rob55

oberpongo said:

The conclusion the author is deriving from the survey in the headline of the article is misleading! Only owners of CarPlay were surveyed! Of course they want the feature. But whether prospective car buyers really need it or even know of it is not stated!

On a recent 2018 Audi Q7 loaner (which by my best guess was about 6 months old), there were dozens of stored connections from various customers who connected their iPhones to the loaner's CarPlay system. While this information is anecdotal at best, it does suggest that at least Audi is informing their customers of the availability of the feature. And on a side note, I found it infinitely easier to simply plug in my iPhone and use CarPlay rather than temporarily pair my phone via Bluetooth. 

irwinmaurice said:

Wow - so much knee jerk reactions to what, at most, amounts to maybe a couple hundred dollars.... on a new car that ASP is upwards of $50k (USA)...

It's the principle of the thing. 

GG1 said:

The only way I can justify this in my mind is if there are other software updates at the same time (BMW's navigation maps, iDrive, etc.). I believe BMW charge for navigation maps updates. Of course, with CarPlay, the iPhone has the latest maps already, so that cuts off one recurring revenue stream. Perhaps this $80 yearly charge may be the response to that lost revenue.

This is my theory as well. I never updated the maps in my 2011 328i (even though they didn't have CarPlay back then), simply because I didn't feel like paying $300 for something that happens seamlessly and for free on all our smartphones. 

The other thing I haven't seen pointed out yet is that BMW makes you (at least through the '17 models and some '18 models I looked at) get the NAV package if you're going to opt for CarPlay. 



Now, if they do away with the NAV system requirement, and only charge the $80 per year for CarPlay, this would be way better than being forced to cough up the $1,700. This, I suspect, is little more than wishful thinking.

cgWerks said:

I don't find chip cards to be slow. It seems dependent on the type of reader, and maybe the connection? At places where it works well, I have a hard time seeing how Apple Pay would be any faster (besides the time difference in getting it out of your pocket/wallet).

But, you've nailed the problem why even though I have an iPhone and my bank even keeps prompting me to setup Apple Pay (yet I haven't), is that I have no idea where it works and where it doesn't. It takes longer to try with Apple Pay and find out it doesn't work, than to just use what I know works. Privacy issues aside, Apple Pay seems more cumbersome. (And, I'm a tech guy... imagine the average non-technical user.)

In my personal experience, ApplePay is significantly faster. At the supermarket yesterday, I held up my phone for what must have been (no exaggeration) no more than a second or two. Since I have my debit card as the default, I had to deal with the PIN step on the terminal (I just hit enter), then tapped the "Yes" button on the screen, and I was done. The cashier was just standing there waiting (presumably for a longer chip-and-pin transaction), until she realized that the payment process was complete, and she had to hit a button and hand me my receipt. This is the norm in the places where I regularly use ApplePay. It's that fast. My chip-and-pin experience at the Home Depot last week took at least three to four times as long.

Additionally, I don't randomly try ApplePay when I go to new stores hoping it will work. I simply ask if they accept contactless payments. When I get that blank stare like they have no clue what contactless even is, I simply say, "You know, ApplePay, Android Pay." At that point, they usually say one of three things; yes it works, I don't know, or No it doesn't. I almost never stand there waving my phone around in a futile attempt to get ApplePay to magically work. I did once, but that was only because it initially worked when the retailer got new credit card terminals, and then it suddenly stopped working for a couple of months until they got their act together and fixed it. I'm also vocal about suggesting that they deploy the feature, especially when they have new credit card terminals that should support the feature.  

But all that aside, how can you even compare ApplePay to alternative methods when you haven't even set it up on your phone to actually give it try? That was a rhetorical question, you need not answer.

 

melgross said:

What a bunch of crap. There were plenty of issues with Jobs. He presided over a lot of junk. He also ignored people’s complaints about it. Remember the round “puck” mouse for the iMac? That was all Jobs. The Cube’s problems? Jobs again. MobileMe? Yup! That’s just a few. If you want to blame Cook for issues, blame Jobs for the ones on his watch too.

and by the way, don’t refer him as though he’s still with us. 

And let's not forget one of the most famous examples of him ignoring people's complaints, the infamous "You're holding it wrong!" during (so-called) Antenna-gate.

Don't get me wrong, a case quickly solved the signal attenuation problem, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that there was a wee engineering oversight with the antenna on the iPhone 4.