Wall Street Journal posts this big thing that is pretty unequivocal.
John:
Like the Wall Street Journal is not a rumor site and they're...
John:
Their record, the track record for Apple is pretty good.
John:
They tend to get a lot of these sort of what we assume are controlled leaks and stuff.
John:
But this was like, what was the title?
John:
Apple gears up to challenge Tesla and electric cars.
John:
And it's a big, long article.
John:
And it's talking all about that, you know, that that they're secretly working.
John:
Hundreds of employees are secretly working, creating an Apple branded electric car.
John:
And that, you know, lots of important people are on the project and it was started a year ago and they've got engineers from Ford working on it.
John:
And the person who was making it was given permission to create a thousand person team and to post employees for different parts of the company.
John:
All the same things that Apple kind of, you know, like when the iPhone was made.
John:
with uh forestall going around and snagging all the good engineers from other parts of the company saying do you want to come work on our secret project or whatever an apple spokesman declined to comment yeah so you know we're not saying this is 100 slam dunk but suddenly you start to notice like
John:
I had not been taking any of this Apple Make a Car stuff seriously at all because there are just so many reasons, like Marco said, for Apple to hire all these car-related people.
John:
Like, they have CarPlay.
John:
Like, that explains almost any car hire.
Marco:
I don't know about that.
Marco:
I mean, CarPlay is really a very small move in the grand scheme of things.
Marco:
Like...
Marco:
It's not a big initiative as far as we can tell so far from what we see on the outside.
Marco:
And I should clarify.
Marco:
So I did... My app is CarPlay compatible, but none of what I'm saying is informed by any inside knowledge of that.
Marco:
I don't have any inside knowledge of that.
Marco:
So, you know, CarPlay is...
Marco:
It is a very small project that, as far as I can tell, is having a very slow start.
Marco:
It's used by very few cars.
Marco:
It's used by very few people.
Marco:
It's used by very few apps.
Marco:
And among the cars and people and apps that are used with CarPlay, it usually gets mixed reviews.
Marco:
And I don't know if it's the fault of the head units or the controls or the software.
Marco:
I have no idea.
Marco:
But it seems like a pretty tiny hobby project.
Marco:
So I don't think they would be hiring allegedly hundreds of people making the giant secret research lab just to make the next version of CarPlay.
Marco:
I don't think that's plausible.
John:
That's the information we can't confirm.
John:
We can confirm things more or less of who was hired to work at Apple.
John:
And those are the confirmed facts of this case that you can actually...
John:
check on and and like you know they hired the guy from r&d uh mercedes-pence r&d they maybe they hired some guy from ford you can figure that out as well right but you can't confirm hundreds of people being moved from division a to division b you know what i mean like that's that's all just kind of rumors and stuff so what i'm saying is like all the all of the news about a particular executive or a particular hire of an important if we hear if we hear about apple hiring somebody they're probably an important person and those are in the ones and twos and carplay totally explains any of those hires right
John:
What it can't explain, like you said, is if they really are hundreds or thousands of people off in some offsite location working on a big project, that doesn't seem like CarPlay in its current form.
John:
But it could be many other things like
John:
helping to make a you know design the entire interior and interface of a car that they don't happen to make that would be a significant undertaking that would require lots of people partnering with a specific car maker um by the way mixed in with all this are the stories from earlier uh months ago of like tesla's hiring away all the apple employees and uh
John:
going in both directions you know tesla's hiring way apple employees which i i kind of makes sense to me when i read those stories it's like well yeah uh like who wouldn't want to go work for tesla and it's kind of a shame because what immediately popped into my mind is you know elon musk walking through a garden with some apple engineer and saying do you want to sell sugar phones for the rest of your life you want to come with me and change the world casey that's a reference by the way
John:
yeah because like who's the shoes on the other foot now it's like well what's more exciting like revolutionizing the world of cars with electric cars or doing what apple's doing and maybe it's closer maybe it's a toss-up it's certainly not apple versus pepsi but i can imagine it not being very difficult for tesla to hire away apple employees who are car nuts because you don't get to work on cars at apple right or do you yeah
John:
And then the other rumor is that Apple tried to buy Tesla.
John:
You know, lots of people, again, fairly unsubstantiated.
John:
Some people predicting that Apple will buy Tesla.
John:
Some people predicting they already did try them.
John:
But every time you read something like that, it's like, yeah, yeah, it's easy to write that story.
John:
But there are so many things that we have had retroactively confirmed about Apple trying to buy companies that, you know, refuse them or considered buying companies and didn't like it.
John:
Or like trying to drive by Dropbox, not really buying Dropbox and their dalliance with Palm way back in the day.
John:
People can remember that.
John:
Like these are not the best thing about all these stories is they are not entirely unplausible.
John:
These rumors, they don't I don't think any of us 100 percent believe any of these because the evidence is not better supported.
John:
But all of us get to the point where we're willing to entertain the thought.
John:
Right.
Marco:
One of the reasons why I never thought Apple would make a TV set, which I've talked about a few times here before, is that the TV set business is just kind of a messy business.
Marco:
It's a very, very big commodity business, supply chain business, but not in a way that leads to a lot of profit usually, unlike the phone business and their computer business.
Marco:
And it's also not an item that is frequently updated and upgraded.
Marco:
Typically, people buy TVs like every decade or whatever.
Marco:
It's not like a every couple of years kind of thing like a phone or a computer.
Marco:
And there's not a lot of ways an Apple TV, from whatever we know today, TV world to be...
Marco:
there's not really a lot of ways an Apple TV could really meaningfully differentiate itself from what the current little Apple TV puck box for a hundred bucks does or, or what, what another one could do.
Marco:
So it seems like getting into the TV set business is not only unnecessary because they can get all the value they need out of just making the box, but also probably not wise because it just, it's kind of just like, it's kind of a messy business.
Marco:
Well,
Marco:
talk about a messy business how about the car business i mean the car business is you know not only extraordinarily expensive to get started and to run and of course you know apple has the cash if they wanted to build a car factory and design cars they could uh whether they should and whether they would is a very different story but certainly they have the money you know they could afford to set this up even though it is extremely expensive and
Marco:
The big problem I see with it, though, is that, you know, like the television business, the car business is just really kind of messy.
Marco:
Apple doesn't really get into a lot of those, like, messy businesses that often.
Marco:
Cell phones are pretty messy.
John:
Well, they were never a cell phone carrier, for instance.
John:
I know.
John:
They tried to be, though.
John:
That was their first instinct to say, carriers suck.
John:
Can we do a phone without involving carriers?
John:
And they pursued that.
John:
Right.
John:
And they just determined, no, you can't be.
John:
We need the carriers.
John:
Right.
John:
It's it's the type of I know it's not a business that they like to be in, but there are businesses that have been messy until Apple entered them and sort of clarified the thing.
John:
And when I look at this whole situation here, I think to myself, who is the Apple of the car business?
Marco:
either one of you two i would argue bmw but i am hugely biased bmw are you crazy i mean i would say there isn't one i mean there there is i mean as just as car analogies are often used and frequently misused in in tech discussions and debates uh i think in this this massive car analogy there is no equivalent there is no fair point i mean i think there's 100 there's an apple of the car business and it's tesla
John:
The reason it's Tesla is not so much for anything like, oh, because they have a big tablet on the dashboard.
John:
They're the Apple of the car business.
John:
No, they're the Apple of the car business because time for Johnny, I have to come out.
John:
They reimagined what the car could be and they took out all the crap in the car.
John:
Like they're even getting rid of hydraulic brakes.
John:
It's like there's nothing.
John:
Go see a Tesla Model S. There's no car there.
John:
there is no car inside that car like you look around in it and like there's a big cavernous thing a trunk in the back and it has seats to go in it and what's in the front there's a big cavernous thing where you put it's like where the hell is the car and in the interior there's no yes like and there's the massive simplification of the car like they're talking about how many parts the car has a lot of these things are like you know
John:
There are 10,000 components retired to make a car or whatever.
John:
The number of parts in a Tesla compared to the number of parts in an internal combustion engine alone, let alone the entire car surrounding it, is just night and day.
John:
And so that's the type of simplification.
John:
Not that Tesla invented the electric car.
John:
Obviously, this is another reason why I think they like Apple.
John:
But that type of simplification of like, we're not just going to make a car.
John:
We're going to...
John:
make something that is simpler and better and you know has fewer parts and less things that can go wrong and different characteristics and thing and people are going to tell us you can't because of you know range problems or you know like that it's not it doesn't make nice noises like internal combustion engine all these other things but
John:
we're going to do it anyway and the other part that's like apple is you know apple didn't invent the mp3 player the mobile phone or anything else tesla did not invent the electric car many people have made electric cars before them and most of them had not been that great like from the gm ev1 way back in the day with its lead acid batteries all the way up through all the different models that are and the hybrids and the things that have gone in between and tesla
John:
is it you know takes the apple approach of sort of leading from the top uh doing whatever it takes to make a good electric car which turned out to cost like 100 grand right but it's you know it's it's the first electric car that people actually say is a good car and that's totally an apple type of thing to do and the whole way that it's made is such a difference from you know dealing with all the internal combustion and everything right so
John:
That makes me think that it's not impossible for a company to do an Apple-like thing to cars.
John:
Tesla shows, of course, how difficult it is because you have dealer organizations making so you can't sell your car in your states and all the crazy government regulations.
John:
And it's not guaranteed that even with all the government subsidies that Tesla is going to come out on top and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
John:
But I 100% think Tesla is the Apple of cars.
John:
And that's kind of bad for Apple making a car because if there's already an Apple of cars, what the hell is Apple going to do if they can't buy Tesla?
Casey:
No, no, no.
Casey:
See, here's the thing.
Casey:
I know you're wrong that Tesla is the Apple of cars.
Casey:
And the reason you're wrong is because a software update actually made the Tesla faster.
John:
Ooh.
John:
Apple used to do that all the time back in the old days.
Casey:
Just kidding.
John:
OS X used to get faster with every release and the same hardware.
