Learn, Make, Learn
Learn, Make, Learn is two product geeks sharing qualitative & quantitative perspectives to help you make, better. Hosted by Ernest Kim and Joachim Groeger.
Learn, Make, Learn
CarPlay or the Highway?
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This week, we discuss the tension between integrated in-car UX platforms vs Apple’s CarPlay & Android Auto. When, if ever, does it make sense to give up control of your product experience?
FOLLOW-UPS – 02:21
Tesler’s Law, aka Conservation of Complexity
Theodore Leavitt on Marketing Myopia
@geoffbaron: The difference between PMs & developers
@tr3v: No one was ever inspired by a KPI
CARPLAY OR THE HIGHWAY – 12:20
@kirankripakaran on Threads
Everybody hates GM’s decision to kill Apple CarPlay
We need to talk about digital ownership
BMW re-thinks on-demand services
Car-seat install bricks new Ferrari
Bang & Olufsen designed its new speaker for a long life
Framework modular laptop
Kia Reveals Modular EV Van Lineup
Apple’s next-gen CarPlay
Mini’s new giant circular OLED on the dash
MKBHD: The Kia EV9 is Surprisingly Good!
About those kill-switched Ukrainian tractors
IMPLICATIONS FOR PEOPLE MAKING PRODUCTS – 54:07
Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Antifragile
Bezos Wisdom: “Focus on the things that don’t change”
WEEKLY RECS – 01:02:00
Morgan Aeromax
Troubleshooter: Morgan (1990)
Troubleshooter: Morgan (2000)
Perfect Days
How Toilets Got a Starring Role in a Wim Wenders Movie
Komorebi
CLOSING & PREVIEW – 01:11:13
(Image: Apple)
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Rant, rave or otherwise via email at LearnMakeLearn@gmail.com or on Threads @LearnMakeLearnShow.
CREDITS
Theme: Vendla / Today Is a Good Day / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
Drum hit: PREL / Musical Element 85 / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
Hello and welcome to Learn Make Learn where we share qualitative and quantitative perspectives on products to help you make better. My name is Ernest Kim, and I'm joined by my friend and co-host Joachim Groeger. Hey, Joachim, how's it going?
JoachimHello. I'm still under the weather, but, again, not bad enough to cancel on anything. A little rundown. I want this be over. I want us to be able to be outside more and not be in, in wintertime. How about you? How are you feeling?
ErnestI'm kind of in a similar boat, uh, as we've discussed offline. This has been in the news, so I think I could mention this publicly that there's been some pretty big layoffs at Nike over this past week. So it's, uh,, been a challenging time, but, I think we're, I. Kind of through the worst of it. uh, Definitely looking forward to longer days. It's been nice to see the days last a little bit longer and, uh, I think what daylight savings is coming up relatively soon as well, so, uh, yeah, they'll be nice as well.
JoachimYeah, a rough week, in Beaverton. for sure. I've been a lot of things on LinkedIn and a lot of commiseration and support, which is nice to see the support aspect, obviously, but yeah, still very rough.
ErnestYeah, it's been a tough, gosh, past few months across so many industries. The tech industry's been really hard hit, so I, I, I definitely agree. It's been really nice to see the support that people are showing on LinkedIn. I think we, everyone's realizing we're kind of all in the same boat. If you work at a big company, you're subject to the vagaries of, uh,, big company decisions.
JoachimYep, exactly. And the stock market and all of what that entails.
ErnestWell, maybe that's something we could talk about at some point down the road. But, uh,
Joachimyeah,
Ernestfor today, this is episode nine and our topic is, uh,, what we're calling CarPlay or the highway, and that's a play on the expression, my Way or the Highway that speaks to the tension between integrated in-car user experience platforms versus third party platforms like Apple's Car play or Google's Android Auto. But before diving into that topic, let's start with some follow ups to our previous episode. What the bleep is a product manager. Joachim, do you have any follow ups to share?
