Fuuutuuuurrreee!

Its a vendor lock-in exercise.

Most every company designs their products in this manner. Locked-down app stores? That’s less about “user safety,” and more about making switching between Android or iOS incredibly painful. Netflix and Disney+ and other deal services’ taking content exclusively to their platforms? They want you locked into their service, not the other guy’s. “Free” cloud storage? They want you sticking photos (that probably train their AI) on their servers with automatic backups so you overrun that storage and buy more for them. Xbox Game Pass? Rent games forever and never switch to Playstation because you’ll lose everything (hence spending billions to make Starfield and others exclusives).

The two biggest driving forces right now are “you’ll own nothing and like it,” and “only we have what you need, so never look elsewhere or else.”

He seems to get it. I either want to hand off my familiar to my device or to do as little as possible. Cars are making their infotainment either overly complex or meaningless. Even doing equalizer settings through the display on my grandma’s Jeep is a nuisance. A couple of no-look clicks and dials turns now requires tapping on a slab while taking focus off driving.

If I were an Android Auto/Apple CarPlay person (my car doesn’t support it), and GM forced this on me, the outcomes wouldn’t be in GM’s favor. My usual reaction to such a change is to never consider the brand ever again Even if I did, I wouldn’t touch a single one of their stupid app features. I would sooner inconvenience myself out of spite than give GM the activity, data, and revenue they want from forcing things on us.