For most of the twentieth century, you couldn’t buy a Coca-Cola in the Soviet Union. It was one of the most American things in existence, and like Levi’s and Michael Jackson, the Iron Curtain kept it out.
\nWhen the Iron Curtain finally came down and Coke started pouring in, the apocryphal accounts all say the same thing: what people couldn’t get over wasn’t the taste. It was that the bottle a factory worker in Moscow could finally buy was the exact same bottle the President of the United States drank. That was the whole magic of Coca-Cola. A Coke is a Coke, and no amount of money or power could buy you a better one.
\nFor almost twenty years, the iPhone has been like Coke. There have been plenty of different iPhones, small ones and big ones, but when a new one came out, it was always the best iPhone you could buy. That might not be true anymore.
\nYesterday I had drinks with a former colleague after work, and we got on the topic of Apple raising prices. Somewhere in that conversation it hit me: the era of the singular iPhone might be ending.
\nWhen you think about it, humanity doesn’t have a good track record of “everyone can have the same good thing.” The fact that the iPhone has been a relatively stable product for almost 20 years is a bit insane, especially because every other piece of technology ends up fracturing to cash in on every angle it can. The iPhone did that in small ways, but none that ever diluted what the iPhone was.
\nRight now, the differences between iPhone models are largely age based. Old iPhone isn’t as good as new iPhone, sure, but what the device is capable of has been roughly the same thing across each generation.
\nIf some rumors are true, we might have bad iPhone, good enough iPhone, and luxury iPhone. You might think we’ve always had these differentiations (e.g. iPhone 16e, non-pro base models, Pro Max models), but camera bumps and screen sizes are superficial changes. With some of the iOS 27 changes available only with Apple’s most powerful chips, it’s looking like this could be the year where how much you pay for your iPhone might mean you and I have genuinely different experiences of what an iPhone can do.
\nWe’ve seen this playbook before in hardware like cameras and home audio, but the major consolidation of technology into our smartphones has mostly eliminated them. Services are really the next frontier of differentation by price. Netflix used to be one singular thing before it fractured into Netflix with ads and Netflix with 4K. It even gates which shows you can watch based on how much you pay. Once any product matures, the only way to grow is to break it into tiers and gouge everyone, the rich for the luxury version and the poor for the privilege of a working one. So how long until we have different Instagrams, different TikToks, different YouTubes, each one rationed by a payment gate?
\nYou might even argue YouTube Premium and Instagram’s paid tiers already do this. But, for now, those only exist to buy you fewer ads. Everyone’s still able to watch the same things and follow the same people. But the looming threat that the internet could be turned into a giant cable bundle always looms.
\nThe pitch is always choice. More tiers, more options, something for every budget. But you’re not picking what’s right for you. They’re picking what people with your budget are allowed to have.
\nSo if Apple does start to intentionally isolate useful features across various price points, the reason will be pretty simple: they think hardware growth is effectively over. The iPhone, the most successful tech product in history, might not be able to differentiate on hardware alone. Instead, they have to also tie software to that hardware. They need to stop selling more of the good enough phones at a reasonable price, and start selling different phones at higher prices to the same people who will pay. Apple Intelligence not running in Europe is the biggest hint I can imagine. Why should Apple put perfectly good, leading edge A-series chips into phones that might never run Apple Intelligence? Just food for thought.
\nEven with the big price raises this week, there’s nothing uniquely cynical about Apple’s approach. This is just what every product does when it stops growing. Analysts will tell us this is normal, that it was always going to be this way, that this is just how things work now in a post-Covid supply chain world. That the iPhone was just an exception for twenty years. Exceptions, even exceptional ones, can still end.
\nBut, we don’t have to believe this. It wasn’t always this way. It was this way for almost twenty years, and they’re the ones with the power to choose to end it. For almost twenty years, the best iPhone you could reasonably afford and the iPhone you wanted were the same phone. That was a key part of what made the iPhone so sticky. I don’t think most people even noticed, but they might now.
", "date_published": "2026-06-25T19:00:00-05:00", "url": "https://b10g.xyz/2026/06/25/the-end-of-the-singular/", "tags": ["tech","apple","product"] }, { "id": "http://codybrom.micro.blog/2024/11/19/for-sale-google-chrome-never/", "title": "for sale: google chrome, never monetized", "content_html": "The DOJ is about to drop the biggest antitrust bomb since Microsoft’s Internet Explorer case.
