this is why SaaS sucks

EDIT: Snark removal.

> geek will figure out cars before car people figure out computers

Between this and similar issues (e.g. Porsche / BMW charging subscription to their updating map data), it’s clear how true that quote was.

Not only are they massively losing to Tesla, they don’t even know they’re losing, or why. This is what you get when you hire MBAs and consultants.

If it costs next to nothing then it's a good feature. It's like the remote for my TV. Sure I can get up and change channels, or I can walk and start the car. but chances are I'm gonna say "nah" and just cold start it. I'm not paying $8 month but I do pay $40/yr for the volvo version (although that has a bit more than just remote start. I use the remote heater start 100x times more than remote start though).

I mean if the heater is remote started then why wouldn't the engine be. It's just the 2nd step of the heating process.

$8/month for 3-4 years sounds absurd if you consider other fees such as repair fee, annual checkups, insurance, parking fees, tickets etc.

Given the context it is far more logical to assume they did not enhance the older cars, but instead, they decided not to cut access while they could because then they wouldn't be able to enable it remotely should the customer renew their subscription.

All I can think of is the waste of fuel and unnecessary GHG.

For how long? I heard, anything more than 10s is unnecessary.

This makes (any) brand look incredibly cheap.

However, If someone wants to sell me Car as a SaaS, I'm interested.

By that, I mean as soon as there's an issue with the car, I simply flag it in the App and an employee comes to my place and swap it over for the same model/trim (transfers whatever I have in the trunk too). Then I just keep using the replacement car until either I stop using the service or it has an issue or is due for maintenance.

Perhaps in the future they'll sell all the vehicles with the same audio system, but just disable certain speakers or add noise to the signal if you've not paid your monthly premium audio fee?

https://jalopnik.com/a-carmaker-s-23-billion-plan-to-keep-yo...

Sometimes this can be done via cell phone app. And there is always a monthly subscription for this option.

But no it is not a monthly subscription for starting your car with your key fob in the pocket.

I hate them so much. They all cost a boatload of cash to replace and give me absolutely no benefit over a regular key.

https://imgur.com/r/4chan/dgGvgKF

[0] https://www.tweaktown.com/news/70481/used-model-has-autopilo...

Pun intended; what the heck is happening under the hood there?

we now now need an Open Source Car.

Something that pings a neuron in another brain may be the second step in a chain to me which leads me to interesting and unexpected lines of thought.

If it bothers you, depending on your client, theres a "collapse" button at the bottom of posts so you can personally skip on entire threads as soon as you know it's not for you.

Other people have different values so I, without rancour, say "carry on" to grandparent.

I have a emergency hammer/seatbelt cutter near the gearstick just in case.

I do not mind taking a philosophical stand, but in this case, my preference would be to still go for Toyota due to their reliability and modifiability, and not get any fancy add on like remote start.

Yes, when cars finally reach the self-driving more, it sounds complicated but our knowledge also grows over time. We don’t charge extra for voice-assistant support in devices these days which was black magic 30 years ago. Similarly how current computers compares to pricing of first ones. Is coding so ”revolutionary” that we can start ignoring normal adjustment of pricing compared to every other type?

For the new car buyer, you pitch it as cost savings for the time you own the car. The OE Toyota Long Range remote starter is $1000 so if you go with the app, if you only own the car for 8 years then you're saving money as the new car owner.

However the overwhelming majority of car sales in the US are used, and the average age of the American car is now 12 years old. Outside of maintaining a spare parts supply chain, you don't gain any additional revenue from used car sales. With subscriptions, a 2020 model year car can still be generating revenue for a company in 2035. Plus you can adjust the subscription price year after year as desired.

I don't like it personally, but I can see method to the madness.

No, they're just quiet.

The subscription approach also doesn’t fix any problems - for example, the Adobe subscription solved the common agency/design headache of receiving files for a more recent version of the software. Whereby one couldn’t drop $20-40k to upgrade their software just to get access to one set of files. A situation made worse if the source of the files is unable to back save them. This allowed big agencies to squeeze out smaller competitors which couldn’t update their versions right away. The subscription solved this problem and is generally viewed as a win/win for adobe and their customers.

