rcomeau

lkrupp said:

If you need to run Windows then buy a Windows PC.

Not all of us are lucky enough to have everything they need on macOS. I've managed to get down to pretty much one thing on Windows, but a doozy: SolidWorks. There is no  macOS version (nor is there a serious competitor either) and it is one of the standards in the field, which is essentially Windows based. Yes, I am one of maybe 50 who needs this, but I can still lament and I don't look forward to carrying a second laptop just so I can bang out that next prototype while on a long flight (when I get to fly again!).

thethirdshoe said:

There is a way to avoid supporting it for 40 years.

Don't ever sell the car to anyone. 

Go with an Uber/lift like business model. A person pays so much per month to have a car available all the time. The car shows up when needed.  After the vehicle has been completely depreciated in a few years, scrap it and put out the new model.

40 years, yeah right.

Most people don't buy cars just to get from A to B or carry the groceries for the same reason we don't all just wear burlap sacs for clothes. Cars are an also expression of ourselves, so driving that grey Prius on weekends for groceries does not cut it for most car buyers. I am not saying this is good, but it is human nature and why we have so many different model cars and clothes other than burlap sacs.

Keep in mind that not every developer got an M1 the day they came out. We have been developing on the Mac for over 20 years (I recall getting the developer Intel iMac) and we just got our first M1 mini last week. We ordered extra RAM and that was a "special" order.

You have more than your own code to worry about. All of your dependencies have to be migrated and then you have a lot of testing to do. Since Intel chips are still here, there is no fire and most of us have more to do than spend 100% of our development resources porting stuff... Most of us will get there when we need to.

emcnair said:

Prior to the new M1 Macs, there was little functional differents between a Mac and a PC. What really made the difference was external design and Mac OS? Apple's defining difference in the computer market was user experience. How different is that from what they are rumored to do for cars? Most people only care about what they can touch, see and feel. Only geeks and gear heads are going to care about performance specs. And cars are worse than computers. With computers, users will often hit the peak the performance of there computers. I have never driven faster than my car go.

Actually, when Apple made beige boxes that looked like a PC with MacOS running they almost went under. Only when they looked at all aspects of design (the chassis, motherboard design, keyboard, mouse etc...) did they get back to being unique and able to charge a premium for it (and the Intel part was unimportant). If all they are going to to is re-skin a Kia and have some Apple software in the dash screen, they are going to make the beige box mistake. No one is going to pay a premium for a re-skinned Kia.

CheeseFreeze said:

If so, Apple is treating a car like a phone; get the screen from Samsung, the cellular modem from Qualcomm, etc.

In this case you’re not really getting an Apple Car, but a branded Kia with CarOS.

I’m not saying this leads to a bad product at all, but it doesn’t make me excited for the brand and have respect for building a car company from the ground up, like Tesla has been doing. They’ve created their own factories, their own production tech and processes, their own battery tech, chips and software. 

Feels like Apple tried to do this but failed and are now going for a different strategy, which is completely dull and uninspiring.

That said - rumors! We don’t know anything for sure yet. 

Agreed. They can't farm out the design and manufacture of parts that make a car a car to whoever makes the cheapest and then put an Apple logo on it and expect to charge a premium.

I had a Ford Escape once, and while it was dependable and functional, every part inside looked like it came from a different supplier (plastics with different colours and textures that were supposed to the the same), so it oozed a car designed around manufacturing efficiency not driver satisfaction. Apple's strength is in the integration of all the components by controlling the design and manufacturing process (even of the manufacturing is subbed out). Just changing a few side panels on a Kia and putting apple software in it means they completely miss the point of why one buys a premium car. I'll keep my EV Jag, thank you very much and plug in my iPhone to the dash to fix the software.