\nIn the late ’90s, bundling IE with Windows licenses played a big role in getting Microsoft labeled a monopoly and for good reason. IE’s complete stranglehold peaked at ~95% market share (150M users). Today Chrome’s “mere” 65% translates to 3+ billion users and gives Google far more control over the web than IE’s team could dream of.
\nThe DOJ’s ideal solution? Make Google do what Microsoft probably should have done: spin off or sell off their browser.
\nBut my question is: who on Earth could even buy it?
\n\n\nLeah Nylen and Josh Sisco, reporting for Bloomberg (November 18, 2024):
\nTop Justice Department antitrust officials have decided to ask a judge to force Alphabet Inc.’s Google to sell off its Chrome browser in what would be a historic crackdown on one of the world’s biggest tech companies.
\n
Leah Nylen, reporting for Bloomberg (November 19, 2024):
\n\n\nShould a sale proceed, Chrome would be worth “at least $15-$20 billion, given it has over 3 billion monthly active users,” said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mandeep Singh.
\n
I think Chrome is worth way more than that. Consider that Google was paying Apple as much as $20B per year just to be Safari’s default search engine (about 36% of what Google earned from Safari search advertising). And that was $20B annually for partial access to just Safari’s 18% market share. Chrome has nearly four times Safari’s user base. Add in that Chrome is also one of tech’s most powerful consumer brands, has a massive app extension ecosystem and deep enterprise penetration… $15-20B almost feels laughably low.
\nUntil, of course, you consider Chrome never had a business model and whoever buys it will just be burning money. That is, unless, they figure out how to make it profitable without completely angering its users. Google seemed to have that figured out with search ads, but that road now looks hazardous for others to follow.
\nIt begs the question, if Chrome gave Google too much power over search, who could run it without abusing some other kind of monopoly power? And what will a future owner do about search, especially since users genuinely prefer Google? It makes me wonder if Google is realistically punished by this, or if this is just the old joke about boats and the two happiest days of ownership? If Chrome sales, they get some money sure, but they also get to offload a massive expense while still likely holding onto their default search engine status with a lot less antitrust heat.
\nAt a bare minimum, I can’t imagine Apple or Microsoft, with their entrenched investments into their own browsers and previous antitrust baggage, would even dare think about bidding for Chrome. And, any other big tech company with the cash, capacity or ambition to successfully run Chrome is realistically on list somewhere at the FTC or DOJ. Even if we still consider companies with pending or future anti-trust cases, it’s a surprisingly small pool of potential buyers.
\nWhile I’m honestly not a gambling man, let’s head over to my imaginary betting window while I set some completely arbitrary odds on potential buyers:
\nI think Meta is a clear frontrunner should they want it. Zuckerberg has spent the last decade trying to escape the platform constraints that Apple and Google have placed on his empire and Chrome could finally give Meta what they’ve always wanted: unfettered access to users outside of their app.
\nThe strategic fit is perfect. Meta’s aggressive push into AI with their Llama models needs a direct consumer touchpoint, but while Meta AI keeps gaining users, its utility is constrained by Meta’s apps. Building Meta AI-powered browsing assistants into Chrome could directly compete with Google’s Gemini and seriously enhance their AI’s relevance.
\nThere’s a hardware dimension too. While Meta’s Quest headsets and Ray-Ban smart glasses show they’re serious about owning new computing platforms, Chrome could give them an even stronger position in one of today’s dominant platforms while they work on tomorrow’s. And, if the company’s metaverse vision ever materializes, controlling the world’s dominant browser could be a crucial bridge between traditional computing and whatever comes next. Unlike their failed mobile efforts with Facebook Home, browser ownership is a much more achievable path to platform relevance.
\nBut both of those are still not the biggest prize of this transaction. Chrome would give Meta something they’ve only dreamed of: a complete view of users' entire digital lives. The advertising implications are staggering, and instead of seeing only what users do inside Facebook and Instagram, they’d get insights into every website visit, every search, every purchase. For a company built on turning user data into advertising gold, that’s worth almost any price.
\nBut regulatory hurdles for Meta are quite real. Meta would probably face intense scrutiny, especially under a Trump Administration FTC and DOJ, but they might actually have an easier time than other tech giants precisely because they’re not currently a browser or search player at all. By that token, DOJ might see Meta as a legitimate counterweight to both Google and Apple’s browser dominance.
\nThe price tag would be steep, but Meta’s $70B cash pile and need for more desktop and enterprise reach make this their best shot for platform relevance. Also, don’t bet against Zuck when user data is on the line.