This might not be a big deal if Toyota was the only company contemplating this business model (what's $8/mo, after all?) but I doubt they will be. If every product in your life adds a "small" subscription fee (calculated at 50-1000x actual service costs), things are going to get painful very quickly.

$8/mo may not be a lot of money only because it's just your car doing that. Then you will have your TV charging $8/mo so that you can your a remote controller, $8/mo for the remote of your air conditioner...

The ethics problem here isn't the subscription at all, it's with the clear and good faith communication of what the product is to which the user is subscribing.

In this particular case, it seems like the Toyota Remote Connect service was sold and marketed as a phone app, but when terminated it also removes the capability of remote starting the car over local radio (probably bluetooth I guess) from the key fob, which no one seems to have known was part of the product in the first place. That's bad, if so.

(But to be fair, a better article would track down some Toyota owners for quotes about what they were told, and maybe a copy of the original license agreement. This coverage from Ars is IMHO a little weak.)

It's already available monthly ($199/mo), thankfully there's the one time purchase option still though ($10,000).

Legally, Toyota cars are now like timeshares: you "own" it, but usage fees may increase arbitrairly over time. It's probably legal, but it's a shitty move to charge the consumer the price the market will bear when the consumer has no negotiating power.

I wonder if it is even possible to add aftermarket remote start features.

That's exactly what you're supposed to do, except probably not single-handedly. You're supposed to find investors with cash to burn, engineers who are frustrated with their big corp wage-slave jobs, and frustrated consumers and bring them together.

There's about 4300 EV startups funded in the last 15 years [1], and 27 have gone public or are in the process of going public via SPAC in the last year [2]. Some of them (eg. Nikola) don't even have the "hire qualified engineers" and "build a working product" part down and still managed to raise billions.

[1] https://tracxn.com/d/emerging-startups/electric-vehicles-sta...

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-07-06/hyperd...

The people that currently have "Apple fuel stations" is Tesla. So I'm not sure why you're blaming Apple for something that already exists.

You might lose access once you're on old enough software though.

Telemetry data straight from a cars location is not sold, if it even exists. It would be extremely valuable but seems potentially illegal.

Ridiculous

We got refunded but no other compensation

They are the owners, the 'owners' are the owned, captive market.

There are a lot of things that require a generation (of people) to change. For example, the latency of game streaming services is awful if you're used to a local experience, but if you ask a 12 year old that's never experienced low latency, local gaming, they don't even realize it could be different. They'll happily play high latency streamed games.

So when you see things like the investment that's going into things like game streaming and it seems stupid, you have to consider there may not be any expectation of capturing the current market. They're after the market that's in elementary school right now.

"Key fob remote start has nothing to do with an app, nor does the car or the fob communicate with any servers managed by Toyota."

It sounds like this $8/month charge is for the allowing you to use remote start locally presumably over RF.

I could get a suitable data line myself for $1, at quantity one. I doubt Toyota has to pay anywhere near that much.

https://www.cdw.com/product/samsung-678u-series-55-4k-uhd-le...

The responsibility is on regulators, not me as a consumer.

But how long until BASIC functions become subscription service? Like electronically locking doors, or some other such nonsense?

Once money finds a path, my belief is that the path gets widened.

"I suddenly remembered that a morphological relative of 'performative' was 'performance,' which could describe the sensation of conversing when you knew what would be said: it was like performing in a play."

...

"Before I learned how to think in Heptapod B, my memories grew like a column of cigarette ash, laid down by the infinitesimal sliver of combustion that was my consciousness, marking the sequential present. After I learned Heptapod B, new memories fell into place like gigantic blocks, each one measuring years in duration, and though they didn't arrive in order or land contiguously, they soon composed a period of five decades. It is the period during which I know Heptapod B well enough to think in it, starting during my interviews with Flapper and Raspberry and ending with my death."