John:
Those were the days.
John:
Well, it did that by starting off being super slow and crappy.
John:
Tesla didn't start off, but they just shaved a couple seconds here in their office.
John:
i'm just being silly oh and we forgot the other rumor involved with the car thing that we talked about at a previous show is like you know minivan spotted with weird stuff on the roof and reportedly apple self-driving cars and we talked about that and said that is very easily explained by apple doing something like street view which we think they need uh is apple interested in self-driving cars that's a that's totally an apple style simplification like you don't even need to drive the car but i think apple is not as interested in google as google is in that kind of basic research at this point
Marco:
Yeah, and for whatever it's worth, the Wall Street Journal article said specifically that a person familiar with the project said that self-driving cars are not part of Apple's current plan.
Marco:
And that's also, I mean, that's for the best.
Marco:
I mean, how well do you think Apple does with really complicated academic AI kind of problems?
Marco:
Like, that's not really their strong point.
John:
And honestly, I think at this point, Apple's ability to make a car...
John:
No matter how many people they hire now, how many hundred engineers they put on it, like, look how long it took Tesla to make its first car with the help of essentially buying Lotuses and strapping its batteries and engines on them.
John:
Like, Apple has a leg up on them and that they have a hojillion dollars and that helps you along significantly, but...
John:
It takes a long time to build expertise, and even if you can buy expertise, it takes a long time to buy expertise and get it all working together.
John:
Again, I think they could do it, but it would be a long road, and if Apple decided that it wants to make a car because it believes cars can be simplified and can be made better or whatever...
John:
The obvious move is to buy Tesla because they've already done so much of that work and their philosophy of simplification and reimagining the car as something both better and less complex than it was before.
John:
It's totally in line with the type of stuff that Apple does.
John:
It's just that Apple doesn't really know anything about cars at this point.
Casey:
So has there been a time in the past when Apple has taken a product that was basically fully formed and bought the company and made it their own?
Casey:
I think, like, what was it?
Casey:
Sound Jam became iTunes.
Casey:
Is that right?
John:
That worked out well.
Casey:
That's sort of kind of what I'm talking about.
John:
But if they bought Tesla, don't you imagine they would keep the Tesla brand like they wouldn't make it the Apple car?
John:
Actually, I guess to that end, Beats is probably the obvious answer to my question.
John:
Right.
John:
I mean, they didn't even want to change the brand of the headphone maker.
John:
I would imagine they would keep the Tesla brand.
John:
Yeah, I don't know.
Marco:
There's so many things about this that just make me really skeptical that these reports are getting the right big picture.
Marco:
you know you can you can pick up bits and pieces of information here and there and you can say oh well they hired this person who has a car background and it seems like they're making a big lab and you know all this stuff you can put together the bits and pieces but i i really don't know if like if the conclusion is well of course they're building a car because they're i mean as i said there's so many reasons why that is not an apple like business to enter and you know not to say apple can't change and enter new businesses that's how progress is made but
Marco:
This just doesn't seem like the right business to enter.
Marco:
I mean, you know, you mess this up, people die.
Marco:
Like, it's very serious.
Marco:
It's very cumbersome of a business to enter, to be in at all.
Marco:
It is extremely hyper-competitive.
John:
Well, I would not call it hyper-competitive.
John:
I would call it, there are large barriers to entry, which is kind of the opposite of hyper-competitive.
John:
Like, the fact that GM is still in business shows that it's not that...
John:
How competitive can it really be where when you go out of business, the government puts you back into business and your cars aren't really that great and your cars do tend to kill people sometimes.
John:
But like it'll all work out in the end.
John:
Like, yeah, it's it.
John:
There are high barriers to entry.
John:
But like the argument I see in a lot of places is like.
John:
even from the the gm executive you know that the car business like you kind of did with tv business the car business is not like a high profit business it's low margin it's difficult and like i always see people saying that whether it's about tvs or about cars like well then why the hell are you even in this business you just describe your own business as pretty darn crappy right but you could describe the pc market the same way oh it's low margin it's a race to the bottom it's crappy somehow apple lent just to make money there and
John:
the phone market in similar ways apple's big thing kind of like tesla at this point is we find the most profitable part of the market which is usually near the top and we make a lot of money in that part and maybe we expand down as we're able to but i i don't think it's impossible for apple to make margins on its theoretical car that would make gm cry because the apple is better at you know because first of all apple's car is going to be way simpler than an internal combustion engine car apple already has the
John:
some of the expertise and contacts to do the battery stuff and you know like they already buy a lot of lithium batteries yeah like there is definite synergies there but like i i don't entirely buy this story either but like almost every argument i've seen against it and even the tv for that matter like apple knows where to get lcds from apple can stick something inside it like is it a low margin business apple's tv wouldn't be low margin you know what i mean like if apple makes a tv it will not be like oh we make two dollars on every tv if apple makes a car it will not be a low margin car
John:
I don't know what the margins on the Model S are, especially with all the government subsidies being factored in.
John:
But if Apple was making the Model S, they could make it for less money just because you've got to have money to make money.
John:
You've got to have the deals.
John:
You've got to have the contracts.
John:
Apple could make the Tesla for less money than Tesla is making it.
John:
So immediately, the car has higher margins than it has there.
John:
So all those arguments, again, aren't as compelling to me as the idea of like,
John:
that apple doesn't want to make cars because like why doesn't apple make boats why don't they make airplanes why don't they sell real estate like they're you know they're a company that uses technology to make people's lives better but a certain point when you go into like cars or constructing buildings or uh opening uh medical clinics around the country these are all things that apple could do but it starts to drift off of the path of what i picture as the
John:
a business that Apple would want to get into.
John:
Just because it involves technology, everything involves technology at this point.
John:
So I have, this one Wall Street Journal story made me take it seriously, but it has not convinced me that it's happening.
Marco:
Right, because I think, you know, what a few people have said is that, you know, they worry about Apple's focus.
Marco:
You know, if this is true and if they do end up making a car, like, you know, should we be worried about the focus?
Marco:
And I think one way to look at this is, you know, you've heard, I'm pretty sure Steve used to say this, I know Tim always says this,
Marco:
which is that apple tends to only uh or ideally the ideal apple maybe maybe not the actual apple but the ideal apple uh is a company that only enters markets where they think they can make a really meaningful difference but that doesn't help you in here does it because don't you think they would say we can totally make a meaningful difference by changing the way everybody drives like this is totally a meaningful difference
Marco:
Well, but from the product side, we already have electric cars.
John:
I know, but they've never really been done right.
John:
And Tesla is being choked to death by the rest of the automotive industry.
John:
I kind of think of Tesla that way.
John:
It's like a fledgling little bird.
John:
We all want it to fly, but it's constantly getting beaten down.
John:
And it's amazing that it has done as well as it can with government help and everything.
John:
But wouldn't we all feel terrible if Tesla just didn't make it?
John:
yeah that would be unfortunate like because it was like we know that they've made a good car like the model s is a good car i don't care i mean yes it's 100 grand it better be a good car but it is a good car it's like the first good electric car like the roaster didn't even apply that it has limitations and so on and so forth it's like wow someone finally did it you know it's it's nice to drive it's attractive uh it's got all the advantages you expect from an electric car it's really fun like
John:
They did it, right?
John:
And now you just keep, you know, well, they can make a cheaper one.
John:
They can make a $30,000 model.
John:
They make an SUV.
John:
Like, you want them to just spool up and eventually become a real car company.
John:
And if they failed, if they kind of like, oh, we didn't quite make it.
John:
We're filing for bankruptcy or whatever.
John:
Everyone would be disappointed.
John:
So I think that shows that we want someone to come in and make a significant difference in the industry.
John:
Whether that has to involve Apple at all, I don't know.
John:
I mean, and if we don't want to, like, Marco keeps groaning because he doesn't like the idea of Apple making a car.
John:
But, like,
John:
you don't think they're going to be pulling people off ui kit to work on the car you know maybe kind of for the interface but of course they will but not to the degree that like people got pulled off os 10 to work on ui kit like there are there are no automotive engineers at apple who are going to get pulled off their current project to work on the car like automotive engineers are you know that's a different skill set of mechanical engineering you know maybe the manufacturing people will be some crossover but i feel like it wouldn't be as big of a focus diversion as many other things that apple does do so i'm not
John:
groaning quite as much about losing focus on, you know... Because I assume they would just hire new people.
John:
Or, like I said, they would just buy Tesla.
John:
They come with a bunch of people who already know how to make cars.
Marco:
What I was really getting at with the make a meaningful difference thing...
Marco:
think about it from the buyer's perspective like if you are buying an apple car or let's say right now let's say you're buying a tesla because that's the closest thing we have to what we think this might you know the kind of thing we think this would be you probably probably if you look at what's in the market today it would probably be closest to a tesla than any other vehicle maybe a leaf but you know probably probably closer to a tesla uh so if you think about that as as a driver
Marco:
I mean, none of us drive electric cars, so we don't really... Maybe this is not the right... Maybe we're not the right people to be speculating on this part, but is there that much of a difference when you're driving the car, when you're owning the car, whether it's electric or gas, so much so that an Apple car could be radically different to own and operate and drive than any other car?
Marco:
I don't think the differences are that big.
John:
I think they are.
John:
I don't...
John:
Other than the battery, which is still a concern, but Tesla has a built in way to replace and everything like that.
John:
The maintenance, the maintenance concerns and costs and the number of things that can go wrong.
John:
Like there's just less stuff in the damn car.
John:
It's electric motors.
John:
And like once the brakes are electric, too.
John:
Yeah, you got to replace brake pads.
John:
But like there's no fluids.
John:
There's no like, you know, the hydraulic system is just there's no oil.
John:
There's no gaskets.
John:
It's just like so much stuff that you have to deal with with car maintenance goes away.