Follow-Ups
Joachimyeah. I don't wanna hijack this again but we did discuss it last episode where we were talking about behavioral economics and is it a real discipline and. I was reading a totally unrelated book. It's called The Moment of Clarity, which is trying to draw on the humanities and social sciences to help the innovation process,, as opposed to using data-driven approaches or the more quantitative frameworks, even jobs to be done. There was a, an anecdote about a shoe company that remained nameless. So I don't know who this is, but this was the early two thousands. And, an executive asked a question very innocently, is yoga a sport? And he was laughed out of the room. But the authors of the book have said, it's a great question to put yourself in a position of, humility and exploration and What happened was of, 'cause he was laughed at, he was mocked for this perspective. They said, no, no, no. High performance, athletic wear is what we do. And, and yoga is just irrelevant. Even though at the time it was very clear that people were spending more time doing yoga than running marathons, obviously. So that then reminded me of what we were talking about last time, where people make bad decisions. And I didn't want to come across as suggesting that people never make bad decisions. I think that people make bad decisions for some very specific reasons. So, there are two things that are at the root of bad decision making. One of them is when you flatten the world and remove all of the complexity and, um,, you lose fidelity into the perspective of what's actually happening. When you do that, you're always gonna make a bad decision. So I would call that bad signals coming into the system and ignoring the good signals, or not investing the time to build better signals. Everyone says, simplify. Simplify, simplify. People forget that there's a point where you can't simplify any further and you are stuck with the specific complexity of the problem that you're dealing with. In fact, there's someone who is a human computer interaction chap Tesla, Larry Tesla, who came up with his conservation of complexity principle saying that there is a point where the complexity can only be shifted from one party to the other. And you just have to accept that there's a certain level of complexity. I think when bad decisions happen is when we ignore that leftover complexity and we just say, simplify. Get rid of it. So flattening the world that leads to bad decisions. And we do that because it's easier. And then the obvious one is incentives matter. Bad incentives lead to bad and seemingly irrational decisions. So if I tell you that you can leave this job and no one has to know what you did here, you've signed an NDA, you can fabricate any story about how amazing you were and how, your leadership was the reason why everything was successful or that failure had nothing to do with you because the company is so big. So you can obscure what your contribution was in that. So of course you'll make bad decisions. There's no discipline on you. So again, no discipline, no incentives, no constraints, leads to bad decision making. So all of that to say, I acknowledge. That bad decisions happen all the time. We've talked about this frequently, Ernest, and it's probably what motivated a lot of our conversation to start this was trying to understand and unpick when do we cross over into just bad decisions around any type of innovative process. I do think people make very bad mistakes, but again, in that rational framework asking what is it that's driving that, they don't want to invest the time because they're incentivized to just do something quickly, move fast and break stuff that tells you already you're gonna make bad decisions from that kind of philosophy.
ErnestThat, That's a great one. That brings to mind a couple of things for me actually. One thing I loved at Weiden and Kennedy was one of their kind of maxims was walk in stupid every day. The joke is that's easier for some people than for others. But I think there's a lot of, validity to your point of that person asking that question, is yoga a sport? It there, I think it does take a lot of humility. I. To ask questions like that, ask fundamental questions, that are really important. And, That was one of the things I think that helped make Weiden such a great place, was that so many people were willing to do that. And it does take courage to ask those types of questions because oftentimes you are laughed out of the room if the company doesn't have the right culture that's willing to, confront important questions like that, fundamental questions like that. The second thing is related to, our topic today, and it's this point of, uh,, there's this tendency for companies to get into this mode where they're so fixated on doing this. One thing there's the adage around the reason the train companies, which had been so dominant in the us but the reason they really fell from that was that they became fixated on being train companies versus being transportation companies. And when other modes of transportation, emerged, um,, they really lost out and, you know, are now just a shadow of their former selves in terms of the, the size of the companies. So I think that's a great point to make, a great point to highlight. And I think we're gonna touch on that over the course of this episode. Um, in terms of follow-ups, I just have, A couple, one. it's really something that's visual, so we'll include it in the show notes. But, after our episode, I came across this great, post on threads, and the cap it relates to something else we talked about, which is Dune. It's an image of the director Denis Villeneuve, who's wearing just like a regular outfit walking alongside Timothy Chalamet, who's wearing his costume from Dune. It's a very interesting dichotomy to see the two of them. And the caption is a product manager takes a developer to meet with a client. Uh, and it's, it's, you know, you have to see it. It's so we'll include that link in the show notes, but it speaks to, um, I think a common thread of, uh,, product managers are sort of meant to be that generalist that sort of. Quote, unquote normal person in, in a room full of experts, domain experts who might have some ex eccentricities. and I thought that was just a nice illustration of that. A related thread that I came across has to do with designers, but it also kind of speaks to this point of specialization. so this is from, a person named Trevor Young who posted this, and I'll just read the thread. He says, it feels to me like over the past 10 years we've watched designers everywhere trade in a lot of what made their contributions unique in an attempt to gain influence among their peers and other disciplines, which ironically has made them less valuable. Maybe it's time for a big reset. And then he follows that up with, a little bit more detail here. He said some modern advice given to designers is learn to speak in business terms, to convince your leaders of your worth to justify your design decisions and to see your work realized. But then he says, it seems like we've seen the limits of what that will do and that no one was ever inspired by a KPI. Um, and, and I, I've, yeah. Yeah, I think that's great. 'cause I absolutely have seen that advice, shared quite a bit over the last several years of, you know,, talk like a business person, given to designers. Um,, but I think there's just so much validity to this, you know, around the, the value of specialization. So I just thought that was worth sharing and I'll, include that link to that thread in the show notes as well.