\nAmazon’s case for Chrome feels pretty obvious at first glance. Their advertising business is already a juggernaut spanning sponsored products, brand experiences, streaming TV, audio, display ads, and even physical packaging. But it’s still largely confined to their own ecosystem. Chrome user data would dramatically change that equation, giving them insight into the entire consumer journey, not just what happens inside Amazon’s walled garden. Combined with their existing retail, streaming, and device data, they’d have an even more powerful advertising powerhouse that could rival both Google and Meta. Heck, just adding one new Amazon ad to Chrome’s new tab page could justify the purchase price.
\nAmazon’s track record with platforms is pretty mixed. The Fire Phone flopped, their Fire OS is a weak Android fork for TVs and tablets, and the Chromium-based Silk browser struggles on Amazon’s underpowered hardware. Yet Amazon has proven they can absorb and scale major acquisitions like Twitch, Ring, and Zappos. The problem is these acquisitions have plateaued a bit too. Twitch regularly loses top streamers to YouTube while Ring keeps delaying on promises like HomeKit support and their 2020 in-home security drone. Even Alexa, itself born from acquiring Polish startup Ivona Software, has lost its early voice AI lead to OpenAI and Google. This summer, The Wall Street Journal reported Amazon lost over $25 billion on Alexa devices between 2017-2021, selling half a billion units at razor-thin margins hoping to drive merchandise sales from users who treat them as fancy alarm clocks. Even now, as Amazon pushes hard on enterprise AI with AWS Bedrock and Q, they’re still trailing in consumer AI. Chrome’s billions of users are tempting, but Amazon’s mixed record of strong integrations suggests this might be an expensive distraction rather than a strategic necessity.
\nBut Amazon’s biggest hurdle might be regulatory. They’re already under intense antitrust scrutiny, with the FTC’s lawsuit heading to trial in October 2026. That case focuses on Amazon’s retail dominance and pricing algorithms like “Project Nessie” that allegedly extracted billions from consumers. Giving them control of the world’s most popular browser could be a bridge too far for regulators. The DOJ’s whole point is to reduce concentration of power but letting Amazon add Chrome to their arsenal might just be the opposite.
\nThey’re still a logical contender with clear advertising potential, but the limited hardware synergies and regulatory challenges make this feel more like a thought experiment than a realistic outcome.
\nApollo Global’s Yahoo might seem like an unlikely Chrome suitor, but the private equity firm has shown a surprising amount of ambition since acquiring Yahoo from Verizon for $5B in 2021. While current CEO Jim Lanzone has successfully led content and advertising businesses at CBS and Ask.com, Chrome would demand something Yahoo currently lacks: a strong product and entrepreneurial leader who could transform the world’s favorite free browser into an actual business. Given Chrome’s role in cementing Google’s search dominance, monetization was never the goal and turning Chrome from a cost center into a revenue generator, while maintaining its technical excellence, will require a unique kind of executive leader.
\nBut Chrome would transform Yahoo’s comeback story overnight. Instead of relying on a declining but substantial user base, they’d have access to billions of new users. The advertising and analytics potential would dwarf Yahoo’s current reach, potentially justifying Apollo’s purchase price and then some.
\nThere’s also a really fascinating regulatory angle. The DOJ’s core complaint is that Google uses Chrome to maintain its search monopoly, but Yahoo licenses search results from Microsoft’s Bing. If Yahoo owned Chrome and made Yahoo Search (powered by Bing) the default, it might actually help create the search competition the DOJ wants, if a bit indirectly. Microsoft would get the expanded user base they need to improve Bing without triggering the antitrust concerns of buying Chrome themselves. It’s a potentially elegant, if still entirely implausible, way to boost search competition through the back door.
\nBut there are two massive hurdles. First, this isn’t the old Yahoo. Apollo’s version is a much leaner operation focused on digital advertising and content. While they’ve shown promising signs under private equity ownership, maintaining and evolving Chrome’s massively distributed codebase would require an enormous investment in engineering talent and R&D that Yahoo simply doesn’t have right now. Even if they could attract the right people, building that capability would cost nearly as much as Chrome itself. Second, it’s unclear if Apollo would be able to justify Chrome’s price tag. While they have deep pockets, private equity typically looks for clear paths to profitability and monetizing something people have been getting for free for the past 16 years is not going to be easy.
