
More Apple Car Thoughts: Software Culture - subnaught
http://www.mondaynote.com/2015/11/01/more-apple-car-thoughts-software-culture/
======
Rezo
The software folks (Google, Apple) are going to figure out how to build great
cars much faster than the car folks are going to learn how to build great
software.

Car companies are incentivized through their engineering know-how, massive
supply chains and complex dealership relations to keep optimizing complex gas
engines that require significant maintenance. The software folks, having no
burden of legacy on the other hand are incentivized to make the engine and car
platform as simple as possible, basically an electric motor (or 2, or 4...)
with virtually no serviceable parts. The cost and profit structures of the two
sides will look very different, and that is going to make the customer
experience much better on the "innovative" side (no more haggling the price of
a car for example, 1st party servicing, etc).

Forget the Palm quote. Look at Nokia in 2007, when the iPhone was introduced:
50%+ marketshare, 100,000+ employees, 100 million+ devices/year, they already
had "advanced" features like app stores and web browsers. But they were
fundamentally a hardware company and supply chain oriented, optimizing the
bill of materials and crippling their products to death, and could not make
the transition. Not even 10 years later, they are extinct! That is what BMW
and friends should be worried about.

~~~
jarek
> incentivized to make the engine and car platform as simple as possible

The question at core of the post is: how simple is possible?

When iPhone launched it didn't have copy and paste. That was fine because you
can iterate on software and user expectations are different. But you can't
launch a car without airbags.

What complexity can the software folks eliminate and still have a viable
product? The internal combustion drivetrain is a good example, though
replacing it with electric has its own complexities (e.g. batteries and their
control systems). But is there much more? Software-culture companies are
having problems being clever with just door handles. Will you convince users
they don't need reliable cup holders - a plain old boring mechanical part?

If you can't simplify much more, will just IC to electric swap make enough of
a difference?

~~~
timcederman
Terrible example. When the iPhone launched, it could make calls and send
messages extremely reliably. It was foremost a phone. Copy/paste wasn't a core
part of that functionality.

~~~
sorenjan
According to test engineers at Ericsson, the first iPhone was "a crappy phone"
[0]. It routinely dropped calls [1, 2]. It also didn't have 3G or MMS,
something most if not all other phones had at the time. But apparently it was
good enough, did other things well, and could be updated and replaced. That's
a major difference between consumer electronics and cars.

[0] [http://www.techsite.io/2015/10/16/ericsson-engineers-
thought...](http://www.techsite.io/2015/10/16/ericsson-engineers-thought-
iphone-was-a-crappy-phone/) [1]
[http://www.pencomputing.com/reviews/apple_iphone_3months.htm...](http://www.pencomputing.com/reviews/apple_iphone_3months.html)
[2] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2009/07...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2009/07/31/AR2009073100971.html)

~~~
jfoutz
And yet, it seemed to do pretty well.

~~~
kamaal
It was perceived to do very well. And that is the only thing that counts.

That's the same thing today too.

------
weinzierl

        … but does Apple’s personal computing software knowhow 
        translate into the high-reliability real-time code 
        required for a safe, reliable and, of course, elegant 
        electric car?
    

It doesn't have to. Not all the software in a car is high-reliability real-
time code. My prediction is that Apple will make all the user facing software
and buy all the rest. The reason I think so is that it's not enough to write
the high-reliability real-time code. Besides thoroughly testing it you will
have to get it approved by authorities - worldwide.

    
    
       Proud incumbent automakers look down on the interlopers. Dr.-Ing. Dieter 
       Zetsche, head of century-old Daimler-Benz, has no patience for Silicon Valley 
       companies intruding on his turf:
    
    
       “What is important for us is that the brain of the car, the operating system, is 
       not iOS or Android or someone else but it’s our brain […] We do not plan to 
       become the Foxconn of Apple,” Mr. Zetsche said, referring to the Chinese company 
       that manufactures iPhones.
     

That sounds like a Daimler car had a Daimler brain but that's just not true.
The most important ECUs are made by companies like Bosch, Continental or TRW.
These suppliers sell to all car manufacturers and they will be more than happy
to supply one more.

Thinking about it this makes me really curious how Tesla handles this. Has
anyone an idea which third party ECUs from which suppliers they use?

