By John Moltz
November 29, 2024 2:00 PM PT
This Week in Apple: The future is (not) here
CarPlay comes to GM cars, despite the company’s desires; Apple faces more regulatory headwinds; and, no, that AI supercycle is not happening.
CarPlayin’ around
I often keep tabs open with stories about GM’s travails since grandiosely ditching CarPlay and Android Auto because I am a big fan of cringe comedy.
So, in reviewing my open tabs for this week’s column I ran into this interview The Verge did earlier this month with GM’s VP of software, Baris Cetinok. Cetinok defended the company’s move, saying:
“You get the most out of your vehicle because now we’re the company that builds the vehicle and is also creating the infotainment experience, the cluster experience, the app, and everything. We’re going to build that one day and maybe a voice assistant on top of it.”
And a pony.
For its part, The Verge noted:
Every time we do a Decoder episode with a car person, we talk about CarPlay, and then we get an avalanche of emails from people who say they’ll never buy a car without it.
I might be a little more amenable to the idea that you should own the whole stack if much of that user experience didn’t already exist outside of the car environment and wasn’t owned by smartphone companies and if it was a company other than GM trying to do it. Ah, yes, put the company that made the Corvair and the Vega in charge of my entire user experience. Mmm, nice.
Good news: this week the market stepped in and said “Enough!”
White Automotive & Media Services of New Hudson, Mich., has created a fully integrated CarPlay/Android Auto system for Chevy EVs. You know, if you don’t want to wait for GM to cobble a pony together from spare parts.
Everybody’s doing it
Oh, boy, more Apple regulatory news this week. Yayyyyy.
“China tries to exert control over Apple Intelligence launch there”
Oh nooo. Will Chinese citizens not be allowed to know the awkward pleasures of wandering through Image Playground’s uncanny valley? First they had to suffer through the Cultural Revolution and now this?
“Apple Faces Daily Fines in Brazil Over App Store Payment Restrictions”
BOR-ING.
This stuff makes writing about daily deals look interesting.
Honestly, maybe it’s self-indulgent, but I’m really tired of talking about Apple’s run-ins with government regulations. I started writing about Apple because I loved its products. I didn’t start writing about it because I loved fights between companies and regulatory agencies over app store rules. There weren’t even any app stores when I started writing about Apple! That would have been impossible!
Gah.
I wonder if Jason would mind if I just started captioning these sections something like “EU fines Apple for Candy Crush approval fiasco” but then put my Star Trek fan fiction in the body.
It’s good stuff. All post-Dominion War.
There’s a dryly sarcastic Andorian security officer.
No one asked for this
Get ready to put on your surprised face because, according to IDC, AI is not driving a smartphone supercycle as many had predicted.
Wait, nobody wants that thing nobody asked for?
Weirrrrd.
“While GenAI continues to be a hot topic and top priority for many vendors…
Vendors, not customers.
…it is yet to impact demand significantly and drive early upgrades.” said Nabila Popal, senior research director with IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker.
You can add another feature almost no one wants to this bonfire of the tech vanities.
“New foldable phone models continue to grab headlines despite the low volumes in the market,” said Anthony Scarsella, research director with IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker.
Apple was able to inch up iPhone sales and the smartphone market overall is growing but not because of AI or foldables. (Someone really thought foldables would drive an upgrade cycle? I’m gonna need names.) So, why are people buying new phones? Just to upgrade. And when they do, they’re getting cheaper phones.
Rapid Android growth of 7.6% year-over-year focused in APeJC, Latin America, Middle East and Africa and China, primarily in low end devices…
Still, big tech’s current favorite technologies cannot fail, they can only be failed. IDC insists sales of foldables will grow in double digits through 2028 and:
…we continue to believe GenAI will revolutionize the user experience in the years to come…
Technically 2167 is one of the years that will someday be coming. Then when AI is finally viable because it’s actual artificial intelligence instead of Rube Goldberg-style large language models, the heads of these analysts that are being kept alive in jars will be able to say “I told you it was going to be a hit technology.”
Heads in jars always get the last laugh.
[John Moltz is a Six Colors contributor. You can find him on Mastodon at Mastodon.social/@moltz and he sells items with references you might get on Cotton Bureau.]