\nSo while Yahoo offers a uniquely clean regulatory path through its Bing partnership and search-neutral position, the odds remain quite long. Without the right product leadership and engineering muscle, Chrome’s potential would wither in Yahoo’s hands.
\nOracle might seem like a dark horse for Chrome, but Larry Ellison has never met a Google fight (or big tech acquisition) he couldn’t resist. Oracle has the technical resources to maintain Chrome’s codebase and deep enterprise relationships that could turn into real value. They’ve managed major open source projects before, though their handling of Java after acquiring Sun, and the aggressive licensing fees of the Google lawsuit might not inspire a lot of confidence.
\nI think an enterprise angle is pretty compelling. While consumers might balk at Oracle branded Chrome, business customers already pay Oracle billions for mission critical software. Chrome for Enterprise already exists with advanced security and management features and Google charges for it. Oracle’s massive sales operation could bundle this into their existing packages, creating the kind of clear monetization path that could justify a massive acquisition price.
\nBut the cultural mismatch is hard to ignore. Oracle excels at extracting maximum revenue from enterprise customers who have no choice but to pay up, while Chrome succeeded by being free, open, and beloved by everyday users and developers alike. Trying to combine these two would be like oil and water. The developer community, which has long viewed Oracle as hostile to open source, might just flee Chrome entirely.
\nSo while the enterprise strategy is compelling, Oracle’s DNA might be too fundamentally at odds with Chrome’s to make it work. Then again, Larry Ellison is one of Trump’s biggest backers, and with Trump’s DOJ and FTC likely calling the antitrust shots when this all happens, regulatory approval might be more about political allegiance than consumer interest. After all, Oracle nearly landed TikTok in 2020 through Trump’s direct intervention, a deal that made more political sense than technical sense. Stranger things have happened in tech M&A.
\nCloudflare: They’d be a strong values match given their focus on improving the web, but acquiring Chrome would require them to scale massively—likely to afford and sustain the technical and operational demands of the browser.
\nZoom: Despite attempts to expand beyond video calls with tools like Zoom Docs, email, and calendar, none have achieved significant traction yet. Acquiring Chrome would be an even bigger leap, pushing the organization far beyond their core expertise, likely spreading them too thin.
\nElon Musk: Musk probably sees the appeal of owning the world’s dominant browser, but with SpaceX, Tesla, X and now the Department of Government Efficiency all vying for his attention (and budgets), taking on Chrome might finally stretch those resources and focus too far.
\nSalesforce: While Chrome’s dominance would give Salesforce unprecedented access to integrate their enterprise tools directly into billions of browsers, it’s hard to see them succeeding in consumer tech. Marc Benioff has shown little interest in consumer products, and Salesforce’s enterprise DNA makes them an awkward steward for the world’s most popular browser.
\nIntuit: While Intuit excels at creating mass-market financial tools, transitioning to managing a global web browser is a leap too far. Chrome’s scale and complexity don’t align with Intuit’s existing business model or expertise.
\nOpenAI: It’s hard to imagine a scenario where OpenAI would step into the browser market. While the company’s AI tools and services are undeniably transformative, its focus has been on advancing artificial intelligence rather than managing a complex, user-facing product like Chrome.
\nOne intriguing aspect of this situation is Chromium, the open-source core of Chrome. The DOJ’s filing might clarify whether Google could continue maintaining Chromium after divesting Chrome. If Google retains control of Chromium, it would significantly lower the technical barrier for potential buyers, as the acquisition would focus more on the Chrome brand than on its technical foundation. However, this could also diminish Chrome’s overall value as a product. On the other hand, if Google cannot remain Chromium’s maintainer, the pool of companies capable of managing both Chrome and Chromium’s massive codebases shrinks considerably.
\nWe’ll know more soon, but one thing’s certain: whoever buys Chrome will reshape how billions of people access the web. Whether that ends up being better or worse than Google’s current dominance also remains to be seen.
", "date_published": "2024-11-18T19:00:00-05:00", "url": "https://b10g.xyz/2024/11/18/for-sale-google-chrome-never/", "tags": ["tech","chrome","google","antitrust"] }, { "id": "http://codybrom.micro.blog/2023/06/06/vision-prodictions/", "title": "vision pro-dictions", "content_html": "Yesterday Apple announced the new Vision Pro spatial computer (aka headset). One of the things I do at my job is kind of try to predict the future, or at least imagine how to get ahead of it so we can make the right moves today. With that, I’ve been assembling some predictions (most of which I assume will be proven wrong very quickly) on how I think the Vision Pro will change the current state of product, experiences and technology.