John:
and so i you know i i just think that is that's a different experience of driving a car well but but what can apple bring to that that tesla and nissan and everybody else can't yeah i mean that's why i think they should just buy tesla like but that's the problem but you know so what can apple bring to it that the other companies can't well what they can bring to it is assured uh future for tesla if they buy it right because
John:
If you were worried about Tesla, if they're not going to make it, if they can't make, you know, $100,000 cars are fine, but if they can't feel the $30,000 model, they're never going to be a player in the industry because you just have to come down and price a little bit if you're going to sell, you know, any significant number of cars.
John:
And if Tesla...
John:
can't get that done on its own apple can make sure that that happens yeah that's that's a pretty weak argument though and obviously they would make they would make the ui and the interface inside it much better than it is now hopefully i mean there are areas for simplification in the interior of a car that that you would hope i mean maybe today not today's apple we've all lost faith in their ability to make decent interfaces but
John:
The Apple of old, you would imagine, could simplify the interior of the car in the same way that the iPad simplified the music player and the iPhone simplified the phone interface.
John:
Maybe you could say Tesla already did that by putting a big iPad in the dashboard, but I don't know.
John:
I don't think Apple would be bringing as much to this as they brought to phones or anything like that.
John:
Is that the question they're asking themselves?
John:
Tesla looks like they've already done a lot of the work, so we shouldn't even bother.
John:
Maybe.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
I keep coming back to what's in it for Apple.
Casey:
And I think we've been dancing around that question, you know, this entire discussion.
Casey:
And what is it that doing a car would serve for Apple?
Casey:
Now, maybe it would keep your engineers entertained.
Casey:
We've talked on and off about how the worst reason.
Casey:
Well, I'm not saying it's a good reason, but it's... Your engineers would kill themselves.
Marco:
It would keep your designers entertained.
Casey:
Maybe.
Casey:
Whatever the case may be.
Casey:
I mean, we've talked about talent retention here and there over the years, and that would theoretically retain talent.
Casey:
But of course, I'm also assuming that every nerd is also a car nut, and that could not be further from the truth.
Casey:
The only other thing I can think of is, what if there's some sort of technology that Apple has invented or figured out how to leverage in such a way that it lends itself to...
Casey:
to a vehicle rather than to a piece of electronics.
Casey:
What I'm thinking of is, you know, the click wheel made the iPod, in many ways made the iPod the iPod.
John:
Phil Schiller came up with that, though.
Casey:
Click steering.
Casey:
Yeah, exactly.
John:
It's different.
John:
So give me what's an example of technology hypothetical that you can imagine this being the case for.
Casey:
So to finish my thought just very quickly, multi-touch, yeah, it wasn't new, but it was leveraged differently.
Casey:
And there are a couple of other examples that I can't think of off the top of my head.
Casey:
But what if they had some crazy new battery technology?
Casey:
And the reason it's not in iOS devices right now or MacBooks right now is because it's just too freaking big.
Casey:
Maybe these batteries are...
Casey:
Hugely, hugely, hugely efficient.
Casey:
They can charge in 12 seconds, but unfortunately, they're just freaking massive.
Casey:
And so the only thing that this is really good for is an electric vehicle.
Casey:
Granted, this is all hugely hypothetical, but...
Casey:
In that case, maybe they would have something to contribute.
Casey:
And that seems to me to be the kind of thing that would make Apple say, well, maybe we should give this a shot.
Casey:
Some sort of either different and interesting application of an existing technology or even better, some sort of brand new technology that for whatever reason, they just can't shoehorn into a iPad or an iPhone or a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro or whatever.
John:
You're thinking of Mr. Fusion, aren't you?
Casey:
That or a flux capacitor, yeah.
John:
Yeah, the chat room had that one.
John:
Yeah, but that is perhaps the least Apple-like thing that I could possibly think of.
John:
Google tries to do basic research, and even they don't do this type of thing.
John:
There is no secret battery breakthrough technology that Apple has that only works with big batteries.
John:
If anyone's going to come up with that, it's going to be...
John:
a university theoretical physicists are like, it's first, what's going to happen is the basic research is going to say that something is potentially possible.
John:
And then a bunch of people are going to try to do it.
John:
And the first person to pull it off is probably not going to be like Apple just doesn't do that kind of basic research.
John:
That's just not, I mean, and I don't think that's going to change about the company.
John:
This is not the way they work.
John:
Like, what does it say?
John:
Google outspends them in basic R&D, but like, I don't know, some big multiple.
John:
And Google is not compared to like, you know, the real basic research going on in, you know, the fields of science and engineering.
John:
Google self-driving cars are, you know,
John:
not a drop in the bucket compared to people who are trying to spending like just years and years working on whatever carbon nanotube battery technology type stuff like that stuff's going to come and when it's you know apple always grabs the stuff that's just at the edge of what's possible and they apply their engineering and manufacturing expertise to bring it to existence but i don't think that apple has anything like that for batteries like
John:
For something else, maybe they have a really good idea about the interface of a car, but there are a lot of limitations on the interface of a car because people are kind of used to what it is and there's government regulations saying how it has to be.
Marco:
I also don't think I want Apple making the interface to my car because there is, I mean, for many of the same reasons we discussed early on in Neutral, which nobody listened to,
Marco:
We discussed our feelings on touch screens versus knobs and buttons versus a combination of the two.
Marco:
And I think where we all came down is we actually don't like the Tesla approach of everything's on the touch screen.
Marco:
Like, I like knobs and buttons for all the controls that are necessary in my car for basic operations.
Marco:
Things like the ventilation controls and, you know, like anything that's on the center console that's not like the navigation screen.
Marco:
I want knobs and buttons for it.
Marco:
And even the navigation screen, like I don't want a touch screen because the ones I've seen and used have been terrible.
Marco:
I want like the wheel, the iDrive wheel that BMWs have is great.
Marco:
The Audi has a somewhat similar one.
Marco:
Toyota and Lexus have a really weird, terrible pointing stick system that's just awful.
Marco:
And I've seen many other hideous systems from other brands.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
For the most part, I want knobs and buttons.
Marco:
Because what you need in a car for both safety, especially, number one, safety, and also for just reduced annoyance, you need that button to work every time.
Marco:
You need it to respond within the same amount of time every time.
Marco:
Because what you don't need to be doing in a car and what you shouldn't be doing in a car is having to check up on the state of what you think you just did to make sure it took.
Marco:
or to reissue a command that the car misinterpreted.
Marco:
And if you look at Apple's current software designs and systems and styles and just the standards by which they hold themselves in reality, what we get from them in practice, it's not that solid.
Marco:
You know, there are parts of it that are, like the kernel's pretty good these days, but...
Marco:
The UIs, all the stuff sitting on top, the services and everything, this requires a very different degree of reliability than what consumer software for computers and tablets and phones really requires.
Marco:
The things in cars need to work every time.
Marco:
And if they miss just a little bit, if it's just a little bit buggy or a little bit slow or a little bit inconsistent, it's really annoying and potentially very unsafe.
Marco:
And so I don't think I would want Apple making that kind of software in my car, at least as we know them today.
Marco:
And maybe they can do that in the future, but I'd be very worried if they did it today.
John:
Don't you think the Apple Watch is reassuring in this regard, though?
John:
Because what mostly you're talking about is like what they did with the phone is they made it all screen because they realized that the buttons were limiting.
John:
And really, the number of interesting things you can do with the phone when it's just all screen just expand greatly.
John:
It becomes a general purpose computing device.
John:
Whereas on the watch, they made a slightly different decision.
John:
Yeah, it's all screen because they expect similar type of things.
John:
But
John:
the little digital crown thing and the button on the side acknowledge that in this application it's not just about oh i can make this a general purpose computing device because it's so darn small so other aspects like quick access and reliable reliable use of you know like why don't i just make people pinch on the screen well it's a different context here they're not afraid afraid to make it you know the the highlight feature of their watch user interface to be a knob essentially
John:
I would imagine if Apple had a take on a car, like what you're envisioning is like, boy, if Apple made a car, it would look like just a big giant iPad in the middle of the dash.
John:
That's essentially what Tesla did.
John:
I would hope that if Apple did a car, they would recognize that this context is also different than the mobile phone context and that what's appropriate on a mobile phone making it just a giant screen
John:
would also not be appropriate here.
John:
So it would have, not that it would have a digital crown, but that they would have knobs and buttons and stuff on it.
John:
And it would not be entirely screen.
John:
I expect a big screen to be featured heavily, but I would not be surprised if an Apple-designed car interior had more knobs and buttons than a Tesla one does.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So let's put this in the parking lot.
Casey:
I couldn't even say it with a straight face.
Casey:
I tried so hard to get it out with a straight face.
Casey:
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Casey:
So let's assume for the sake of conversation that CarPlay doesn't exist.
Casey:
It basically doesn't.
Casey:
God, the two of us are harsh today.
Marco:
No, it hasn't gone very far.
Marco:
Maybe it will in the future, but right now it really has not gone very far.
Casey:
Yeah, and that's a fair point.
Casey:
So...
Casey:
If we take it that CarPlay either doesn't exist or barely exists, wouldn't it make the most sense that all of these hires and all of this activity is probably about making what we call CarPlay today?
Casey:
I mean, that just seems the most obvious to me.
Casey:
The thought of actually constructing an automobile seems kind of crazy to me.
John:
Yeah, partnering.
John:
If Apple's interested in cars, partnering with a car manufacturer to do what we talked about back in Neutral is like,
John:
these car makers all want to do it themselves they want to be like oh we we have our internal design group that does all our you know ford interiors with the new my ford touch whatever you know like they want to do it themselves it's a point of pride but they're terrible at it because they don't have much experience cars used to not be about software and then seemingly overnight night cars came about software first the engines were about software but that was like oh it's not visible it's not user interface you know so all of a sudden our engines all have 20 computers in them
John:
they seem to make that transition okay but when it came to make you know human computer interfaces inside the cars they have not done well and they haven't been able to attract that expertise so we're always looking like if you could just bring someone from the outside like let apple do your interior but no car maker wants to let some you know computer company come in and design that they want you know it's like like bmw or whatever it's like it's a point of pride we make the interiors and they just keep trying and they refine them and they get better at them
John:
Uh, but I imagine if you're Apple and all the people at Apple, including the big fancy executives who make the decisions, drive super expensive cars and kind of like how all the executives had super expensive cell phones, but still thought they were all crap.
