Maybe I'm an outlier here (but I don't think so...) in that CarPlay is an absolute non-negotiable. I don't care (and don't really want...) it to handle climate control, but music, podcasts, weather, messaging, phone, and navigation? Heck yes. The built-in systems are bollocks and 99% of the planet has already committed to Android or Apple for these features in the rest of their outside-the-car life, so the dumbest thing any auto manufacturer could do is push against the tide.
I don't want any ties to a phone manufacturer or OS, honestly. I'll have my car a lot longer than I have my phone. Just give me decent sound and an charge/aux connection. The rest I can do on my phone with a mount.
> I'll have my car a lot longer than I have my phone
Doesn't that make CarPlay/Android Auto a good thing? Provided the car supports both platforms, it means you can change phones during your car's lifespan without having to worry about losing features, and you get new phones as your phone upgrades without having to change your car.
I don't know, what if a third mobile OS is developed and gains traction (or is just one that I prefer) but it isn't supported by the car. What if future releases of iOS or Android are incompatible with a 10-year-old version of CarPlay or Android Auto?
CarPlay and Android Auto were engineered from the start to be as agnostic to the car's hardware as possible. Your car's stereo is really just a dumb screen (i.e. just a display and input/output interface) with the phone doing most of the rendering + a few other things (i.e. providing some car instrumentation, like fuel remaining, if the manufacturer enables it) - the hardware requirements aren't really strict from a performance standpoint (minus CarPlay Ultra, and even then, that's just a tighter integration).
Not just push against connecting your own phone, but also charging you for the features your phone could already provide (for free or for a cost you're already paying as a phone user). GM with $10/month data plans, and Toyota (per the article) with $200/year plans to access navigation.
They might try. But nobody is going to pay for a sub par experience.
Some executives will get a big bonus for pushing this out, and later another for reverting back.
I won’t buy a car that does not have CarPlay. And I know many who are the same. My phone is a centerpiece of my life (gahh I hate saying that), my car however is not.
How about Android but implemented by the car company? (Literally using apps like Google Maps but the main app menu is the car company's skin). I believe this is in effect what GM is doing? That satisfies your argument of using Android or Apple.
That doesn't solve my issue at all, though it might be fine for some. I use my iPhone for everything - maps, podcasts, music, and of course phone and messaging. When I get in my car, I want it to instantly become my mobile office connected to my iPhone. Building those features into the car, regardless of the technology, does nothing for me if it duplicates rather than synchronizes with my out-of-car life.
Yeah but that problem happens with companies like Tesla as well given their oldest cars are dog slow now on the latest OS. I have heard some reports of more bugs being introduced on the oldest models because of less QA (not fully sure though)
The only way out of that is to ignore the infotainment and use your own device like with an AUX port.
Back when I was a software developer, I needed a Mac Book Pro or Mac Pro. But as a Realtor, an iPad makes for an excellent laptop. Extremely portable and does everything I need in a mobile productivity device. For many people, it is absolutely everything they need in a computing device and gets better with each release.
Couple years ago I was in a thrift shop and came across one of these for a steak restaurant - and there was my family cattle brand! Was done to highlight that their meat came from area ranchers, and now will make lovely wall art at my home. No idea if anyone older in the family recalled these placemats or when they were printed.
We have really good family records dating back hundreds of years. What stands out to me is the number of my ancestors who regularly lived into their 80s or 90s 500 years ago. At the same time it's very easy to see that entire branches of the family were wiped out, probably by basic things like Flu, IE: when you see a bunch of young people in their teens or 20s die within a short timeframe, that's the most likely explanation. I'm just a layperson, but it certainly feels intuitive to say that physical work like they did (avoid cardiovascular disease), probably minimal non-processed food diet, and a whole lot of serious luck when it came to avoiding disease and especially childhood maladies, is probably what worked. Sure it's anecdata, but it seems very consistent across many generations.
The 30.0* signs are basically “no trespassing” sign that property owners (stores shops buildings etc) may elect to refuse entry to persons in various modes of carry. Most commonly will allow people to conceal carry with a license. Most places (in mid-large cities) don’t want people walking around openly carrying a gun in their place of business.