The movie left this key message out almost entirely.

We just don't build new roads in North America.

Apple conveniently disallows people from making local backups encrypted with your own key, which means in reality you need to pay a monthly fee to store them on iCloud.

Serious question, I don’t know, I only use Apple Maps for satellite since it doesn’t do transit where I live. But the quality level definitely feels like an “eat what you kill” product without much food, as opposed to a loss leader for the Apple brand.

I am afraid one can inform the international public: in some countries, this is exactly what happens, since years.

So this seems like a bit of an improvement :)

A single ad now on a network connected device is no guarantee that it will remain that way. Especially as it becomes "optimized" for revenue from all possible sources.

It is unfortunate that the rest of this stuff is so infested that a single ad (for now) seems reasonable.

When AAA tested 3 different hammers, only 1 of the three successfully broke tempered glass. All three punch style tools broke the tempered glass.

But a lot of car windows now have laminated glass. While the tools may be able to shatter the glass for those, they still stay in one sheet, (just like shattered windshields in most car, since those are laminated glass too). And it is really hard to break through that shattered but still intact sheet, with neither style of escape tool really being much help.

A quality rolling ballpoint pen would also work (given enough force) because it contains a small ball of tungsten carbide.

My knife also has a tungsten carbide window breaker on the base of it.

The engine wouldn't be bolted in, everything would be welded into place. Parts to repair it would not be accessible, except at Apple dealerships. If it doesn't start, you could expect to replace the Main Driving Unit at a price roughly 90% of buying a new one.* The entire car would have tamper sensors. Also, they would make the car one inch shorter every year.

I can't imagine Apple as a car company.

* Seriously, the main logic board seems to always be the culprit and the replacement cost is up there with a new item.

Surely you meant 4.2 years? 10000/199/12 = 4.18760469012 (years).

https://www.subarupartspros.com/sku/h001sfl300.html

On that page it says:

> This Genuine Subaru Accessory is an alternative for customers who do not enroll in STARLINK Safety and Security Plus.

For those who buy CPO's or with cash, longevity and maintenance are the prime factors for budget car purchasers.

I find these and Apple "apologies" funny: "Fucking Apple and their monopolistic practices!!! ... but they are so pretty, there's nothing as pretty in the market". Well, having bad market practices is part of the product feature, so you can vote with your wallet for a product with less bells and whistles but better business practices. People using Open Source have done it for a long time.

Annoyingly, it STILL takes a few seconds to start up.

My living room TV is a 39" Panasonic from 7 years ago. It's dumb as a brick.. but I almost never watch TV so this is fine!

It'd be nice if you could buy a brand new 55" OLED or whatever and not have to deal with smart TV software. I guess there's the gigabyte, LG, and alienware monitors.

I had a slight preference for an automatic transmission but ended up looking mostly at manuals since those often lack a few of the "modern" anti-features. I wish I had better advice to give, the experience honestly bummed me out quite a bit.

I'm at the point where I'm considering physically disabling the radios in my appliances.

Because Apple are the nickel-and-dime masters.

From removing headphone sockets in order to sell stupidly expensive wireless headphones, to stupidly overpriced soldered memory and storage upgrades, to the 30% appstore fee scam, to disallowing local backups to promote their iCloud storage racket, to unrepairable devices where you can't even replace a battery, to keyboards that need motherboard replacement to replace a key, to disallowing WebGPU so victims can't play online games instead of the games they take their 30% cut from, to proprietary connectors that they abandon a year later, to iPhone displays that can't even be replaced with another legitimate iPhone display, they do everything in their power to lock-in and bleed their victims dry.

Literally everything they do is a scam to nickel-and-dime their victims.

Every item they sell has all these arbitrary limitations just so they can take a cut.

They are usually the first to do every terrible consumer-hostile action because their victims are locked-in suckers with Stockholm syndrome whose devices don't work with any other companies devices or accessories.