John:
I bet a lot of those executives with similar tastes drive to work in their a hundred, $200,000 cars and say, boy, the interior and interface of this car is terrible.
John:
And like, this is the best car you could buy.
John:
Like I'm, it's not because it's a cheap car.
John:
Like,
John:
I'm rich.
John:
I have a lot of money.
John:
I still have to use a crappy cell phone and deal with my crappy TV set and drive a car that I love everything about except for the user interface in the interior, right?
John:
And so the channeling that frustration would be like, you know...
John:
can't we can't we work with bmw mercedes porsche honda hell anybody will anybody let us like work with them at the level we want to work with them and say we own the interior user interface of your car you do the engine you do the car you do the structure you do the suspension you do everything else but we own how you turn the windshield wipers one how you adjust the radio how you call someone on a cell phone from your car like let us do all that for you and so far no car if apple has made those overtures no car manufacturer has taken them up on the deal and again i don't blame them because
John:
If I was a carmaker, I'd be like, F you.
John:
What you're basically doing is cutting us out at the knees and saying, you're half a carmaker now.
John:
Please, Apple, come in and become the most valuable differentiator of our car line, relegating us to a mere manufacturer of a drivetrain and body shop.
John:
Nobody wants to do that, right?
John:
But I can imagine Apple wanting to do that.
John:
And maybe that's plan A. And plan B is, well, can't we just buy Tesla?
John:
And plan C is, we'll just make our own damn car.
John:
And that's
John:
That's a hell of an extrapolation of the order of events.
John:
And I don't know what kind of gaps there are between plan A, B and C. But plan A sounds plausible that Apple would want to be more involved in the interior of a car.
John:
And CarPlay is like the weakest, most piddling little attempt to get Apple anything inside a car.
Casey:
Yeah, that's exactly what I was driving at.
Casey:
And I come back to maybe, you know, when we started this conversation, one of you, I think John had asked, well, who is the Apple of cars?
Casey:
And maybe the better question is, who's the AT&T?
Casey:
Who is the most beleaguered?
Casey:
Who is the most desperate?
Casey:
Who is the most willing to let Apple just saunter in?
Casey:
I think you mean singular.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Actually, you're right.
Casey:
I'm sorry.
Casey:
That's very true.
Casey:
I do mean singular.
Casey:
So who is the most desperate and most willing to let Apple, you know, just waltz in and kind of take over the show?
Casey:
And I don't know who that is today.
John:
Alfa Romeo.
John:
No, wait, let's try again.
John:
Everyone's already owned by somebody else.
John:
Like any beleaguered brand, like, you know, Tata or Fiat already bought them.
Yeah.
Casey:
Who's left?
Casey:
But you see my point, right?
Casey:
I mean, who is most willing to do that?
Casey:
I think Saab before they disappear, because Saab is dead now, right?
John:
Yeah, GM bought them, right?
Casey:
And then spun them off, I thought, or just let them die, one or the other.
John:
Yeah, Saab is gone.
Casey:
So like Saturn?
Casey:
No, they're gone too.
Casey:
What kind of shape is Nissan in?
Casey:
I thought they were doing well.
Casey:
Mitsubishi was hurting last I heard.
John:
Yeah, Mitsubishi, but they don't offer a good car for Apple to put its stuff inside.
John:
The car is a much more important part of the entire product than the cell network was for the iPhone, arguably, even when they pick the bad cell network, right?
John:
And also the phone always had sort of like, if we do well, obviously we'll expand outward.
John:
Like we won't be AT&T or singular only forever.
John:
We're successful.
John:
Whereas if you're successful with a car, what do you think?
John:
Every car company is going to be like, Oh yeah, totally.
John:
Apple come in and do our, you know, like it's not, I don't see a path forward for that.
John:
It's like, you just, either you do something like car play where you try to get buy-in from, and this car play could still work.
John:
Like,
John:
you're not owning the interior but every interior has a place where you can put your crap and some limited integration of course androids trying to do the same thing like i think the the prospects for carplay are similar for the prospects of you buy your tv from someone else and let us control some part of the interface and in practice that kind of sort of works like that's the puck device category like well we don't make your tv we don't control the interface those menus you bring up to adjust the picture controls we don't control any of that
John:
uh we don't control your remote but you can attach this box to one of your inputs and use our own little remote and then we sort of take over your tv for a small period of time and it's not great but it works and other people try to do it so that's car play that's the android car thing or whatever but that's not going to get us to like that's not going to resolve our dissatisfaction in the same way that doesn't suddenly make us all love our tvs because we have seven pucks attached to them
Marco:
Well, and also it's not a great metaphor because TVs were kind of just made to be taken over.
Marco:
Whereas if you want to properly integrate into a car system and take over the UI, you need to be integrated into a lot more.
Marco:
It's a lot more complicated than just like, oh, there's a giant screen, take it over.
Marco:
Most cars have multiple displays and gauges and different control surfaces all over the place and all sorts of different things you got to hook into if you really wanted to.
Marco:
to take it over and you know over time it's only going to get more complicated like look at what our fancy cars have we have the heads-up displays we have cameras in the mirror to look at stuff on the road you got sensors all around the car you got the navigation screen you got media controls you got navigation itself you have all these like the mobile office bs all these different things like and the number of systems in cars that are that are going to be integrated into everyday models is going to keep going up over time as you seem to get cheaper
Marco:
So the model of what CarPlay is doing now is always going to be very limited and is really, if anything, going to keep being relegated to a smaller and smaller proportion of the car's overall smarts and displays.
John:
But like television, the car interior is under attack from usurpers from the outside, right?
John:
Like...
John:
Automatic, as an example, like a previous sponsor of the podcast lets you shove a thing into a standard port on your car and give it a bunch of features that it should have had.
John:
And already if car manufacturers knew what the hell they were doing, but they don't.
John:
So use this when we all used to have GPS is stuck inside our cars when it you know, when it wasn't on our phones.
John:
And it wasn't built into the cars.
John:
That was an attack from the outside.
John:
Hey, if car makers knew what the hell they were doing, every car would have GPS built in, but they don't.
John:
So buy this Garmin thing and suck your cup into your dashboard.
John:
Right.
John:
Us, everyone connecting iPods to their stereo systems long before car makers got a clue.
John:
Like there is a constant assault from outside world of the faster moving technology sector.
John:
To do things that sometimes it's just kind of like taking advantage of your car hardware.
John:
Sometimes it's an entirely separate system like the GPS, but sometimes like automatic, it's like, you know, help you find your car in the parking lot.
John:
Why can't you do that already?
John:
Because car makers have no idea what they're doing.
John:
Buy this thing and we'll help you do it, right?
John:
And I don't know.
John:
That's not...
John:
It's not like they're going to win, like they're going to overwhelm it from the outside because they can't.
John:
And Marco, you're totally right.
John:
Like attaching a bunch of these things is like it's worse than attaching pucks to RTE because like the experience should be entirely integrated.
John:
It should know how fast your car is going, where you're probably going to, how much pressure is in the tires, what the current g-force being pulled is, whether it's okay to interrupt you with a call because it knows how you're like total integration.
John:
Like that's, you know, you ask what could Apple add to the car experience.
John:
If this is maybe the idealized Apple, they could add an interface that takes into account all those things in a way no car maker has and do it all without relying on a bunch of other stuff that you stick inside the car.
Casey:
Yeah, I think you guys are both right.
Casey:
The only thing that makes me doubt you is what if they were to work with a car manufacturer that already has a bus?
Casey:
I think Volkswagen, for example, and I'm not talking buses in what the Brits would call a coach.
Casey:
I'm saying a service bus.
Casey:
And so...
Casey:
As an example, I think that Volkswagen has some hilariously named and mildly inappropriate service bus that all of their different components talk to.
Casey:
And I think BMW does the same thing, actually, and presumably most modern car manufacturers do.
Casey:
So maybe this isn't really narrowing it down at all.
Yeah.
Casey:
My friend Brian, who had a Volkswagen R32, I remember that he had done something.
Casey:
I don't recall the specifics, but he had done something with the Volkswagen CAN bus, as I believe what it's called.
Casey:
Thank you, Matt Donders, in the chat, where he had added a gauge or something like that.
Casey:
Whatever he did, he did something different.
Casey:
That was possible because basically all of the cars, different computers were talking to each other on one common bus.
Casey:
And so if that were the case in, say, a Volkswagen or a BMW or something like that, then maybe they could do something more than just the fairly rudimentary CarPlay implementation they have now.
Casey:
Maybe they could add gauges, not to say the gauges are really the be all end all, but just as a simple example.
Casey:
You know, something like that is possible without presumably too much work if they can just get themselves onto the CAN bus.
Marco:
Yeah, but as soon as anyone does that, as soon as Apple plugs into that, they're going to just lock it down.
Marco:
Because as John said, the car manufacturers kind of don't want someone else to come take over their systems and plug into their systems.
Marco:
They want to control the whole thing for lots of good reasons, for themselves, for their businesses, for safety.
Marco:
There's so many reasons why they're not going to let anyone else just plug into their bus and drive all over it.
John:
it's like well microsoft did that with ford right weren't they the like the ford my touch interior thing like microsoft partnered with them yeah but that was like two desperate companies i mean right well the whole idea is like that it's almost as if it was to ford's advantage for that interface to not be too good because like i said if the reason people are buying your car is because everybody knows it's the car with the awesome apple interface and like you got to check it like if that becomes the value proposition of your car if it is the differentiator
John:
you don't like people are buying your car not because of something you did you are giving there's some portion of value and attractiveness inherent in your product and you're giving the most important portion of that to apple like it's kind of like that you know the cell network you know uh we want the iphone in our network it turns out that people don't care what network it is they'll get at&t if it means they get to have the iphone the iphone becomes the most important thing uh
John:
It's not like, oh, this is going to make people love AT&T.
