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Just image how fun would have been the Apple Maps rollout if it was deployed on cars. With the software glitches that has plagued smartphones in the last decade

Just image how fun would have been the Apple Maps rollout if it was deployed on cars. With the software glitches that has plagued smartphones in the last decade - we would have had a small genocide on our hands if it was translated on fast chunks of metal, able to kill couple of people on collision. A single messed OTA (or heaven forbid maliciously corrupted) could inflict some serious pain.

Retra 11y ago
If Apple Maps was mission-critical industrial-strength navigation software (as you'd have to assume in this hypothetical) then maybe Apple would have put more money and effort into making it work well. Why would you assume the software they wrote for a smart-phone would be the same software they'd write for a car?
- venomsnake 11y ago
  Because sloppiness and bad habits tend to propagate.
- mindslight 11y ago
  With navigation being one of the key features of smartphones, it seems like Apple Maps would certainly be mission critical to Apple. Furthermore, it seems like we've already forgotten that telephones are supposed to be reliable. Take the Android Hangouts App for instance. In using it for a year, I've yet to have a non-buggy experience. First, the phone would stop ringing for incoming calls. Recently half of my outgoing calls will fail to open the audio device, so the other end can hear me but I can't hear them. Nevermind the everpresent dropped calls where the app just disappears. If your response is to say "yeah, but that's a downmarket VOIP app" then you've proven my point, given that it is published by one of the largest web companies around. Bell engineers made reliability a design goal. Internet engineering assumed poor reliability could be compensated by endpoint software - this works really well for layer 3, but by the time you get to layer 6 and 7 you should really stop kicking that can down the road! Your landline keeps working in a power outage because every CO is full of lead acid batteries, all the equipment runs off of a 48VDC rail, and power is even supplied to end-user devices so they continue to work as well. From the SV viewpoint this is obviously a complete and utter waste, but it's awfully nice to be able to communicate in a power outage (especially as emergencies tend to compound). Nevermind the modern standard of ridiculous UI latency. The general guideline for an imperceptible delay is 10ms - that's 10 million instructions at 1GHz. Yet anything that gets "modernized" with a touchscreen inevitably has input lag 10 to 100 times that - amateur hour! Yet these horrid devices are invading everywhere you'd traditionally have a simple well thought out interface with tactile feedback - including cars. Why bother spending design time up front when you can punt to soft controls, and then release "updates" if you're ever taken to task? So no, I have little faith that our self driving car future won't involve a lot of abrupt stopping (because presumably the motor controllers will be engineered [correctly]) due to some undiagnosable error, and then a 2 minute wait while the system reboots. I can only hope the windows aren't LCD panels that turn dark for the process.
  - venomsnake 11y ago
    Here is a bonus question - what happens when a car with so much electronics inside dives into a lake?
    - mindslight 11y ago
      The battery will likely have overcurrent protection, because that rule is written in blood and it would be hard to generate enough complexity to forget it. The insurance company totals the car then passes it off to a hustler who dries it out, replaces the major electronics, and sells it as "lightly used".
      - venomsnake 11y ago
        I was thinking about more the mundane opening of doors/windows under stress. I really dislike not having a mechanic switch there.
        mindslight 11y ago
        From what I understand, a car sinking in water is pretty much impossible to open doors anyway? Do some new cars really rely on soft controls for opening doors? That seems like it would be annoying from the get-go, and perhaps resulted in the car being purposely driven into a lake. Then again, so is being required to use a touchscreen while driving yet they're now being adopted for radios - remember when texting and driving wasn't a major safety problem because T9 was ubiquitous? For possibly being not able to roll windows down, that ship sailed a long time ago. Although there is a huge reliability difference between a simple switch on a direct battery rail, and relying on two microprocessors plus a likely DC/DC converter.
Rezo 11y ago
Cars are still regulated and will have to pass safety and compliance tests. I think the companies themselves also realize that they're going to have be extremely careful with updates, not the least from a liability point of view. But, where there's a will, there'a way, and mainstream OTA car updates are entirely inevitable in my opinion. But the traditional car manufacturers do no have this will. It does not fit their world view. The idea of an OTA that changes the car is abhorrent to them. They looked at bemusement when Tesla did UI feature updates OTA, confusion/doubt when Tesla changed driving dynamics OTA last year, and horrification at the "self driving" features recently deployed. And they have no plans in this regard either, they are entirely convinced they are right and the rest of the world is going mad and will surely self-correct. The luxury 2015 model German sedan you buy today will NEVER receive a new feature, or even bugfixes except at a dealer, while Google and Apple are all about creating new platforms spanning multiple products & years. And that is why the Germans will lose.
- blub 11y ago
  OTA updates touching critical components are insane in the security environment of 2015. Were you paying attention to what kind of attackers and exploits have been flying around in the past few years?
bluthru 11y ago
Tesla doesn't have the software resources of Apple and they're making it work.
- venomsnake 11y ago
  It is not about resources, but culture. Apple have a culture that delivers extremely high quality hardware, but they don't have the culture to deliver good software.