\nThey are:
\nThis new platform is gonna bring a new monetization strategy with it. This isn’t the place for 99¢ apps, especially when every user has shown their willingness to spend and user base is small. Pricing will look more like Mac apps, or perhaps higher. Subscriptions will be the norm, or perhaps pay per hour/day for certain kinds of apps.
\nEntertainment is obviously a big part of this and VR events (court-side sports & front-row concerts) could be a game-changer. It has the chance to be a big disruptor to live sports so I’m predicting a Ticketmaster-like entity might sell expensive per-event ticketed access so VR doesn’t undercut in-person.
\nStreamers like Netflix and Disney are going to add VR/AR content to their libraries but put it behind a higher tier plan. Apple will raise the price of Apple TV+ but will still have some of the cheapest access to VR content and it will all be Vision Pro exclusive.
\nZeiss lenses are going to be expensive for people who need them. DTC third parties like Warby Parker will probably replicate something pretty equivalent very quickly.
\n3D photos and videos will be more interesting and more used than Live Photos, but not by much. 3D photos and videos will also be in a new Apple format that is not widely supported for a while.
\nIf I think of more, I’ll probably update this post. And if any of them are every confirmed or disproven I’ll try to remember and update those too.
", "date_published": "2023-06-05T19:00:00-05:00", "url": "https://b10g.xyz/2023/06/05/vision-prodictions/", "tags": ["tech","apple","vision pro"] }, { "id": "http://codybrom.micro.blog/2023/06/05/the-second-screen/", "title": "the second screen", "content_html": "A few months ago I started writing a blog post that is probably never gonna get finished and so this is my attempt to rewrite it while it’s relevant and force myself to finish.
\nWhen I graduated college, my parents gifted me an iPad and I was super excited. I’d wanted an iPad since it launched but I didn’t really know what I’d use it for other than the fact that I just love technology and cool toys.
\n\n\nQuick tangent: The model they got me was the 3rd generation version and it was also the last one to use the 30 pin connector. It was actually replaced nine months later when Apple launched the iPhone 5 and the Lightning port and I’m still bitter than Apple made it obsolete so fast.
\n
Anyways, I was so stoked to have an iPad but I had no idea what to do with it.
\nI tried to write blogs and essays on it, but it felt weird. Trying to type on a large virtual keyboard just wasn’t satisfying. I tried again, writing with a Bluetooth keyboard in this weird origami-style case that propped everything up, but that just also felt weird. I tried drawing with it, but I’m not much of an artist, especially when it comes to drawing with my finger. I also tried watching a fair amount of TV on it, including The Newsroom and the first season of Game of Thrones using the HBO Go app. It was fine, but I had other devices better suited for that.
\nOverall, I was pretty underwhelmed by my iPad. It felt like there was supposed to be something more than just big iPhone apps and watching TV. Because the truth was, I didn’t even like the big iPhone apps. I wanted something that was better than what I might even get on my phone and maybe that killer iPad app wasn’t even available as an iPhone app.
\nThere was one kind of app in particular that kind of got me excited: second-screen apps. The idea is that while you’re watching live television you open an app that is connected to what you’re watching and it gives you a separate but connected and interesting layer on which to look at your TV watching experience. For example, there might be a game or trivia or a Q&A happening while you’re watching a show or stats and alternate camera angles while watching sports. However, the second-screen apps that popped up barely scratched the surface of what was theoretically possible. They tried to be incrementally better versions of existing things (live TV guide, entertainment reviews, social feeds) just fine tuned for monetization.
\nMy first attempt at writing this went deep into the mistakes that were made by the apps that went after this, and rather than go in depth here’s a summary:
\nI say all that because I really just want hit the nail on the head with a giant hammer. Here goes: you can build cool shit, but you need to solve a problem.
\nSocial TV apps were a solution in search of a problem. These startups were able to convince VCs that people were already using their phones, laptops and tablets in front of their TVs — so why not serve up ads on those devices related to the content shown on the TV screen? But that wasn’t a problem users experienced - it was just an opportunity to exploit users’s desire to connect with fellow fans and their favorite shows. Targeted advertising is not, and will never be, a feature users care about, so building your product to suit your monetization strategy instead of your users is how to fail fast.