And then other companies see their success and copy them.

So naturally any conversation about companies being assholes will skew towards discussing Apple, because they are the biggest and most successful assholes.

All of the remote controls you talk about being free are provided over cellular connections, in addition to nav, voice support, and telemetry being sent back to tesla.

as such, tesla is subject to the same economics as toyota, they have just decided to hide it in the price of the vehicles or on the backs of their investors. They pay AT&T to connect their vehicles to the internet.

Perhaps starlink will allow them to keep hiding the cost, perhaps not, especially if Tesla tries to turn the revenue knobs.

I don't think that it is. I think that it is a charge designed purely to normalize the idea of paying for everything as a subscription.

The next generation of car buyers might not realize that this is ridiculous because by then _everything_ is a subscription, from their shoes to their haircuts.

I don’t mean to criticize, but I have to admit that I cannot empathize.

There's nothing compelling me to get a newer car, except for engine wear.

Hex error codes, or generic "Something went wrong" errors are the norm at Microsoft.

Might want to read:

Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect Daryl J. Bem Cornell University

https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/features/psp-a0021524.pdf

This work has been replicated many times by others because no one believed it.

Also look up Decision Augmentation Theory.

I don’t see much difference between “confidently stated but provably wrong in seconds via Google” and a lie.

Knowing that my children will suffer and die is the main reason why I didn't want to have any. Now I have two.

Funnily, it's the same reason my own mother didn't want to have kids either. Yet, here we are. I suspect it is a pretty common feeling.

1) Are you me? I've done exactly this because I knew that my car fit a 10' board. Turns out when you're buying rough lumber 10' sometimes means 10' 2".

2) The windshield is laminated glass instead of tempered. It'll crack much more easily, but it'll (more or less) stay in one piece in the frame instead of shattering out into a million tiny bits.

Now we circumvent already things evolution purports like the strongest survivies. We also compensate for errors or flaws like eye sight, mental illness etc. We question eating meat. We cook meat. We self control and we evolved evolution by inventing the internet (highspeed human interconnect) and computers. Potentially the internet itself with all it's inputs (blogs, comments, news), processing power in-between and outputs will become a new thing.

We also do not support not lifing. If I would tell my parents that I want to stop/end my life I would not be allowed.

Why? Because of course the only true answer can be that lifing is good.

Now let's question this: we have no impact (universe will disintegrate), we have a lot of pain in the world, we can't guarantee to anyone that they will ha e a good life and there is no purpose in life either besides the purpose you create for yourself.

We can't ask someone if they want to be a life before they get born either.

In my logic the most social thing would be to be aware of everything around you and stop creating new brains to entertain yours.

How many brains in agony are okay? What is the perfect ratio? 1:10000? 1:100?

Making kids is not a logical answer it's an evolutionary one.

Lucky enough for our society my type of thinking will not propagate much anyway. ----

People are doing what they want anyway. It's just a discussion :)

Moral and ethics is a construct of a self-sufficient, sustainable and fair society. Nothing else.

And I'm not talking about the accessories that have enough active electronics to possibly justify it (pencil, or airpods), but things like cases, wheels, stands, dongles, etc.

Apple accessories very much are trying to nickel and dime people (on top of hardware that is already quite expensive), so it is unsurprising that people would (mistakenly) assume that Apple would try to do the same with digital subscriptions.

But I really didn't experience that at all. Outside of Apple Music and Apple Arcade (both of which are optional and neither of which I use/pay for) what exactly are the ongoing costs for most Apple hardware? Yes you have to buy some of the software, but that's true of basically every operating system; my 2014 Macbook still gets free updates as of about 8 months ago (I haven't checked since then since I gave it to my sister in law).

In fact I actually have found that Apple-centric apps seem to give me more options in which to pay for them outright instead of ongoing costs. Most of the the Omnigroup's software has a "just buy it once and you're done" feature, unlike something like, for example Microsoft Office.