John:
No, it's going to make people love the iPhone.
John:
That is the differentiator, and that's where the value is, and they just want you to be a dumb pipe, and now you're sad.
Casey:
Well, but that's exactly what Ford did with the MyFordSync or whatever it was, which was Microsoft behind the scenes, and they made it clear that it was Microsoft.
Casey:
That was a selling point.
John:
Right, but it wasn't that good, and no one was buying a
John:
ford because of like if all of a sudden people bought fords because everyone knew that fords are the cars with the great interfaces that like they never had that reputation that was that was never the value proposition of a ford and if it had become one if it'd be like i wasn't going to buy it for but now everybody tells me like the same reason like i'm not into apple but everyone tells me an iphone is an awesome cell phone so i'm interested and i'm going to check it out right
Casey:
I guess.
Casey:
But I mean, to take it on its flip side, I feel like I've heard many times that say Cadillac's navigation interface is just atrociously bad.
Casey:
And we talked a long time, especially Marco, about how awful the Lexus interface is.
Casey:
So yeah, maybe you don't want it to be a selling point, but you certainly don't want it to be a liability either.
John:
Yeah, well, you're kind of right that it was, you know, Microsoft desperation.
John:
But Ford is actually one of the American car companies that does not
John:
constantly making terrible cars and being bailed out by the government and like you know if you had to pick what is what is the best american car maker i think ford is a pretty strong case to be major ford in terms of both financial health of the company and the quality of the vehicles they put out there's there's spot exceptions you can see you can find exceptional cars and you know all the other makers as well but ford overall was it was not the most desperate of all companies
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Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Anything else on cars?
Casey:
Yeah, one more thing, I think.
Marco:
We have more than one more thing.
John:
Go ahead.
John:
Well, one more major thing to bring this back down to earth now.
John:
Followed by three weeks of follow-up.
John:
Too busy speculating about this.
John:
Let's all now assume that Apple is not going to make a car.
John:
But let's assume that these rumors about some large project...
John:
at apple involving cars in some way that is not street view and that is not merely an extension of existing car play exists because if if this wall street journal article like say it gets a bunch of things wrong and it guesses wrong about what these people are doing but there really is a large number of people apple's gearing up and how like like marco said this seems crazy that these people would all be working on car play so they're not making a car and if this is not about street view and if this is not car play but it is car related what the hell is it
Marco:
I mean, honestly, I think a Street View style project from those little minivans that we've already seen pictures of that I don't know if we definitely know that they're from Apple.
Marco:
I think that's kind of vague as to what the connection is, but assume they are.
Marco:
I think that would be enough to have a big staff and a big lab like that might be the reason that might be all this is because, you know, quote, all this is is actually like to do a Street View kind of thing is a huge project.
Marco:
But why would that be in a big building?
Marco:
Well, it's a lot of data, a lot of software to write, a lot of data to manage and people to manage and a fleet of vehicles to manage.
Marco:
I mean, that's a big job.
Marco:
There's a reason why only Google has that feature right now.
Marco:
Did anybody else ever do a Street View?
Marco:
People in the flyovers are not nearly as good.
Marco:
I don't think anyone else did Street View except them, right?
John:
Not to my knowledge.
John:
So the rumor is like a thousand person team.
John:
Like if they were doing Street View, which I probably think they are, I would imagine this effort to be more distributed, like necessarily more distributed.
John:
It's not as if all the cars are leaving from California and coming back to California.
John:
Well, it is Apple.
John:
It's like all the AOL traffic going through Virginia.
John:
I don't know.
John:
It just it doesn't seem like I believe the Street View thing 100 percent.
John:
And I suppose that could take maybe 100 people, but not 1000.
John:
And I'm not sure I would hire anyone from a car company to lead that because that's more of a, I would hire someone from like a mapping company or someone who, you know, they already have acquisitions from the keyhole or whatever company that gave them their map data.
John:
Like,
John:
It doesn't fit with this rumor.
John:
I guess it depends on how much of the Wall Street Journal article you think they got correct.
John:
And I'm willing to believe that they got everything correct except for what these people are doing.
John:
I'm willing to believe that the number of people is right, that their sort of general location is right, that the people who are leading them are correctly identified, but they just are guessing wrong about what these people are doing because they're not actually making a car.
John:
They're doing something.
John:
And I'm not sure what that something is.
Marco:
I mean, the reality is, like, if you take these little collection of facts, assuming they're true, I think making a car is the most likely conclusion to draw from that.
Marco:
It's not what I want them to be doing.
Marco:
It's not what I think they should be doing, from what I know today.
Marco:
I mean, this could also, you know, if you said to people in 2004, should Apple make a phone?
Marco:
you hear from a lot of people who would say yes and a lot of people who would say, well, maybe they should just really focus on the computers.
Marco:
You know, so we don't know.
Marco:
I don't know by saying, I don't think they should really do this.
Marco:
Maybe they will blow us away.
Marco:
I don't think that's very likely just because it's like,
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I think they can make a car that is designed very well.
Marco:
But I think about like, you know, if you look at like TVs and why, again, I know I said a lot of this earlier, but if you look at why they don't make a TV, I think one of the reasons they don't make a TV is that TVs really have very little interface.
Marco:
Like the TV itself, like the boxes that plug into it have an interface.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
the tv itself has very little interface really uh you're basically making tiny adjustments sometimes adjusting the volume maybe and then picking inputs like that's basically what you're doing uh everything else now you know you're plugging a box and do do things there so like tvs like apple could not bring a whole lot to that because most of what a tv does is a dumb screen that you turn on and off and pick inputs from
Marco:
but they would own the whole screen it's like what can they bring to the phone it's basically just a big screen they own everything on the screen it defines the the experience well it's well but they already have that with the box anyway so compare that to the car to actual car usage like this is kind of what i was getting at earlier when i was saying like how much can apple bring to this like as you're using your car
Marco:
What parts of what you're doing in your car, when you're actually owning and driving a car, what parts of that process and that experience are you heavily interacting with something where interface quality is that important?
Marco:
I think one of the reasons why cars have such mediocre interfaces so often is because it doesn't really matter that much.
Marco:
Because for the most part, you're barely ever looking at the controls, I hope.
Marco:
And you're not doing that much.
Marco:
There's like 12 buttons.
Marco:
You're not doing a massive amount of things.
Marco:
You're not running freeform software for plenty of good reasons that probably won't change.
Marco:
There's not that much going on there.
Marco:
And many of these advances probably shouldn't happen for safety reasons.
Marco:
So I
Marco:
I really doubt what value Apple could realistically bring to this that would make it worth all this trouble, all this hassle, all the risk, all the expense, all the loss of focus.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
What problem are we really desperate for an Apple car to solve?
Marco:
Because look, all of us agree that cars often have pretty mediocre interfaces, but all of us still drive these cars with pretty mediocre interfaces.
Marco:
We all chose to buy the ones we bought for different reasons, really.
Marco:
So not only do I not think Apple could make a huge difference here, but I'm also skeptical as to whether they would succeed much in the market because people buy cars for so many different reasons beyond the things Apple's good at.
John:
Well, I mean, Apple's good at fashion, too, and people buy cars for those reasons.
John:
But I think your view of what Apple can bring to this is too narrow.
John:
Like, it's not just about the user interface.
John:
Like I said, it's bringing the things that Tesla has essentially already brought to it, only bringing it to more people.
John:
The ownership and use experience of an electric car is, I think, significantly different from an internal combustion engine car, and it's also different from a hybrid.
John:
and all the parts of the car that don't necessarily have to do with driving getting in and out of it that like the ownership experience the maintenance experience like what the car looks like how big it can be where it can fit like oh there's the places you can innovate with an electric car where you can't innovate with internal combustion energy because you have different constraints and tesla is doing that now and that that is the that's why i call them the apple of cars like that is what they're bringing to it and yes also hopefully making the interior have nicer interface and having integration with your iphone and having all this other you know like
John:
All the things you would expect them to do.
John:
But I think it's the sort of total ownership experience that Apple would be bringing to it.
John:
But I keep going back to what Apple is making with the car.
John:
And you said, if this rumor is true, the most likely thing, like if you think they're right about everything, is that they're making a car.
John:
I have to think that like...
John:
A thousand persons seems too small.
John:
And I would think that there would have to be something in this article about them hiring away automotive engineers from car makers, like poaching people from different parts of the organization.
John:
Like if I just look at these facts, what it looks like they're doing.
John:
If I say every fact in this Wall Street Journal article is correct is...
John:
they're working on something having to do with interfaces inside cars.
John:
It does not look to me like they're making a car because this, I mean, you know, again, if everything is article is true, I would think you should be hiring way, way, way, way, way more mechanical engineers, automotive engineers and stuff like that.
John:
And be much less concerned about like poaching people from the rest of the organization to do like software and just hiring.
John:
Like what it just, it just seems like, again, unless you're buying Tesla, which already comes with those people,
John:
This rumor, the most likely thing, if everything was true in this article, it's like, oh, they're doing something much more significant having to do with the interior of cars.
John:
That's what it looks like to me.
John:
I'm bored by that too, though.
Yeah.
Casey:
Well, speaking of boring, what if it's something even more boring than anything we've discussed?
Casey:
Like, what if they're just using their knowledge of system on a chip and building an ECU?
Casey:
Or what if they're building a custom ECU to work with their custom head unit to vertically integrate or whatever the business-y term is, all the electronics and software in a car?
Casey:
But it could be any car.
Casey:
It could be GMs, could be Fords, or it could be Bentley.
Casey:
Who cares?
Yeah.
Casey:
I mean, it's a very boring answer, which is why I don't think it's really Apple style, but it's a possibility.
Casey:
I mean, they've gotten pretty good at chip design.
John:
Yeah, but like, again, who's going to buy that?
John:
Like, I don't think they want to be a parts vendor for car makers.