The 51% is alcohol & guns don’t go well together. Conservative Texas would probably like to do away with alcohol altogether, they still only allows beer & wine sales on Sunday and only because Sunday Football. Liquor bottles can only be bought at liquor stores (except on sunday). Unlike California where you can pick up some Johnnie & Jameson with school supplies and toilet paper before church.
Most regulations are on when and how you use the firearm. Having a LTC means you have a little more forgiveness for trespassing because the signs were hidden behind the door or plants etc. Constitutional carry will still be charged. But LTC has more penalties for misuse, such as brandishing to intimidate carries greater penalties
The restrictions on unlicensed open carry of a loaded weapon in a vehicle alone makes the Washington regulation way more of a hassle than in in Texas, although they both have location restrictions.
I acknowledge I'm using anecdata and deliberately telling a story to pull at your emotions, but my cousin died suddenly at 45 of a heart attack, having been skiing and surfing just weeks prior, IE: seemingly great health. But, because he had been a (successful!) self-employed person but was in a bit of a bad time (wife cheated, divorce, sudden economic shift...) he didn't have health insurance so put off going to the doctor when he had a weird symptom a week or so before he passed.
I bring this up because in this country our health insurance is broken in every way. We absolutely should be investing in preventative medicine, because doing so would not only have found things like my cousin's situation, but it would also help us ward off both the disease and cost of more chronic illness. Instead most of us dwindle along with very limited access for decades until we either get some condition that forces us into very expensive and time-consuming care, or we end up gutting whatever life savings we might have on our last few months. So is an annual physical really all that big of a deal on the surface? No, but it's emblematic of how broken our approach is to care - to put it in IT terms, we have no monitoring/observability or metrics and we only take action after we've had an incident or breach, and even then we are generally only applying patches not dealing in RCA.
He didn't say it's not a big deal, he said checkups are relatively predictable. Those mean very different things. Moving the predictable costs behind insurance and administration artificially inflates it because there's less pressure on providers to compete.
If people weren't doing dumb things with insurance to try and socialize healthcare costs there's a good chance your friend would have been able to afford going to the doctor whether or not he was insured.
I get your point and I generally agree with everything you've written, but I'm a bit at a loss on the home internet thing... our society is entirely tied to our connectivity at this point, so are you simply recommending people use their internet-connected mobile devices and forego another home provider? With you on the cable thing - even the streaming providers that were supposed to save us have become prohibitively expensive at this point.
Home internet is a luxury if you already have a data plan on your phone to accomplish the necessities - that is for access to government and corporate web sites and educational (school related) needs. Social media, in its basic forms are text and photos which also should fit in most included MVNO data plans such as this one from US Mobile which is $22.50/mo or $228/yr (19/mo)
Unlimited High-Speed Data
Unlimited Talk & Text
20 GB Hotspot Data
FYI - I live in a fairly rural area and have coverage. The standard home internet plan here runs about $90/mo after all taxes and tithes are paid.
>>I see it happen all too often, farmer dies, kids don’t want to do anything with the land
Often they've moved away to The Big City and don't have any connection or the skills, and often too there just isn't a meaningful return in the crop to justify the lifestyle change or added responsibilities of management.
>>For many farmers, this transition has become a valuable secondary source of income and allowed them to continue or expand their operations.
I think every American should read the book The Crazies by Amy Gamerman that was just published, that talks about this issue. Illustrates a lot of what's really going on in our country.
>This is because they are built to go through the machine after each rental
What machine are you referring to here? It sounds like you are referring to some kind of waxing / edge sharpening / cleaning device, which would be extreme luxury compared to the rental shop at my local hill where they intake the rentals for the day and dump them back into a bucket for the next skier.
This is kind of an interesting problem, but it overlooks another variable, at least in the case of skis - it's not just how many days I'm going to use them this year, but also for the next few years. Yes, there are people who buy new skis regularly, but more commonly the person that makes the buy vs rent decision decides that over the next multiple seasons they intend to ski enough to justify the buy decision. This is especially true if you are buying new skis rather than say, rental skis at the end of the season (think kinda like buying a used car that has been depreciated, you can buy used skis that still have a lot of miles...). So my point is simply that the real world problem is actually even more interesting than this hypothetical.