There are many reasons it's done this way, but I can see the reasons people might compare it to being turned upside down and shaken for loose change like a piggy bank.

[1]: https://www.apple.com/apple-one/

I think the upgrade prices are reasonable, $1/month for 50GB and $3/month for 200GB, but I can see characterizing that as nickel and diming. They should have bumped up the 5 GB base plan years ago.

> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://www.reddit.com/r/mythbusters/comments/130js6/breakin...

What you lose in convenience, you gain in privacy, since iCloud backups are not e2e encrypted.

https://www.boxcryptor.com/en/blog/post/iphone-backup-icloud...

However if this is an extension of the original argument for why it makes sense to assume Apple is Nickle and diming over priced digital services. It doesn’t fit.

I'm not all over the details because there were so many reasons for me not to go Apple that this was just the tip of the iceberg.

Cruisers now tend to have cages to prevent this.

(This is not a solution if the car is underwater.)

If you're ever in the trunk of a moving vehicle, do what you can to sabotage the brake lights-- the wires are usually accessible and it increases the chances of attracting police attention.

Of course you can always open front doors.

Yes, modern cars have these pull tags in them. I don't know how new, but the first car that I bought new with a trunk was a 2007 model. It had them. They are even glow in the dark for easier locating in a closed/dark environment.

However, if you are ever in a real life situation trying to decide that the "movies" didn't do it this way is just a really bad way to be. Maybe the illusion/magic of Hollywood still holds for those not working in and around it, but nothing on a screen is real. Every thing presented on screen to you is there for a reason (even if what is on screen is omitting things). I've been in/around/through it for 30 years, so I could be jaded too.

Wait you’re telling me I can’t dodge bullets like they did in the Matrix… ;D

Thanks for the chuckle .. have a good one ..

The fact that the front doors both unlock when a single handle is pulled is because there's an electronic sensor and solenoid that unlocks everything when one handle is opened.

I had a Pontiac Vibe (really a Toyota Matrix) that had a cable in the door unlock assembly fail. You could open the door from the outside - the external door handle was physically the same part as the latch mechanism - but the external handle was back by your shoulder, while the internal handle was forward by the mirror and connected to the latch by a steel cable swaged to some aluminum pins; that connection eventually failed and the internal door handle flapped impotently.

I spent an embarrassing amount of time ignoring the problem and instead rolling down the window to open the door...

Regardless, it's not that much of a stretch to imagine that an automotive engineer might decide to replace cable actuator with a wire and solenoid.

Here's a video describing how to use the manual overrides (none are in plain sight)... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLDqmGQU6L0

Here's a photo of thee door interior (with no mechanical door pull)... https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/7I8AAOSwF-tgN5U1/s-l300.jpg

I’ve always considered this a serious safety design flaw.

Unfortunately, this is not anymore warranted. Already in models of ten years ago, there do exist "full lock non mechanically overridable" and "lock which is unlocked through the handles". Disabling the "feature" requires intervention from the manufacturer - if it can be disabled at all.

Look, I am informed that in at least many of the current cars with RFID based keys, it is impossible to lock yourself in the car... (And the idea seems to have spawned from manufacturers coming from the territories in the world most notorious for carjacking.)

> the 2007 Corvette has a manual release located on the floorboard by the driver's seat

Having random cables cut doesn't help the situation, but the issue was not knowing how to manually release the latch and not having an emergency window breaker.

Nope, not that model.

I had the chance to take one of the Fisker Karma development vehicles home from work. Everyone said it drove great. I got in and realized the door latch was a button. The whole car way prototype and development parts. The window was kinda small to crawl through. I said no thanks. There was a loop of string in the bottom of the door pocket to manually open it. Still nope.

For example, you don't want your kids to open the doors while you're driving. Or you don't want a car-jacker to reach through the window and open your door.

I did, on a 1980s car, since it was the normal door handle.

[edit]

Honestly if the rotary dial had similar tactile feedback, it would probably be fine. No worse than when they moved it off of the tree as bench seats were retired for safety reasons.