\n—
\nSo why did I want to hurry up and write this now? Well, it is the eve of another major Apple announcement. Tomorrow we night finally know what Apple’s plans for virtual reality/augmented reality are, and people are going to think they should start building apps/experiences for this new device the way that they did for the iPad and for the Apple Watch.
\nI have two responses to that.
\nThis sounds so basic, so why did second screen apps get it so wrong? The short answer is that the world was in the middle of a digital transformation. People were increasingly more likely to get entertainment through a digital means, and that meant that there was suddenly a giant pot of money if you could use some kind of attribution technology to demonstrate return on ad spend. These second-screen app people thought this was wonderful. They could marry the traditional advertising technology to the digital. Except one problem: interactive advertising does not solve a user problem and so it was a huge fucking flop.
\nThe peak of this kind of thinking was around the time of Apple’s “there’s an app for that” campaign. An article on Vox asks the right question, “do we really need an app for everything?” The answer is of course not.
\nYet someone is going to do this again if they buy into the hype cycle of AR and ship before they have an effective product with a complete UX that fulfills a need for a user. The hype cycle isn’t inherently bad. The hype cycle is basically a natural phenomenon. What’s bad is trying to shoehorn poorly thought out ideas and even worse monetization strategies into a product users definitely don’t and won’t value.
", "date_published": "2023-06-04T19:00:00-05:00", "url": "https://b10g.xyz/2023/06/04/the-second-screen/", "tags": ["product","tech","apps"] }, { "id": "http://codybrom.micro.blog/2023/01/08/statefullessness/", "title": "stateful-less-ness", "content_html": "The statelessness of modern hardware design really annoys me.
\nRecently I read John Gruber’s comments about a bombshell study about the safety of touchscreens in vehicles. Here’s the specific passage that awoke something in me:
\n\n\nThe reason that cars are largely switching to mostly touchscreen controls is the same reason phones switched — software is more flexible than hardware. Cars today do more than cars from 2005 did. But in the same way that all phones still have some hardware buttons (volume, power, mute), cars should too. The trick is getting the balance right. A couple of recent cars I’ve driven have definitely gotten that balance wrong.
\nIt’s also the case that as cars take baby steps toward self-driving, previously stateful hardware controls need to become stateless. A traditional turn signals sticks in place until you complete the turn. That’s tricky with a car that can turn itself. Or just think about volume knobs on stereo equipment. In the old days, the physical knob indicated the volume level, usually on a scale of 0–10 ( but not always , of course). Nowadays, though, playback volume is generally adjusted directionally, up or down, and the knob or buttons don’t indicate where the level is set, because the level is a value stored in software, and indicated on a display.
\n
In my current car, a 2022 VW, I have two ways to control my volume: steering wheel buttons and a volume knob next to the stereo/infotainment screen.
\nIf I want the car to start with the radio silent, turning down the volume knob before I turned it on will do nothing because volume is software controlled. Both buttons are stateless because they have no power without the software – they do not control the state. Because of this, I have effectively no option to start with the radio muted. Maybe I can hit the power button on the Infotainment screen before it fully boots up, but it pisses me off that my volume knob is powerless until the software allows it to be.
\nIn some older cars I’ve driven, the volume knob was the only way to control volume and it was stateful, meaning the the exact position of the knob controlled the state of the volume (not somewhere else in the electronics or software). This meant you could turn the knob down before turning on the vehicle and it would obey. But the modern car designer would think this is “dumber” design because a single hardware component controlling something isn’t flexible or controllable by software.
\nMy old car, a 2014 Chevy Cruze, had a really buggy Panasonic infotainment system. Sometimes the stereo would crash while I was driving and then I couldn’t do anything until I stopped the car or it rebooted. While crashed, I couldn’t change anything - the song, the station, THE VOLUME. It was maddening and showed the risks of making everything stateless. To allow a control to be stateless is to also allow it to fail when (not if) software fails.
\nI suppose stateful controls will continue to be phased out from products more and more. We recently got a “smart” space heater that is app controlled and also has no stateful buttons or knobs. I willingly sacrificed convenience for control, but maybe a car shouldn’t be one of those places.
\nAlso, maybe it’s because of my years spent operating sound boards that I like to feel getting it dialed in, but otherwise I feel I am becoming an old person who yells at technology. I just think something gets lost when you convert a perfectly positioned knob into a software value.
", "date_published": "2023-01-07T19:00:00-05:00", "url": "https://b10g.xyz/2023/01/07/statefullessness/", "tags": ["product","tech","cars"] } ] }