John:
Like, that's a loser business.
John:
And like, anything where you think an Apple will vend this product or service or technology to all the car makers, that is kind of the same reason they can't seem to make a TV.
John:
It's like,
John:
and apple will let this technology work with every cable company and all the tv like the industry does not want that industry does not want apple to come in and and you know sort of do what they did to the remember they did the music industry and it's like oh well apple's not going to do that to my industry right and they basically did it to the cell phone industry too like it was all about they did the music industry it's like damn now apple has way more power than we ever wanted them to how do we get ourselves into this situation and then it was like the video companies you know
John:
tv movies are like we're not going to let apple do what they did to the music companies and they were super resistant and helped competitors or whatever it's like like ha ha we learned our lesson the people who didn't learn that lesson were the cell phone companies they weren't paying enough attention they're like yeah let's see what apple did the record companies yeah and now like the movie studios are all scared of them ha ha like they weren't even thinking about themselves and apple came and did the same thing for them essentially it's like how did this happen you know and the car makers are
John:
i would hope wouldn't let that type of if only because of pride and stubbornness which is it seems to be very strong in the car business because there are so few car companies and because so many of them have like long story traditions having to do with families and everything that they do they do not want an outsider coming in and like first of all everybody's got it's not a differentiator so screw that and and second of all they don't want anybody coming in and telling their business but
John:
i don't know like it seems to me that apple if again if these rumors are true wants to do something having to do with cars and i think they seem to be starting in the interior and growing slowly and so unless they buy tesla which they totally should because it would be great uh i don't see them making a car
Marco:
Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Cards Against Humanity, Fracture, and Squarespace.
Marco:
And we will see you next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Because it was accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
John:
And if you're into Twitter.
Marco:
you can follow them at c-a-s-e-y-l-i-s-s so that's casey list m-a-r-c-o-a-r-m-n-g-marco-r-m-n-s-i-r-a-c-u-s-a-siracusa it's accidental they did it in
Casey:
We didn't even mention that.
John:
Oh, it's shaped like a minivan.
Marco:
Oh, God.
Marco:
Can you imagine?
Marco:
Maybe it's a compact hatchback of some sort, but even that's kind of... They just mean it's shaped like...
John:
Where does this rumor come from?
John:
Well, in electric cars, you can have things like the Leaf that look sort of small or even like the smart cars that have small internal combustion.
John:
Like you can end up with a car that is, what, for lack of a better term, dorky looking.
John:
And it's all just about like, oh, it's a little commuter car.
John:
It's just for transportation purposes.
John:
And like...
John:
That's less interesting to me as well.
John:
But then I can imagine someone who doesn't know anything about cars seeing that and saying, oh, it's like a minivan or hell seeing the Tesla Model X and seeing it's kind of like a minivan, like anything that doesn't look like a, you know, a Ford Crown Victoria from their childhood.
John:
It's like a minivan to them.
Casey:
But wouldn't you default to SUV rather than minivan if you didn't know any better and didn't know anything about cars?
John:
I would imagine it has a snub-nosed front, like someone saying it looks like a minivan, that there's not a lot of front overhang because you don't have an engine there and you can get better passenger packaging, like the smart cars look.
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
And then if you make that a little bit larger and puff it up,
John:
If it doesn't have, like, a nose, it doesn't have a hood, then it looks like a minivan.
John:
Or a crossover.
John:
You know, I don't know.
John:
That... That's... Of all the doomsday scenarios, them making some little electric commuter car, like a Leaf, or, like, it's just so uninteresting because that is... And I just...
John:
I mean, we all read that big Johnny Ive interview, right?
John:
I haven't.
John:
I haven't finished it yet.
John:
That's so good.
John:
No homework.
John:
It was homework.
John:
I did.
John:
I did like half of it so far.
John:
Give me a break.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Everyone was raving about that article.
John:
But if you have read the was a Leander Kenny's Johnny Ive book, a lot of that article read like a book report on the Johnny Ive book, which is not to say it's a bad thing because it's great.
John:
Like if you haven't read the book, there's a lot of information.
John:
And of course, he had actual interviews and access.
John:
And that's the good part of the article.
John:
But a lot of it, I felt like I was wading through information that I already knew from the book.
John:
that's not a slam in the article, it's just why I found it difficult to get through.
John:
But anyway, at one point, Johnny Ive looks out of the window of his Bentley at the Toyota Echo next to him and complains that the styling is terrible.
John:
So I don't think it's beyond the realm of possibility that
John:
apple would be interested in designing a car and that it would be a dorky car like this is a dorky car done right you know what i mean like small you know commuter car for people who don't need to go long distances and owning this is so much better for people who never even wanted to own a car owning this is so much unlike owning a car that it will be great for you and you'd be like oh they would never do that eddie q is on the board of ferrari and uh you know johnny ive has aston martins and like they like great cool cars but
John:
Johnny Ive was looking disdainfully at the Echo, not because I think he thinks the Toyota Echo, like the idea of a small economical car is terrible, but just because he thought it wasn't designed right.
John:
And in his mind, he's like, I could do a little car that's much better than that.
Marco:
And he was also picking on somebody who's already down.
Marco:
I mean, Toyota has not made anything attractive since at least the 90s, if not earlier.
John:
Yeah.
John:
But as soon as the Super got all puffy, it was all downhill.
John:
Although some of the early Lexuses weren't that bad.
John:
Like, remember the original Lexus SC Coupe?
John:
That was interesting design, don't you think?
John:
Really?
John:
The Lexus SC?
John:
You talk about the convertible hardtop?
John:
No, the original SC.
John:
You guys maybe don't remember.
John:
I'll get you.
Marco:
I'm looking it up.
Marco:
Hold on.
John:
That?
John:
You like that?
John:
No, like super old.
John:
No, you got to go back in time.
John:
Like what?
John:
When did Lexus, when Lexus came out as a company?
John:
They have one that's like, they have a picture here of a 93 and 92.
John:
Try the SC300, SC400.
Marco:
It looks kind of like an Integra and a Miata had a baby.
Marco:
And this is like kind of what came out.
John:
This is comparatively much tighter, as in the skin is stretched much tighter over this car than it was.
John:
The innovative thing about this doesn't look like it looking back, but wow, look how smooth and curved the front and back are.
John:
This is before cars all became water balloons, but I remember reading a story about this that one of the design inspirations for the styling of this car was literally taking a water balloon and squeezing it
John:
and squeezing with your hand and seeing the different shapes that it sort of bulges into.
John:
But compare this to like current actual water balloon cars, and this looks like sporty and svelte and just... I'm not sure I agree with you on how good this is.
John:
yeah i'm with marco this is not a very attractive car at all it's a little bit dated but at the time it came out it was very refined and stylish and it was a distinctive it didn't look like a mercedes or bmw unlike for example the ls 400 which was like you know the poor man's mercedes uh literally only 10 times more reliable and quieter uh but it was it was like this and the original gs actually had some distinctive styling cues where you could say this is like and you know the current line of lexus is also have distinctive styling cues they're just all ugly
John:
our styling is a big giant ugly bowtie mouth yeah them and acura i i would really say like like this the last couple years have really not been kind to most car design uh we've had some really really bad cars being made recently new i really like the new accord and i like the new five series two of our it happened to be two of our cars but i think the styling of those cars took a definite turn for the better because the previous generation accord was but ugly and the previous generation five was not good
Marco:
Yeah, I agree with those, actually.
Marco:
But you can look around the industry and you can see a lot of things that seem to keep getting worse.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Like, for example, everything Acura makes.
Marco:
Yep.
Marco:
Every Acura, every Lexus, some BMWs, if I can say.
Marco:
I really don't like the new M3 styling, as we talked about with the skin flaps.
Marco:
I don't like that at all.
John:
um i don't know like acura i think is a little bit of an upswing because they had they had a really serious unfortunate beak error and they're i think they're trying to come out of that like the mdx was like the low point it's just or maybe the zdx whatever that other thing like i think they're starting to come out of it i think when they merge that merge their high-end sedans back together
John:
into whatever it is the rlx now that the the tsx and the rl became the single car the rlx that is a rationalization and the styling of that car is not entirely hideous and really the rl wasn't entirely hideous either but yeah they're off in a weird direction i think that i think they're trying to come back we're like bmw went off in a weird direction too and they're trying to gather it back but
John:
I think, you know, like you said, the new the new three series starts to go off in a weird direction again.
John:
Like the five is five was the maybe the peak comeback period.
John:
And we'll see what the next five looks like to see if it gets better or worse.
Marco:
God, the Maxima's terrible these days.
Marco:
Sorry.
Marco:
Yeah, don't even look at the Maxima anymore.
Marco:
Just don't look.
Marco:
Oh, my God.
Marco:
I heard it was getting better because it had some dark times, but it just keeps getting worse.
Casey:
I miss the 4DSC.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, the one I had, the 96 Maxima, it wasn't incredibly attractive, but it was at least neutral.
Marco:
Ding.
Marco:
This, the new one, oh, boy.
Marco:
Jeez.
Marco:
What are they doing?
Marco:
What is wrong with Nissan?
Marco:
Oh, what a shame.
Marco:
The Maxima was so good.
Marco:
It lost its way so severely.
John:
Yep.
John:
Nissan had some interesting things like the when the Ultima did the wraparound taillights like that was going a little bit too far, but at least it was interesting.
John:
And I think the Maxima like one or two generations ago also had some interesting features.
John:
It was still kind of puffy, but they were kind of in the right direction.
John:
And then they just lost it for the current generation.
Casey:
Oh, man.
Casey:
I miss neutral.
Marco:
Wow, the Ultima's pretty rough these days, too.
Casey:
Boy, what are they thinking?
Casey:
The car market is not that welcoming as of late.
Casey:
I mean, what is there really that's compelling these days?
Marco:
Well, I think the move to electric is interesting.
Marco:
It's still pretty limited and expensive, but I think it's similar to the move to SSDs and computers.
Marco:
That's clearly the way forward eventually.
