If you were alive (and online) during the 90s, you may remember the banter between Microsoft and General Motors:
From https://crysa.fzu.cz/ondra/documents/cars_like_windows.html (the only online copy I could find)
Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated, “If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving twenty-five-dollar cars that get 1,000 miles to the gallon.”
In response to Bill’s comments, General Motors issued a press release stating: If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:
[…]
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The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single “general car error” warning light.
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New seats would force everyone to have the same size butt.
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The airbag system would ask “Are You Sure?” before going off.
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Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key, and grabbed a hold of the radio antenna.
30 years later, some of those jokes are finally becoming reality, thanks to Tesla.
The Macintosh one is wild
“6. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, reliable, five times as fast, and twice as easy to drive, but would only run on 5 percent of the roads."
Love the scene from the Steve Jobs movie where Woz asks Steve if in order to send an email on the NEXT computer the recipient would also need to have an NEXT computer.
Of course!
Basically iMessaging and FaceTime.
Blows my mind that literally every other brand of phone has settled on a standard for rich messaging and video calls, but Apple had to make a big stink about it and pinky-promise it’ll be out this year.
And all the Apple users act like everybody else is inferior…while they’re the only ones that are incompatible.
I bought an iPhone 12 specifically because I was tired of potato-grams between my wife and I. I switched back to Android a couple weeks ago on that pinky-promise.
Among several other Apple-isms, this one blows my mind then most.
Every other brand is running the same base OS which is Android. There are basically only two platforms for modern smartphones. Yes I know there are a few other options (mobian for example), but they aren’t nearly as popular or functional.
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I don’t get this. I live in the sweet spot for ev ownership: in an area with rich liberals who like outwardly show they care about the environment.
4 people on my block have Teslas. All of them say they love the car. The guy who lives across the street from me says his only regret is that he didn’t get the AWD version because his sucks in the snow. My boss owns a Tesla, said he would absolutely buy one again. My cousin leased one and said that when he goes to buy a car, it would likely be a Tesla. One of my best friends bought one, and loves it. I rented one (it was 15 dollars more a day, with free charging, so I’m pretty sure it more than made up the cost) and it was mostly a pleasure to drive (not a big fan of the touch screen for everything).
According to Consumer Reports, Tesla is one of the top brands for owner satisfaction.
Yet here on lemmy, you would think that owning a Tesla is some kind of miserable experience. I can’t help but believe it’s driven by a dislike of musk, rather than Teslas actually being bad cars.
I think our bias is that a huge portion of us are scientists and engineers, so the things that bother us aren’t the same things that bother everyone else. Most people don’t worry about how their car works, or want to repair it themselves, etc.
It’s not the car for a Linux user.
Im not buying this. If it could be demonstrated, I’d be willing to bet that at least 99% of the people who upvoted this have never even changed a spark plug, let alone anything actually complicated or difficult with their car.
It’s clearly en vogue on lemmy to hate on Tesla, which is almost certainly why this has so many upvotes. I just don’t get why people have to pretend the cars are shit when seemingly it’s really about hating musk.
I’ve changed a spark plug, and assume I’m typical here.
Dear readers: Please downvote this comment if you have never changed a spark plug.
