Apple could dominate car tech (if it wanted)
Summary: Two weeks of car shopping has driven home two big points for me: User interface matters. Car companies aren't all that good at it. Enter a big opportunity for Apple.
Two weeks of car shopping has driven home two big points for me: User interface matters. Car companies aren't all that good at it.
Gallery: Latest car tech missing Apple?
In my tour of test drives, I've discovered that car companies obviously think the following:
- More buttons are better. Acura thinks that if 16 buttons on the entertainment system is good that 32 must really be special.
- Voice recognition is ok---sort of. My first conversation with Ford's Sync system was a letdown. Ford's MyTouch interface in notable, but Consumer Reports already dinged it.
- Navigation screens aren't exactly a walk in the user interface (UI) park.
At the end of this car UI adventure, I was pretty happy to see something very plain. Just give me a button or two and let me drive. Simply put, less is more.
Hence this brain fart about Apple's next growth market. Here's the general idea:
- Some savvy automaker does a deal with Apple to go for collaboration on the car's interior. This partnership would go beyond the standard "plug in your iPod" trick. Apple designers would do the UI and buttons for the car interior. Think industrial design meets Audi.
- The auto-Apple deal would be exclusive. Taking a page from the iPhone playbook, Apple would start this auto partnership with a 4-year exclusive. Since Volkswagen can't quite get traction in the U.S. that's a good place to start.
- Apple could use the exclusive auto deal to make it so it could pop the iPad or iPod into a dashboard. The App Store would have an auto section.
While much of the focus on Apple's next market revolves around the living room, the automobile could be much more compelling. Would this Apple-auto arrangement actually happen? Who knows? There would surely be a culture clash. What I do know is that automakers could use some design help and Apple would fetch a premium on profits if it got into the car-tech game.
Related:
- With Focus Electric, Ford goes for holistic charging, app, interface approach
- Toyota joins in-car app bandwagon
- CES: Toyota launches Entune, plans to take on Ford for in-car entertainment
- Ford’s AppLink to be compatible with Apple’s iPhone
- Ford rolls out SDK for mobile developers
- Ford: Smart device-car interoperability key
- Wi-Fi Sync installation boosts Ford’s assembly line efficiency
- Ford, Nuance aim to make Sync more conversational
- Ford: Solving the Internet’s ‘last inch’ problem at 70 mph
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Talkback
Apple has applied for three patents
Nit pick...
It's "gall", actually. As to Apple's patents I have no opinion, other than the general "software is mathematics and thus is not patentable".
Method patents are dumb too.
RE: Apple could dominate car tech (if it wanted)
Agreed on all counts!
"Software is mathematics, and thus is not patenable"
What does mathematics have to do with it? Most products on the market are created using mathematics.
Should all devices be not patenable, because they are based on mathematics? What delineates between patenable and not patenable? The work in constructing something, maintaining it and improving it, or the raw materials?
Why would raw materials count toward whether something can be patented?
I know many are against the idea, but building a software system involves the same kind of work (not simply mathematics by any stretch) as building a motherboard. Why should the "design" of something be patenable? It's just mathematics, and therefore not patentable, correct?
algorithms, not mathematics
And as far as Apple is concerned: This article is nauseating and outdated. The pathetic fawning over Apple's supposed UI expertise simply reveals ignorance or laziness on the part of the author. Have you actually USED the Mac OS or iOS? Let's see... in Mac OS and numerous Apple applications you have a UI based on Easter eggs... secret controls that only appear if you happen to roll the cursor over them. This should be near the top of any list of UI "don'ts": Don't require the user to sweep the cursor over every pixel on the screen, searching for hidden elements.
Also, don't base your UI on unmarked, undiscoverable hotkeys or "gestures." Apple insisted that a two-button mouse is "too scary" for its customers, but then omits Delete keys from its laptops and expects users to guess at an unmarked, two-handed hotkey to delete a character. Yes, the key that says "delete" on an Apple laptop is really a Backspace key.
What else... a recent iOS update turned the rotation-lock switch on the iPad into a Mute switch. But the switch is about two millimeters away from A VOLUME CONTROL. So now you don't have a rotation-lock switch on this device that's also supposed to serve as an E-book reader. Have fun reading that in bed or on a flat surface.
This is a great example of the moronic detachment from the real world that dictates Apple's UI decisions. Why do you need an emergency switch to shut an iPad up? Because you're taking it to the theater and might suddenly get a call on it? Uh yeah, except... iPads don't get calls. In fact, the chances of an iPad emitting an unforeseen noise are extremely low. And yet we need the emergency mute switch, Apple?
How about that brilliant spelling correction on the iPhone, which FORCES corrections on you unless you opt out, over and over and over. Meanwhile, everyone else understands that spelling suggestions should be presented for the user to opt IN.
Then there's the 1980s inverse color scheme in Mac OS, which you can't change. Windows and Unix systems have had user-definable color schemes for about 20 years. But the vaunted Mac forces users to read black text off the surface of a light bulb all day.
It just goes on and on. If you put Apple in charge of an automotive UI, you'll have to press the emergency brake, accelerator, and seat-recliner button at the same time to turn on the headlights. And also answer a few confirmation dialogs.
RE: Apple could dominate car tech (if it wanted)
RE: Apple could dominate car tech (if it wanted)
because Apple also does it using hardware and it's own software API's linked to it's 30 pin dock connector, which is already available all over the place, including cars.
What hardware does Google make?
Think I'll head down the beach and look at the gulls.
RE: Apple could dominate car tech (if it wanted)
RE: Apple could dominate car tech (if it wanted)
RE: Apple could dominate car tech (if it wanted)
It sounds nice but...
And Title 35, United States Code, Section 102, which states:
Walter J. Blenko, Jr. clearly defines a few concepts here:
Search for:
"Considering What Constitutes Prior Art in the United States"
1 A person is NOT entitled to a patent if it is "known or used by others in this country, or was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country" before the application date the of invention by the applicant for the patent. I
2 a patent is rejecet if: "the invention was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country, more than one year prior to the date of the application for patent in the United States."
3. An inventor is barred from obtaining a patent if he or she patents the invention outside of the United States before the date of the patent application in the United States, and if the application outside the United States was filed more than 12 months before filing the application in the United States.
Honda / Porche / Mercury / Ford / GM / VW and many other manufacturers have been using HUDs and many display technologies in the past just to cover the three applications stated by Apple.
I wonder why the patent office and courts hardly use these items when patent litigations are concerned.
RE: Apple could dominate car tech (if it wanted)
Umm . . . what does this have to do with what this person said?
Flagged.
RE: Apple could dominate car tech (if it wanted)
Why would you need to drag a laptop to the car?
Currently I sync iPod and plug it in to a dock in my glove compartment. But if my car stereo had an iPod in it, I would set it up to be able to work with my wireless router and let it grab its own updates.
RE: Apple could dominate car tech (if it wanted)
RE: Apple could dominate car tech (if it wanted)
RE: Apple could dominate car tech (if it wanted)
RE: Apple could dominate car tech (if it wanted)
RE: Apple could dominate car tech (if it wanted)
Those days are already gone. All this high tech in cars is great except that people own cars for 5 - 10 years. The tech will be massively out of date and getting replacement parts will be either very expensive or impossible.