Marco:
Obviously, it's going to move a lot more slowly, I think, than the SST transition.
Marco:
But because it turns out gas engines are good enough for so many things and way better at certain other things that like, yeah, it's going to be a long time before gas engines are even the minority.
Marco:
But I think I think the electric cars are going to be where we are looking for excitement.
Marco:
And, you know, maybe that's why Apple wants to be a part of it.
Marco:
If they do, who knows?
Marco:
But, you know, clearly from from people who who have driven them or from people who own them, there are a lot of compelling differences to them.
Marco:
There's still a lot of downsides, but, you know, we'll get there.
John:
I just looked at the 2015 Maxima.
John:
I was thinking of the 2014 one.
John:
The 2015 one.
John:
Holy cow.
John:
Do they make it even worse?
John:
I'm speechless.
John:
I love this.
John:
I haven't felt this way since the last time when I first saw the rear end of the C7 Corvette.
John:
That's the last time I felt this way.
John:
Let me see.
John:
What happened?
John:
I just put it in the chat room.
John:
what is that oh oh maybe it's a concept all right maybe that's like maybe it's a concept i i just did search for nissan maxima 2015 if this is a concept i feel a little bit better but like yeah this is this is not a shipping car but if it was that would be a big mistake because that is not an attractive vehicle
Marco:
At least it would be different.
Marco:
I mean, you could at least describe this one as polarizing, whereas the regular maxima, you can just describe as mediocre to bad.
Marco:
Polarizing, somebody will love this.
Marco:
People with bad taste, probably, but somebody will love this.
Marco:
Whereas the current maxima, nobody can love it.
John:
That's what I was thinking of the current one.
John:
That design with the little corner cut out of the headlights, the first time they did that was interesting, but now the car is puffy and gross again.
Marco:
It looks like a mistake.
Marco:
It looks like somebody just screwed up while dragging out this design in 3D modeling software.
John:
Everybody Google for Honda Accord 2014 to cleanse your palate.
Casey:
Oh, God, listen to this guy.
Casey:
Oh, wait, wait, wait.
Casey:
The Maxima was at the end of the really sappy Super Bowl commercial from this year.
Casey:
The one where the dad's a race car driver and he picks his son up from school or something like that.
Marco:
Is this the one where they killed children to advertise insurance?
Casey:
No, I said sappy, not stupid.
Casey:
Anyway, the dad picks up his kid after he's missed his entire childhood, but he picks him up in a new Maxima, so all is forgiven.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
I put the link in the chat about one minute and 16 seconds, give or take a little bit.
Marco:
Wait, I'm looking at the 2014 Honda Accord to cleanse my palate.
Marco:
And you're right, it did cleanse my palate because it just looks completely forgettable.
Marco:
Don't look at the hybrid.
Marco:
Don't look at the hybrid.
Marco:
I'm not...
Marco:
I'm looking at the LX sedan on automotive.com.
Marco:
It's just incredibly bland.
Marco:
It's even in that light silver color that all incredibly bland cars in the last decade have been.
John:
It is not bland.
John:
It is distinctive.
John:
It is non-bloaty.
John:
It is attractive.
John:
It has nice wheels.
John:
I agree that it's non-bloaty.
John:
The sheet metal is stuck to the car.
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
Yeah, I will give you that point.
John:
And it is a car-shaped car.
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
Wow.
Marco:
It's not shaped like a snail or a poop.
Marco:
Our standards are pretty low here.
Marco:
This is winning.
John:
Look at that friggin' Maxima.
John:
What is that shaped like?
John:
Not a car.
Marco:
I guess, yeah, that is the epitome of water balloon design.
Casey:
I actually do not think the Accord is very good looking, to be honest with you.
Marco:
You know, it really needs that spoiler lip on the back to keep the wheels on the ground.
Marco:
It's really fast.
Marco:
It does.
John:
You have a little extra downforce for that.
John:
I think it is very attractive.
John:
The rear end is not great, but it's better than past the cords.
John:
But I really like the front of it.
John:
And even like you say, oh, isn't there just a little bit too much chrome on the front?
John:
Like, just look at all the other Hondas that are trying to use the same design language and how gross they are.
John:
And this is the one car that got this design language to be attractive, I think.
Casey:
This looks no different to me than – what's the big Toyota?
John:
The Camry.
John:
This is so different.
John:
Go actually look at a Camry now.
John:
Go Google Camry.
John:
You will see there's a huge difference.
John:
Never mind if you see them in person.
John:
It's not even close.
John:
Like rectilinear headlights.
Marco:
All right, so I'm looking at a Camry now.
John:
It looks the exact same.
Marco:
No, it does not.
John:
Are you crazy?
Marco:
I would say the Accord looks better.
Marco:
Way better.
Marco:
I would say the difference is pretty small.
Casey:
Thank you.
Casey:
I would agree with that, Marco.
John:
No way.
John:
Look at the giant fish mouth and the frigging... Oh, I'm looking at the Avalon.
John:
But the Camry has nothing going for it.
John:
It has no distinction to its design.
John:
It is just a series of little details tacked on to a squishy shape.
Marco:
Well, I would say the same thing is true of the Accord.
Marco:
It just looks a little bit less squishy.
Marco:
There's not a lot going on here.
Marco:
If you think about what would be the dictionary definition of a car, it would have a picture of this next to it.
Marco:
You ever see those pictures where they average every human face, and then it shows the most average face?
John:
No, but this would not be the average.
John:
This is different...
John:
average together like the camry and the maxima and like you do not get the accord it is not the average it may have been the average of a bunch of cars from like a decade ago but it is it is off the beaten path of car makers now i think this car is attractive and classy i would say classy it is not does not embarrass itself in the way that the other cars do because it just disappears it just blends right into whatever
John:
I don't think it just disappears.
John:
I think being classy in this way doesn't disappear in the same way that Casey's beloved 5 Series.
John:
Like, whoa, this is boring.
John:
It just kind of blends in with the background.
John:
It just looks like a car.
John:
The only thing it distinguishes is it's got little kidneys in the front, but otherwise it's just a car-shaped car.
John:
Remember when all the BMWs were all like the same shape, just came in different sizes?
John:
It's not that different from now, honestly.
John:
Well, it is now because they all have these bulges and ripples and flanges all over them, and they all have different ripples and flanges.
John:
But when they all look the same, the complaint was it's too boring.
John:
It doesn't have the excitement of, you know, if I'm going to spend this much money on a car, I want it to look more exciting.
John:
I just don't want it to look like...
John:
the same car in three sizes and super boring.
John:
But I think that's a, you know, having restraint and being sort of a classy car that the places where it decides to emphasize its attractiveness is in the small details, but the overall shape is very just simple and
John:
non-showy, I think it's a perfectly valid way to go.
John:
I think I screwed it up with the back because the taillights aren't particularly nice looking, but the overall shape of the car I think is very pleasing.
Casey:
See, your definition of classy, to me, what you're describing is the E39 M5.
Casey:
When I think of boring and unremarkable, I think of pretty much any accord that's ever been ever.
John:
Another good example is the front air dam, like the big plastic front bumper thing, whatever you're going to call that.
John:
So many car makers, including I think most BMWs these days, just go nuts with that thing and mess it up.
Casey:
Well, the thing with BMWs, you're right, is that – and I've talked about this a million times –
Casey:
The non-M Sport front air dam on a regular BMW is like a little slit and it looks awful.
Casey:
It looks terrible.
Casey:
Most of the reason I insisted on getting myself an M Sport 335 was not because of anything else.
Casey:
Like it doesn't really go any faster.
Casey:
It doesn't handle any better because I have an xDrive.
Casey:
It was strictly for that air dam because it actually looks good.
John:
But I think most of the things try to make everything like it has giant jet intakes and big scoops and flanges and things poking out of it.
John:
And that's why I think that the M Sport ones look worse than the other ones, or at least more gaudy.
John:
and just look at the look at the big front piece of plastic on this accord it is restrained it does not call attention to itself it completes the shape of the car with maybe a little bit of smarty pretensions of like sticking out at the bottom rim a little bit and with a little tiny chrome accent but it does not i mean and just compare it to the the that same part on an m3 current generation m3 which is like screams at you that i'm a transformer
Marco:
Well, but you're just you're making our point, which is like the Accord looks like it looks average and forgettable.
Marco:
It is like it doesn't jump out at you.
Marco:
None of the design just jumps out and says, look at me.
Marco:
I'm a huge design flaw.
Marco:
It just the whole car just looks like an average, completely forgettable car.
John:
Well, average car doesn't have those wheels.
John:
And I would say an average car doesn't have the LED highlights in the headlights.
John:
And, you know, looking restrained, I think, does make a stand.
John:
Again, compared to the Avalon, which looks like a giant cheese grater fish grill flying through the air with a chrome nose on it.
John:
Like, that is what the average car looks like.
John:
Go look at, you know...
John:
like it's not this this is the average car like the the ultima is the average car the maxima is the average car the camry is the average car they do not look like compare the thing i just pasted in the chat room with the accord and say like well you know it calls attention to itself but in a bad way and if you averaged a bunch of cars together i think you would get something to look way more like the avalon than like the oh my god the avalon is ridiculous what is that that's the car that's like and again look at look at the camry with the little chrome like this is uglier than the maxima concept
John:
Exactly.
John:
Like, that's what the average car looks like now.
John:
And look at the front bumper thing.
John:
Well, go look at the Camry.
Casey:
Yeah, you're right.
Casey:
That front air dam is the kind of front air dam that I like, the big gaping hole, taken way too far.
Casey:
Entirely too far.
John:
And on top of it is an ugly chrome nose, and it's got misshapen headlights hanging off the corners, and the fog lights are all misshapen.
Casey:
Oh, we agree about this.
Casey:
What is this?
Marco:
What is this?
Marco:
I'm just blown away by this car, by the Avalon.
Marco:
Oh, my God.
Marco:
I rented an Avalon a couple years ago on a trip, and it was a pretty reasonable car.
