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Cryptopygia

Cryptopygia

Well-Known Member
Joined
Feb 19, 2007
Messages
3,606
Location
The Eastern state where you can't fill your tank
Car(s)
Whichever car is still working
BERLIN - U.S. computer company Apple Inc. and German automaker Volkswagen AG are discussing the possibility of building an "iCar" that would feature products by the producer of the ubiquitous iPod personal music player.

Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs and Volkswagen's chief Martin Winterkorn met several days ago in California and plan to meet for further discussions, said Hans-Gerd Bode, a spokesman for VW.

There are "scores of ideas," but few concrete plans at this point, Bode said.

Market experts estimate that a compact car upgraded with Apple products would be of substantial interest to young target groups, according to German financial magazine Capital.

Apple already works with VW and other automakers to offer an integrated in-car hookup for iPods. A representative of Apple did not immediately return a phone call for comment on the potential "iCar."

Electronics, ranging from satellite navigation machines to cup warmers, are increasingly a selling point for automakers. Ford Motor Co., for instance, will debut this fall an in-car communication and entertainment system developed with Microsoft Corp. that will cost $395 as an option.

The system, called Sync, allows drivers, using either voice recognition or steering wheel controls, to listen to their digital music players and have text messages on their cell phones read aloud.
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ka-clicka

Hmm, a smooth, glossy car with touch sensitive controls, fancy 3D display, and a shiny chrome undercarriage that to repair requires sending it to the manufacturer or hiring a geek to tear it open...
 
So it'll scratch very easily, break down at random regular intervals and then just die after a year.
 
This sounds like a great idea :rolleyes:

I can already see it, it'll be the cheapest, slowest product VW makes, have the worse build quality in the western world, poor fuel economy, constantly fail, be expensive to fix... well all of those aren't exactly a far stretch for vw. It will have some feature that has been around in other cars for much longer, but done slightly different that will cause the car to cost 3x as much as any car in it's class with zealots claiming it's as fast as anything else out there, and "costs more because it's better built" as the door handle falls off.
 
So you have to replace the car when the battery dies, is that it?
 
That's just crazy-talk. The most I want is to play my MP3s through the car stereo, maybe a SatNav with traffic, but that's it. I have an iPod dock hardwired into my factory stereo and I have a Garmin GPS. The GPS doesn't show traffic though, but I can get that upgrade (not that it matters).

200705141863.png


Yeah, I don't want total multi-media immersion. I don't want it to read text messages to me because then people would want to text message me - that's the kind of thing I discourage. (@#$^^#! text messaging!)
 
I always wondered why a simple company like Apple spawns so much hatred among nerds.
Its not that they force you to buy their products.
 
un-dee said:
I always wondered why a simple company like Apple spawns so much hatred among nerds.
Its not that they force you to buy their products.
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It's more that they promote their products as a lifestyle - I know they're hardly the only company that does it, but it's how much and the way they do it. Plus the fact that so many people willingly buy into their products when otherwise, the flaws and missing features with most of them would turn people away.

But who am I to talk. I've got an iPod ?_?
 
Uhm, so it'll look very smooth, be built like a Slum and will cost the same as the moon?
 
jensked said:
Well...I just thought of something: your car will be able to crash in 2 ways...
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:lol: :mrgreen:
In car terms Apple used to be like Saab, kind of interesting, different, and a tad geeky. Now its like BMW - they perform - but are ruined by customers who know nothing about computers only about status and image. The are a half dozen in every Stabucks I walk into. The STUPIDLY high prices also fit the metaphor. Quite a premium to be trendy.
 
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un-dee said:
I always wondered why a simple company like Apple spawns so much hatred among nerds.
Its not that they force you to buy their products.
Click to expand...

I never bought an apple product, but in school I had to use their heaps of shit.
Narcolepsy kind of said it all:
Narcolepsy said:
:lol: :mrgreen:
In car terms Apple used to be like Saab, kind of interesting, different, and a tad geeky. Now its like BMW - they perform - but are ruined by customers who know nothing about computers only about status and image. The are a half dozen in every Stabucks I walk into. The STUPIDLY high prices also fit the metaphor. Quite a premium to be trendy.
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Their owners are zealots and can get on my nerves. They insist that you pay a premium for Macs because their use superior quality parts and build quality... both of which are pure BS. They have a failure rate that is 10x the industry standard, and the specs on their systems are roughly $500 above everyone else for the exact (or better)product.
 
thedguy said:
Their owners are zealots and can get on my nerves. They insist that you pay a premium for Macs because their use superior quality parts and build quality... both of which are pure BS. They have a failure rate that is 10x the industry standard, and the specs on their systems are roughly $500 above everyone else for the exact (or better)product.
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There are very little 13" laptops around. A C1 or C2 Sony laptop will cost as much if not more than a macbook. For any other product category you are right though and I really hate those idiots who claim that macs are sooo much better and whatever... :mad:
 
I don't really have an opinion on the car per se, integrating tech with cars has been going on since cars were invented, and it's not going to stop, whatever I don't much care.

but I do like Apple stuff. were I to buy a laptop, it'd be an apple. If I had more than $800 to spend on a desktop, I'd buy an apple. I have an iPod. I don't see the reason for the hate. You can get an apple laptop for cheap, especially if you're a student, the hardware looks nice and is just as good or better than other's on the market(I'm a bit sad about intel switch) it all integrates nicely and OSX is the shit.

I've also never had an apple computer fail on me. my iPod hung once, but I just plugged it into the computer and voila! it was fine.
 
hajj said:
There are very little 13" laptops around. A C1 or C2 Sony laptop will cost as much if not more than a macbook. For any other product category you are right though and I really hate those idiots who claim that macs are sooo much better and whatever... :mad:
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Yep. The small screened laptops are a thing of the past. This is why I actually bought a used IBM over a cheap dell, well that and IBM > Dell.

zenkidori said:
but I do like Apple stuff. were I to buy a laptop, it'd be an apple. If I had more than $800 to spend on a desktop, I'd buy an apple. I have an iPod. I don't see the reason for the hate. You can get an apple laptop for cheap, especially if you're a student, the hardware looks nice and is just as good or better than other's on the market(I'm a bit sad about intel switch) it all integrates nicely and OSX is the shit.

I've also never had an apple computer fail on me. my iPod hung once, but I just plugged it into the computer and voila! it was fine.
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The iPod is nice, I love the fact that they can do so much with so few controls. But things like the iPhone where the battery can't be changed, or the fact that they have no trouble flat out abandoning older systems (OSX couldn't run on anything pre-G3, though it was probably a good thing), many of Steve Jobs business practices are questionable and make me glad MS took the market over apple (lesser of two evils I guess), and http://macintouch.com/reliability. On the flip side, OSX is damn nice, if only it had the home+end keys working the way I'm used to in the PC world, I'd install it on my PC.

Keep in mind though, I pretty much refuse to buy any pre-assembled computer. I found that building my own, with a little more thought put into buying parts than it takes to make a sandwich lead to a very reliable pc... I had a system that tamed win98, even with my constant tinkering.
 
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I build all my own PCs because I'm cheap, but if I weren't or if I had enough money to not be cheap, I'd be an apple guy.

I would actually argue that MS is the much greater of two evils, but that's another discussion entirely.

the only reason this computer runs XP is because it's not mine. if it were, I'd have a very small pirated XP partition for Half life, PS and whatever windows specific crap I want to try out, the rest would run linux like my old PC.

MS gets $0.00
 
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