I can't wait for the lawsuits over who pays to repair a feature that failed caused a car to be un-safe/un-drivable and was never subscribed to.

This is actually a big question about Apple’s emergency satellite communication. “Family of five freezes to death in blizzard because of Apple Wallet glitch” is not a headline they want in 2 years.

My guess is they’ll have some sort of postpaid system without verification gatekeeping, or they’ll just fold the cost into 4-year iPhone ownership and eat the loss for those that upgrade slower.

I suspect in these first few years they’re monitoring how it’s being used, and then will use that data to decide. If the usage is so low that the cost is negligible, they might just keep it free. Or it could spawn a regulation that this kind of service must always be free like 911 service on cellular networks.

Please do verification donut to continue.

To prove you are not Full Self-Drive

How is this any different than using snow tires, which is also a recurring cost and requires you to do something (ie. change your tires) before you can use it?

"You paid for stuff before, how is the slow encroaching market takeover by artificially crippled products for blood-sucking rent seeking any different?"

It’s kinda neat how you can win any argument by just putting your conclusions into the questions ain’t it? ;)

>by just putting your conclusions into the question

I answered the question humorously. If it was a silly question, that's not my fault. :)

No "Begging the Question" here. Nice try.

You literally didn’t answer the question though. You just rephrased the question and replaced all the content with your own prior conclusions.

That’s exactly begging the question.

>your own prior conclusions

Oh please. Again it's my answer to the question.

"[The difference is that this is] slow encroaching market takeover by artificially crippled products for blood-sucking rent seeking."

Hope this helps.

"artificially crippled products for blood-sucking rent seeking"

that's the point that's up for discussion, but that's just being asserted with no supporting arguments.

If you're trying to claim it's not "artificial" or "rent seeking," feel free to make that argument.

Seemed self-explanatory enough to me.

Much better. It’s a lot more obvious how insubstantial and emotional the “argument” is. Just bad vibes word salad.

> insubstantial and emotional

I see you didn't take Econ 101.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking

Tell me, what specifically about this press release unveiling a new tire meets the definition of rent-seeking?

Lest you "forget," the context of the current thread is this post[0].

Since this is what you're reduced to, I see real discussion is finished now. Thank you for contributing.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38611689

Snow tires are something you drive around with every day, in the winter months, to improve traction, whereas snow chains are something you put on when there is a layer of compacted snow & ice on the road. You definitely don't drive with snow chains when the road is clear or has a scattered icy patches; that would wreck the road. Also, you can't drive very fast with snow chains on, maybe 50 km/h max.

I can change tires myself if I want to, and when I'm paying for tires to be changed for me I'm paying for the labor involved not the feature of having different tires.

>and when I'm paying for tires to be changed for me I'm paying for the labor involved not the feature of having different tires.

Okay but practically speaking you're not changing your tires for fun. You're changing it specifically to improve winter driving performance. For all practical purposes changing your tires is the same as activating the feature on these smart tires, even if the former involves the tires being removed/added.

That's really just fundamentally not how I mentally handle spending money.

I get that they're logically equivalent, but it goes against my world view to pay per activation on something like this. I have great disdain for the subscriptionication of everything.

How are snow chains a recurring cost? You buy them once and wrap them around your tires when you need them.

Time is money. Having to "wrap them around your tires when you need them" is a cost, even if you could theoretically do it for free. Moreover, if there was "Sudden heavy snow" as in OP's hypothetical, you'd still be screwed.

If you're serious, there is a difference between ransoming a functionality that is already provided vs delivering something new. I know about the economic arguments, but both in perception and reality, it's not the same thing to say "pay us to turn this on" as it is to pay to buy something new. No amount of mental gymnastics will change that.

>If you're serious, there is a difference between ransoming a functionality that is already provided vs delivering something new.

Do you feel the same about software/SaaS that gate features to different license tiers? After all, the functionality is already in the code.

Yes if those features don't require using extra space, bandwidth, hardware.

In this case it's not really clear that they're adding it to all cars. In all likelihood if the subscription scheme exists (which there's also no clear evidence that it is), you'd have to opt in to the expensive tires first.

And if e.g. those extra costs are 15 cents then the only reasonable extra charge is 15 cents?

It’s not free to do pretty much anything, even sending a single HTTP request, so curious how you calibrate.

Easiest calibration: if the feature is already present to the client, requires ONLY pushing a secret button or sending a special one time request, but doesn't require any ongoing http requests or unpaid maintenance on provider side, then it should be free. Like cabin heating or snow chain deployers.

So if you have a mass-produced product and you want some variable features available for customers’ different preferences and price points, you ought to have different manufacturing processes even if you can actually create that variation in software? That seems very wasteful IMO.

If it's cheaper to include hardware in all models than to make different hardware versions, that sounds like you shouldn't make users pay more for actually using the hardware that is already there.