Sure, but it’s pretty hard to develop for a platform that you won’t even be able to see in the real world for several years. And it’s not as though cars have a lot of flexibility when it comes to third-party apps. CarPlay seems to be mostly about mapping and audio at the moment, and it’s hard to see that much else being appropriate while driving.
I pretty much agree with everything, except Apple Pay Later/BNPL. Here’s an interesting article on BNPL. It can actually allow people to buy stuff without using a payday loan. Of course it can also allow people to buy stuff they might not have bought if BNPL wasn’t available to them, but there’s very little in finance that can’t be abused or misused in some way, including credit cards (and cash can be stolen, etc). But also, Apple didn’t invent it, they’re just adding an increasingly popular payment rail to their existing supported payment rails, which doesn’t seem unreasonable.
I don’t know. I’ve been in literally thousands of business meetings, and none have been via Facetime, and while people do fumble the handoff, they usually learn quickly, and even when it happens, it’s not a big deal. Meetings being sidetracked talking about the latest movie or tv show, or someone working remotely having their neighbor fire up their lawnmower, etc., have wasted orders of magnitude more time in meetings than someone leaving a meeting for a minute then returning (for whatever reason). Also, do any of the the other big meeting systems (WebEx, Teams, Meet, Zoom) allow this sort of handoff? If not, I’m not sure how critical it is.
I’ve been thinking along these lines for years. Distracted driving is a huge cause of accidents, but it’s usually blamed on phone use (to the point that it’s illegal a lot of places to use a phone while driving, at least not hands free). I’ve often wondered, how many accidents are caused by people fumbling with their in car control systems (which have notoriously bad UX)? And then think of the last time you fumbled around with your iPhone trying to figure out how to do something, then think about doing that while driving a car.
Late fees. Interest on late payments.
1 Like
I’m just going to pick up on two of these:
Next-Generation CarPlay
Environmental and engine diagnostic features/convenience settings have been screen-based for several years. Our two Honda vehicles (a CR-V and a Ridgeline, both 2019 model year) have everything on screen, with rudimentary physical buttons whose feedback comes from the screen.
Like almost everything about Honda’s infotainment systems, they are poorly organized in practice. If Apple can do it better with CarPlay (and I suspect they can), this is good news.
Handoff for FaceTime
Case 1: I answer a FaceTime call on my Watch. Audio only. I hand it off to literally any of my Apple devices with a screen and I’m already way further ahead than I was.
Case 2: I answer on my iPhone. My spouse wants to join in. Nice camera, but awkward. We move in front of our iMac with a 27 inch screen and an external webcam, and again, much much better and didn’t have to disconnect.
I don’t get the “juggling housekeys and phone” scenario, because I’d just hang up and call back too.
1 Like
Similar thought crossed my mind.
Some of this stuff feels like a solution in search of a problem (share tab groups). And just because Google or MS does something, should never be a reason to also do it. There should be a solid use case—and it’s not like they didn’t have enough good stuff to talk about
Me, I’d prefer to see Apple finally fix iCloud Safari sync before they try to add more stuff to sync.
And next-gen CarPlay: Good. Luck. With. That. Show me just three car manufacturers who eagerly await some outside non-automotive company to swoop in and commandeer there UI, thereby inserting themselves between said manufacturer and their customers. It took forever to get basic CarPlay into most cars, and yet we still see several non-negligible holdouts. But here we are, Apple flaunting their wildest dreams in front of the world as if this thing had any legs outside of Apple. Perhaps this was just a lot of marketing (and perhaps indeed to remind people to keep obsessing about Apple Car rumors), but reality in say the most-sold makers’ cars in the US (or Europe for that matter) in the next few years? Fat chance. 
I suspect that Apple is aiming to expand its financial services portfolio. And like other credit and loan services, they charge a % fee to participating retailers, so this isn’t a total freebie. They’ve been working with Goldman Sachs and Mastercard for years, and maybe this is another opportunity for all the partners and retailers to acquire more users, and acquire valuable user and retailer information.
A question…will this service be in the US only, or will Apple expand it to other countries?
1 Like
It occurs to me that the next-gen CarPlay may be coming out of Apple’s efforts to develop their own car? If this new CarPlay is going to be a user interface for an putative AppleCar, then they might figure that it’s a good idea to roll it out early so people have a chance to get used to an Apple interface for all things driving.
1 Like
This is a good idea, and it looks like Elon Musk is considering adding CarPlay for Tesla:
They’re not doing either of those, they’re eating such costs. And they earn by charging merchants, when a buyer uses it. It’s limited to just $1K too, and is a US-only feature.
Apple still won’t charge interest or late fees; it will eat the cost rather than risk being seen as preying on those with difficulties.
2 Likes
Yes, I’m with David on all three of these points.
I’ve been using Miro as a shared whiteboard/feedback spot with my photography students, it’s excellent and it has emerged as a shared file space which was far more usable and interesting to navigate, leave comments on, re-arrange and group than a shared Dropbox or OneDrive folder. I had begun to think of the infinite canvas as a more interesting metaphor than the desktop. I see huge potential here for a future OS interface.
Handoff, please, now… Teams handles this excellently, I have often had a Teams (audio!) meeting while on the move using my iPhone and ended up at my desk and resumed on my Mac all seamlessly handled. I get tired holding phones up and my iPad in a stand or my iMac is far better for lengthier chats.
