I agree with all this, particularly about the interface. Nobody wants to drive an iPad. But let's talk about why. There's a spot on the chart marked "The moment

I agree with all this, particularly about the interface. Nobody wants to drive an iPad. But let's talk about why. There's a spot on the chart marked "The moment execs decide they need to increase revenue". The poster child for this attitude was the BMW seat warmer subscription [1] Another striking example was Macbooks. The 2011-2012 Macbook Air was an unbelievably good piece of hardware. It didn't make too many compromises for thinness (unlike the 12" Macbook that came later, thank you Johnny Ive for that). It had a useful amount of performance (again, unlike the 12" Macbook). And the kicker was the price. $1300 or so for a 13" MBA was unbelievably good value. This was previously the top end of the "ultrabook" market. Competitors couldn't produce hardware that competed with the Macbook Air on price. The problem for Apple was it was too cheap. Average Selling Price ("ASP") went down. Johnny Ive no longer had Steve Jobs to tell him "no" too, which didn't help. So we got the much-ridiculed and almost completely useless Touch Bar, coupled with one of the worst laptop keyboards ever designed (allegedly to cut 0.5mm from the thickness). Why? To raise the ASP. That was literally the only reason. So with cars and laptops and pretty much every other product you look at if you look deeply enough you see that the company's interests don't match the consumer's interests. The idea that "free markets" will create products consumer wants is a lie. Cars you could once repair a lot of things yourself. Now there are computer systems you need to interface with. Not all of these are bad of course like some improve fuel efficiency, for example. But they are locked down so you can't repair them even if you wanted to. This is an opportunity for even more revenue. If it wasn't for Google Maps you would absolutely have to pay for a subscription for maps. But the biggest problem with cars is how necessary they are, deliberately so. We've built our entire infrastructure to create car dependence and that makes life worse for everyone, whether you like driving or not. \ [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/7/23863258/bmw-cancel-heated-seat-subscription-microtransaction https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/7/23863258/bmw-cancel-heated...