~~~
jarek
> My prediction is that Apple will make all the user facing software and buy
> all the rest.

That's actually a very interesting point in light of the Foxconn comment - it
seems to make a lot of sense for Apple to get the car hardware from a Chinese
manufacturer, e.g. Geely.

------
rb2k_
Maybe only partially related, but one of the things that surprised me the most
when moving to the US from Germany, was seeing the large Mercedes star on one
of the buildings while driving through Sunnyvale [0].

A few days later, I found myself at a BBQ filled with other fellow German ex-
pats and basically all of them were working for Mercedes [1], VW, Bosch [3]
... As it turns out, all of the big German car companies are conducting
research out here.

It seems like a lot of the interesting UI and Autonomous Vehicle research is
being done out here. From what I gather, they seem to think that the
mechanical engineering going into these cars can be done in Germany at a level
that they are happy with, but anything to do with the UI/UX and Software that
controls the vehicle would be a better fit over here.

I am originally from Stuttgart, which is where Bosch, Porsche and Mercedes
were founded and have their headquarters and I tend to agree. Germany is a
great place to optimize an existing technology or come up with interesting
mechanical changes, but dealing with something as fluent and user-centric like
on-screen interfaces or the Software running e.g. the Navigation, doesn't
particularly play to the slow moving German company mindset. I think that as
long as there's a problem that can be measured exactly (torque, gas milage,
ability to withstand mechanical pressure, ...) a German company will do a
great job. For the "softer" qualities, I can see a good symbiosis with the
culture out here in the valley.

That being said, meeting all of these people and seeing the companies within a
20 minute drive was an entertaining turn of events.

[0]
[https://www.google.com/maps/@37.3866231,-122.0357596,3a,15y,...](https://www.google.com/maps/@37.3866231,-122.0357596,3a,15y,243.23h,88.67t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sus2JnQFTcKWtu8UHjbe4_A!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1)

[1] [http://www.mbrdna.com/](http://www.mbrdna.com/)

[2] [http://www.vwerl.com/](http://www.vwerl.com/)

[3]
[http://www.bosch.us/content/language1/html/rtc.htm](http://www.bosch.us/content/language1/html/rtc.htm)

~~~
blumentopf
Based on my experience (from working there), car manufacturers often do not
implement stuff themselves, they outsource. E.g. the HTML5-based infotainmemt
system in the Porsche 918 was not created by Porsche (though they market it as
if it was), but by S1nn.

From a software engineer perspective, if you work at a car manufacturer, you
usually do not write software yourself, you're hired to write specs for
external companies and verify that the results are conformant. Which honestly
is boring.

The car manufacturers should react to the influx of new competitors (like
Apple, Google) by becoming software companies themselves, but management is
too stupid to see that. S1nn is a perfect example: Apple or Google would have
bought the company right away, so should have Porsche. Guess who bought them
instead? Harman.

~~~
rb2k_
> you're hired to write specs for external companies and verify that the
> results are conferment

Sounds like a hilarious game of chinese whispers / telephone. :)

------
paul
I love the quote from Ed Colligan:

Messrs. Zetsche and Lutz might want to meditate on Palm CEO Ed Colligan’s
infelicitous words mocking the newborn iPhone in 2006 [emphasis mine]: “We’ve
learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent
phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to
just walk in.”

~~~
blub
Mythicizing the iPhone is both dishonest and unhelpful. They didn't just
figure it out and walk in, it took them years and many iterations to build a
world class product.

Apple was able to use the wedge of UX to convince customers to but their
devices and gave them time to fix the gaps in their hardware and software.