Shared Tabs will be great for our upcoming ‘application to College’ season… Already my wife and I and our kids use shared Notes for Christmas lists and so on. I share Maps location groups when we are heading off on vacation or for trips with them too. Shared Tab Groups will be great for all of these.
3 Likes
Any thoughts on Customize Spatial Audio, Tommy?
Well, I’m loving Spatial Audio on the songs that are mixed for it, I’m definitely curious about it improving.
Sony announced if for the Playstation 5…kinda. Not much seems to have come of it since. Apple having the LiDAR built into so many iPhones and iPads certainly makes the setup process something I could imagine to be better than the “send us your ear pics” plan. PS5 features: Sony reveals an audio upgrade with a very weird requirement
Quite a number of questions and incorrect information about the Pay Later service in this thread. Here’s an article that provides more information: Apple digs into its massive pile of cash to fund new Pay Later service | Ars Technica
Key points are: no interest to users, transparent to merchants, Apple controls information (so better privacy), limited to “smaller” purchases, no hard credit checks, no late fees. Hardly a payday loan. Not as bad as a credit card purchase, even. Somewhere along the way people got so afraid of usurious credit practices they wrote off all credit as evil and we lost the ability for people to look at whether something is a good credit offering or bad. This is free money offered as a convenience for customers of luxury products. The interface they showed off also seems like a good dashboard for keeping track of your spending and financial planning. Whether you are budgeting and saving for a future purchase, or budgeting and paying off a purchase is pretty similar in a 0% APR situation. Similar skills at play.
As for why, well, making a product you offer more appealing to convince consumers to use your product instead of competitors is a pretty tried and true strategy. And if customers love Apple Pay they will not want to switch to a phone/watch that does not offer it. Seems pretty straight forward.
3 Likes
The improvements in spacial audio using the camera?
It’s probably a byproduct/feature of the coming AR capabilities.
Interesting discussions on Apple Pay Later. Now that Apple is directly engaging in lending services, I wonder if it might attract even more scrutiny from regulators, especially financial ones.
I am not in the US, so Apple Pay Later is not available to me; but I wonder how useful the service is if it is available.
I personally think it is quite a hassle to use even though it effectively offers “free credit”. I use sinking fund arrangements to save up for large purchases, and fund small purchases using “line-item” budgets. Since the limit is $1,000, it seems to be mostly for the latter.
Adding one more layer to the payment process (Apple Pay Later pays for purchase → Pays Apple later) makes tracking expenses and reconciling budget quite a bit more laborious. If I need to use Apple Pay Later to bridge a purchase because of liquidity issue, I will be very worried if $1,000 presents a problem!
I will be glad if Apple offers a way to manage budget and sinking fund allocations (and encourage good financial habits), but that seems not to be in its interest.
1 Like
Regarding Apple Pay Later, as someone in their mid-sixties I’m guessing this isn’t aimed at me. We pay for everything on credit cards and the entire balance gets automatically paid by the bank at the end of the month (paying zero interest). We get flights for the frequent flyer miles which more than covers the very low annual fee.
On the other hand, my mid-twenties daughter has used AfterPay in the past. She wasn’t even sure why she used it as she has a good job, a solid bank balance and still lives at home with us. She said she’d probably just use AfterPay again if she needed rather than switch to Apple’s offering - primarily because she’s used it before. If Pay Later works without additional set up I imagine she’d consider it.
Of course, we’re in Australia so at this stage it’s all academic.
2 Likes
Some of these items are valid criticisms, but I think others fall into the bucket of features that don’t match your way of working, but others find great value in.
Tab groups stands out as an example of the latter to me – it’s one of my favourite features of MacOS 12, and has become embedded in the way I use the web. And I know several other people of who this is true as well. It’s precisely because they’re not permanent like bookmarks that they’re useful. (I do agree that the behaviour when clicking a link in another application is annoying though.) Shared tab groups will be very useful to me for certain situations, and I imagine for millions of others too. So I’m thrilled to see them expanding on it, and I think they absolutely should be evolving the feature.
Handoff for FaceTime is another feature that I was surprised to see included in this article. I run into this problem all the time, certainly in over 50% of my FaceTime video calls. Either on my end or the other end, someone starts on one device, then wants to switch to another one with a bigger screen, or the battery runs low, and we have a little dance of hanging up and calling back which sometimes isn’t smooth and always disrupts the conversation. FaceTime handoff was definitely a “finally” moment for me when watching the keynote (similar to mark unread in Messages). This is a genuine and frequent annoyance, and it’s going to make FaceTime calls a lot more convenient.
3 Likes
These days when I buy almost anything from Apple I use their monthly (price/12) or (price/24) payment plans. Why not? Interest free, part of my income is guaranteed (unless Congress shuts down Social Security), I have assets that I can use to quickly pay off the remainder if necessary. The payments show up on my Apple Card bill which automatically gets paid off at the end of the month. There’s no downside for me. I don’t personally have trouble managing credit or buying large items on impulse, so I’m not worried that I’d abuse Pay Later. I’m not sure that I’d actually use it, though, for something outside of the Apple Store.
1 Like