Retra 11y ago

If Apple Maps was mission-critical industrial-strength navigation software (as you'd have to assume in this hypothetical) then maybe Apple would have put more money and effort into making it work well. Why would you assume the software they wrote for a smart-phone would be the same software they'd write for a car?

venomsnake 11y ago
Because sloppiness and bad habits tend to propagate.
mindslight 11y ago
With navigation being one of the key features of smartphones, it seems like Apple Maps would certainly be mission critical to Apple. Furthermore, it seems like we've already forgotten that telephones are supposed to be reliable. Take the Android Hangouts App for instance. In using it for a year, I've yet to have a non-buggy experience. First, the phone would stop ringing for incoming calls. Recently half of my outgoing calls will fail to open the audio device, so the other end can hear me but I can't hear them. Nevermind the everpresent dropped calls where the app just disappears. If your response is to say "yeah, but that's a downmarket VOIP app" then you've proven my point, given that it is published by one of the largest web companies around. Bell engineers made reliability a design goal. Internet engineering assumed poor reliability could be compensated by endpoint software - this works really well for layer 3, but by the time you get to layer 6 and 7 you should really stop kicking that can down the road! Your landline keeps working in a power outage because every CO is full of lead acid batteries, all the equipment runs off of a 48VDC rail, and power is even supplied to end-user devices so they continue to work as well. From the SV viewpoint this is obviously a complete and utter waste, but it's awfully nice to be able to communicate in a power outage (especially as emergencies tend to compound). Nevermind the modern standard of ridiculous UI latency. The general guideline for an imperceptible delay is 10ms - that's 10 million instructions at 1GHz. Yet anything that gets "modernized" with a touchscreen inevitably has input lag 10 to 100 times that - amateur hour! Yet these horrid devices are invading everywhere you'd traditionally have a simple well thought out interface with tactile feedback - including cars. Why bother spending design time up front when you can punt to soft controls, and then release "updates" if you're ever taken to task? So no, I have little faith that our self driving car future won't involve a lot of abrupt stopping (because presumably the motor controllers will be engineered [correctly]) due to some undiagnosable error, and then a 2 minute wait while the system reboots. I can only hope the windows aren't LCD panels that turn dark for the process.
- venomsnake 11y ago
  Here is a bonus question - what happens when a car with so much electronics inside dives into a lake?
  - mindslight 11y ago
    The battery will likely have overcurrent protection, because that rule is written in blood and it would be hard to generate enough complexity to forget it. The insurance company totals the car then passes it off to a hustler who dries it out, replaces the major electronics, and sells it as "lightly used".
    - venomsnake 11y ago
      I was thinking about more the mundane opening of doors/windows under stress. I really dislike not having a mechanic switch there.
      - mindslight 11y ago
        From what I understand, a car sinking in water is pretty much impossible to open doors anyway? Do some new cars really rely on soft controls for opening doors? That seems like it would be annoying from the get-go, and perhaps resulted in the car being purposely driven into a lake. Then again, so is being required to use a touchscreen while driving yet they're now being adopted for radios - remember when texting and driving wasn't a major safety problem because T9 was ubiquitous? For possibly being not able to roll windows down, that ship sailed a long time ago. Although there is a huge reliability difference between a simple switch on a direct battery rail, and relying on two microprocessors plus a likely DC/DC converter.

Rezo 11y ago

Cars are still regulated and will have to pass safety and compliance tests. I think the companies themselves also realize that they're going to have be extremely careful with updates, not the least from a liability point of view. But, where there's a will, there'a way, and mainstream OTA car updates are entirely inevitable in my opinion. But the traditional car manufacturers do no have this will. It does not fit their world view. The idea of an OTA that changes the car is abhorrent to them. They looked at bemusement when Tesla did UI feature updates OTA, confusion/doubt when Tesla changed driving dynamics OTA last year, and horrification at the "self driving" features recently deployed. And they have no plans in this regard either, they are entirely convinced they are right and the rest of the world is going mad and will surely self-correct. The luxury 2015 model German sedan you buy today will NEVER receive a new feature, or even bugfixes except at a dealer, while Google and Apple are all about creating new platforms spanning multiple products & years. And that is why the Germans will lose.

blub 11y ago
OTA updates touching critical components are insane in the security environment of 2015. Were you paying attention to what kind of attackers and exploits have been flying around in the past few years?

bluthru 11y ago

Tesla doesn't have the software resources of Apple and they're making it work.

venomsnake 11y ago
It is not about resources, but culture. Apple have a culture that delivers extremely high quality hardware, but they don't have the culture to deliver good software.