Marco:
It was huge and totally marshmallow-y.
Marco:
You couldn't feel or do anything.
Marco:
But it was overall a respectable choice.
Marco:
It looked average.
Marco:
It was black.
Marco:
It was low-key.
Marco:
It was pretty fast, given what it was.
Marco:
And it was comfortable.
Marco:
It was fine.
Marco:
It was a perfectly fine choice.
Marco:
This...
John:
my god i mean go look at the go look now go look at the camry i just pasted in oh that is that is go look at the front piece of plastic on this camry and look at the shape of the headlights and look at how the shape of the headlights just have no conviction like and keep the accord open in other windows you can keep looking back from one to the other look at the freaking front of that camera oh camry and accord they basically look the same are you kidding me look at that thing i didn't wait i didn't say they basically look the same i did
John:
Now that you see them both in front of you, do you understand how the Accord is very different?
John:
And if you average all these cars together, they would not look like that.
John:
And again, throw in the Altima, throw in... This Camry looks like it's been an accident.
Marco:
Doesn't it?
Marco:
like the the way that has like those like half fog lights like on the side and then the whole front the whole front grill is like weirdly shaped and black it looks like it was it was in an accident and it's been half repaired and they haven't like painted the new parts i mean look at the hood look at the hood cut lines even look look at the shape of the headlights look at the hood cut lines look at look at the lack of confidence in the chrome like it's going across the thing through the logo
John:
It just, it's nothing.
John:
And, you know, I think the only other car company, boring car company, that has cars that have the styling that is not embarrassing and hideous is Mazda.
John:
The Mazda 6, again, does not look like other cars, is interesting, has a family resemblance, and it has some interesting styling on it, but it has sort of the courage of its convictions.
Marco:
It says conviction right in the marketing title.
Marco:
Conviction, creativity, courage.
Marco:
This is what changes the game.
Marco:
It's the first word on the page.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
See, so Aaron has a 2007 Mazda 6, which I think is a very pretty car for the time.
Casey:
It has less conviction there.
Casey:
It has the kind of large front air dam that I like.
Casey:
Then the generation after hers, which started in like 2008, 2009, it was one or two generations actually that were just terrible.
Casey:
But I agree with you that the brand new Mazda 6, maybe it's a year or two old now, is also very pretty.
Casey:
And I also really, really like it.
John:
Yeah, I don't like the styling as much as the Accord, but you can't say that it looks like I think they've made it worse.
John:
And when I just paste, it actually looks worse than the original generations.
John:
But like it has kind of shoulders and hips and its headlights have a purposeful, distinct shape.
John:
Same thing with its hood cut lines.
John:
Everything about it is not like I hate cars where it looks like they molded the car out of clay and then someone else came later and cut out where the hood would be.
John:
like even the bm the current bmw3s with like the hood corners that end kind of over on the right and left edges by the by the headlights like it looks like you made a car shape and it was a good car shape but where you put where you cut out for the hood makes your car less attractive like it's not integrated into the shape it's just like you took a a line a laser okay now that's where the hood opens hmm
John:
did you ever speaking of hoods did you watch that i8 video that someone sent us no i watched two seconds of it i didn't have a chance you should because well first of all make marco never buy this car which may be good because we think we shouldn't he shouldn't buy this car so we'll stop him from buying well so far i think i shouldn't buy this car so you don't need to do any convincing there all right but you watch i wish we still have that i think someone emailed to us uh
Marco:
No, I mean, I've never been interested in the i8 because it is not a four-door sedan.
Marco:
Ultimately, I really just want a four-door sedan.
Marco:
And I'm very happy with the one I have.
John:
You know, some of the chat rooms said the BMW i8 screams Tesla anxiety.
John:
Tesla is, with the exception of perhaps of the stupid door handles...
John:
is a actual real regular car like you use it every day nothing about it is weird you can open and close all the doors simply because it has weird doors as well you can open and close all the different trunk hatches you can get in and get out of it it has seats that has you know everything about it is just it's a car you can drive it whereas the i8 is like it's kind of a work of art kind of kind of a statement about something it also kind of works as a car if you're careful
Marco:
All right, so let's take on the big guns now.
Marco:
I don't think the Tesla Model S is that attractive.
John:
It's not.
John:
The front of the Tesla Model S is ugly, like the grill thing, speaking of mouths.
John:
But the overall shape is pretty decent.
Marco:
I would say that the Model S looks extremely blobby.
Marco:
It looks like all the personality has been sanded off.
Marco:
I don't like the light design.
Marco:
I don't like the front or the back design or the side design.
Marco:
And I've seen a number of them in person, and I don't think they use very high-quality paint.
Marco:
The black doesn't look very good.
Marco:
The silver just kind of looks boring.
Marco:
You can look at certain cars.
Marco:
I always get blacks.
Marco:
You can look at certain cars, and you can see certain blacks are better-looking than others.
Marco:
And Tesla, I think, has a pretty crappy one.
Marco:
And like it doesn't it doesn't look like its price at all.
Marco:
And for a car that is so interesting and revolutionary, I think it should look a little more like that.
Marco:
And it doesn't.
John:
That's Tesla's weak spot.
John:
The interior are the same as well.
John:
The materials of the interior, although supposedly in the new models, there's an option for much better seats.
John:
But like the interior of the car does not look like a car of that price.
John:
The materials, the comfort, the thickness of the padding on the seats like it just and like I said, the outside of it.
John:
The paint quality, the detailing, it seems like a lower class than it should be.
John:
I think the overall shape is actually pretty good and actually kind of interesting and muscular, but the front and rear end treatments do not do justice to the overall shape, which I think the overall shape is not bad.
John:
If you blanked over all the headlights and taillights and got rid of that ugly mouth grill on the front and just looked like the shape of the car...
John:
In that regard, I think it does look like an expensive car in this shape because most cars, again, maybe the exception of the Mazda 6, don't look that muscular and purposeful, especially a car with as much interior room as the Model S has.
John:
It doesn't look like...
John:
a big giant crossover SUV thing that's lowered down.
John:
Uh, but I mean, consider what came before the Tesla Roadster was just flat out ugly.
John:
Like it was not an attractive looking car at all.
John:
It was, there's the shape of it was awkward and weird and everything about it.
Casey:
I don't think that's true.
Casey:
I thought it was a decent looking car.
Casey:
I mean, granted, it was basically just a Lotus, but I didn't think it was a bad looking car.
John:
The Lotus looks way better on that same frame than the thing.
John:
But the Model S has something to recommend it, and it sort of defines the Tesla look.
John:
I don't particularly think the Tesla look is that attractive, but I do like the overall shape of the car, and I do think the shape looks a little bit expensive.
John:
But yeah, the detailing.
John:
You can get a yacht floor.
John:
What, in the Model S?
John:
Yeah, there's an option for a yacht floor.
John:
yeah i think they are cranking up the options like what was it what is a yacht floor hey vanian of super duper fame was telling me about the new model of tesla's because he got to drive one you know like the dealership gave him one when his was in for service so he got to drive one of the new fast ones and everything and he's telling about the new options i think like they realize where the weaknesses are like if people spend that much money out of the car they want the interior to feel better than a thirty thousand dollar you know thirty five thousand dollar bmw with cloth seats they don't even make those anymore but they used to right
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
Well, because, no, they still do in Europe, just not in the U.S.
Marco:
No, I mean, like, I mean, the problem Tesla's always had is, like, they've always compared themselves in justifying their high price.
Marco:
They've always said, well, if you compare us to, like, a Mercedes S-Class, which is what we're comparable to, blah, blah, blah.
Marco:
It's not even a contestant.
Marco:
right like if you compare the interior quality to other like the set to a 7 series and s-class or the amenities or yeah or the amenities you know the lexus uh the high-end lexuses like if you compare it to any of the very high-end large sedans um it doesn't quite match up at least it hasn't in the past maybe you know i haven't seen one of these new ones yet but the tesla will take that s-class off the line any day though and so like
John:
So you can kind of start selling it as like in the same way that you don't expect like, you know, an Audi RS or a Porsche GT3.
John:
You know, the interior is going to be like stripped down and bare.
John:
And like that's part of the aesthetic of the car.
John:
Like you're not in.
John:
So like in some ways, Tesla kind of unintentionally has that going for it.
John:
It's like we don't intentionally make it stripped down.
John:
Although I always thought in the first model, like the interior was like the padding was so thin and the seats and everything just because they wanted to save weight.
John:
And like those big, luxurious, cushy seats like you have in your car, Margo, they weigh a lot.
John:
And so if you're trying to cut down on weight, you're going to give it a little bit cheaper seats.
John:
And that's why I think the new seats are an option.
John:
And I wonder how much more they weigh than the other stuff.
John:
But if you're going to go with that thing, at least you have performance to back it up.
John:
I mean, it still weighs a ton and still not going to change direction that well.
John:
But it does...
John:
It does have that super flat cornering attitude that feels weird.
John:
And, you know, it's super fast and quiet and actually a fun electric car to drive by all accounts.
John:
I got to drive one.
John:
I'm tired of guessing how much fun it is.
John:
I think you will find it to be super heavy and corner strangely flat and be really fast in a straight line.
John:
That's that's very likely.
John:
And I'm going to hate the lack of knobs and buttons.
John:
I have not driven one, but I have been driven in one.
John:
And even just being a passenger, I was just
John:
immediately apparent like it's not like i went in expecting to feel this because i didn't really know didn't think about it or whatever how flat it is in cornering like strangely so startling without having you know stiff suspension where you feel every bump because it's just the center of gravity like this humongous weight is on the bottom the bottom of the car and then did i feel that the car felt heavy i can't tell that as a passenger but i just know it is heavy because it is you know i wonder how many people are actually going to listen to this
John:
I've got to cut all this neutral out because people can't take it.
John:
The whole show was neutral.
John:
This is mostly staying in, I think.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Apple Car.
Marco:
It's not our fault.
Marco:
They forced our hand.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
We had to do this.
Marco:
It was an accidental car podcast.