~~~
paul
How is quoting the Palm CEO dishonest? The fact that he was so wrong about
Apple is kind of the point.

~~~
blub
The point is that he wasn't "so wrong". Apple didn't succeed immediately and
without stumbling a few times. At the same time the competition screwed up
monumentally.

IMO, Apple will need another wedge and that car makers screw up in order to
repeat their iPhone success. This is a possibility, but not a certainty, as
some here proclaim.

------
tormeh
Good point, but I think they already have the culture necessary in whatever
group is responsible for their CPU design. That's a low-fault tolerance
environment, too.

The advantage of the incumbents is that cars, as long as they have to be
driven manually, are not entertainment machines and cannot really be
entertainment machines. Passengers already have their own phones etc.

I think Tesla's on to something, but it's not software. I don't think it will
necessarily transfer well to Apple.

------
spotman
Toyota got a lot of heat over their software implementation surrounding the
whole stuck accelerator debacle.

They have set the bar pretty low, despite their myriad of experience.

Pretty sure a technology company that designs cpu's for a living can do better
than toyotas example of what not to do, at least in an electronics sense.

They have already hired staff that has a lot of experience in this field, and
already had all the engineering chops and bank account to fund this.

While they have a lot of experience to catch up on in the auto industry, I
don't think it will be amateur hour.

Has Apple ever released a cpu that had the same quality control issues as
Apple maps?

------
Multiplayer
Lutz also recently said he thinks Tesla is in huge trouble and that (I'm going
to paraphrase here) "we tried running our own retail locations at bmw and they
are much too expensive so they need to get rid of them asap".

He had an excellent run in the motor industry, but now he seems to be sadly
outdated on what is happening. So I think we should all be happy to take the
opposite side of his position. Which is that huge wrenching changes are
coming. And not from the incumbents.

------
swiley
After Toyota I don't think I would trust a closed source self driving car.

------
lordnacho
I don't see why Apple couldn't win this one as well. His criticisms are
correct; ordinary software crashes all the time and people are cool with it.
Heck, I even spent all of Friday discovering a Swift compiler bug. I'm sure
Apple appreciate that certain kinds of software need to be more sturdy and can
find the expertise somewhere.

But I don't think Apple's products tend to win because of better engineering.
They somehow do OK on making the product and a stellar job of selling it.
They've built a cult around their nice looking things with simple interfaces.
Whenever they make something new, you can always find a friend (non technical)
who praises their stuff. Undoubtedly, when they build this car, that same
friend will be praising the 8th wonder of the world.

------
ksec
May be this Zero Error tolerance for Car Software will help shape the future
direction of Swift ( If it hasn't already been done )

------
walshemj
I don't think I agree that OSX helps Apple - Apple succeeds inspite of OSX

Look at finder its worse than windows 95's file explorer

------
crb002
It's the Clang IR, same stuff they are making you push to the app store.
Realtime software updates passed as proof carrying byte code. That's where
Apple will be king, the agility to safely update.

------
venomsnake
Apple's software culture is not suitable for cars. You need real time,
reliable, simple and rock hard.

Do you really want the company that created iTunes for windows to drive your
car?

~~~
bluthru
Do you want one of the PayPal developers to drive your car?

~~~
cromwellian
Do you want the guy who launches rockets that travel amazing distances to dock
with a space station to make your car?

PayPal was a merger of two companies BTW.

Judging by the work Google put into WebKit before the fork, Apple didn't even
have a rigorous testing coverage, fuzzing, etc IIRC.

I wouldn't even trust Google to do the kind of stuff automakers and defense
contractors do with respect to verification and testing. Someone else was
right, this could only come from their hardware groups like PA Semi and not
from the guys who write the apps or OS front end.

~~~
bluthru
Considering the developers will have their friends and family use these
machines, I believe the incentive is there to get it right.

Also, isn't self-driving vehicles a more difficult software challenge than
guiding a rocket?

~~~
swiley
Having ability is not the same as having incentive. And in this case having
ability doesn't just mean "showing that it works" like most people seem to
think.

------
Animats
Note the author: Jean-Louis Gassée. He's forgotten now, but he was head of
product development at Apple after Jobs was fired. He left Apple in 1990, not
having done much of note. He started Be (an early multiprocessor 680x0 desktop
machine with its own OS), but that failed. Since then, he's mostly been a
pundit.

~~~
alayne
I think you're being a little hard on Gassée. He held numerous high level
positions at technology companies and worked on the Newton, BeOS, and other
technology which while not market successes, were still influential. At one
time BeOS was considered a contender as a replacement for MacOS.