JoachimThere's a lot of nuance in that point, right? The reason why we're talking is because we want to get our ideas across, and those ideas come from a highly specialized place, either quantitative design and they have depth because of your training, and you bring that to the thing. But then when you talk to the person, it should be in a way that allows them to wrap their head around this complex problem in a way that lets them see what it is that you're doing, ask the right questions and guide them to understanding what it is they're doing and say yay or nay. Right? That's ultimately the decision maker's power. But instead of holding onto the complexity of the problem and working really hard on the communication piece. What's happened now it feels like is that people have taken only the communication piece and they're going the other way around. They're saying, okay, well I need to find something I can tell my manager or or business leader about. So I'll come up with some dumb dinky thing that they get and then work and then hope that that impresses them and then we take it from there. But then you sound like everyone else. I've seen a lot of people in my field, in the technical field essentially remove their training, removing their specialty and their skillset from the conversation and trying to reverse engineer from something they think a business leader would like to hear. And then you just sound like everyone else. And then the question becomes, why are you here? If you just sound like everyone else, I could hire someone that's cheaper, doesn't have a PhD and all this stuff. When I said, boom, I really felt it. And also, no one was ever inspired by a KPI, I mean, goodness me. Yeah, that's that's true. Even in technical fields, like no one's gonna care. But we've all gotten used to, yeah, let's get motivated to move this metric by a couple of percentage points. Thanks for sharing that, Ernest. That is a banger, as they say.
ErnestNo, not at all. I, I think the challenge though is that you, it's a two-way street. You have to have leaders who want these other perspectives. and I think, those types of leaders have been fairly unusual.
JoachimYeah.
ErnestI think you're not gonna ever get there if you as a designer or you as a domain expert, just, give yourself up to this sort of corporate speak, and sounding like everyone else.
JoachimYou'll waste time because keep thinking that maybe they'll get it if you come in and say, this is what it is, this is what I think. And they go, I hate it. go, cool. I'm gonna start looking for another job, or,, or figure out something my time. There's a certain of, self preservation as well that's necessary. And I'm not saying ignore advice and ignore feedback, but I'm saying if you're not coming in with a perspective, you should be coming in with that and someone doesn't like it. Then move on
ErnestRight, right.
CarPlay or the Highway?
ErnestWell, actually that's a good segue to our, our main topic for today, which is, as we said earlier, CarPlay or the highway. and this topic was actually suggested by a friend and colleague Kiran. In the wake of GM's announcement late last year, that they're phasing out support for Apple CarPlay and android Auto, kiran suggested that we discuss the tension between integrated in-car user experience platforms and third party platforms like CarPlay and Android Auto that Subsume built in systems with their own interfaces in mixing support for CarPlay and Android Auto GM joins EV pioneers, Tesla and Rivian who've never supported those platforms in their vehicles. And if you spend much time in online car forms, you'll see that this lack of support is a subject of fierce debate. So is this a short sighted move that will ultimately hurt these brands, or is there insistence on owning their relationship with their customers, including through their user experience platforms, a wise decision that will pay dividends in in the long run? Joachim, what do you think?
JoachimWhen Kieran shared his follow up on our episode on VR a couple of weeks ago, I was having a hard time trying to wrap my head around, you know, is this a serious problem? And, and what is the broader discussion that's happening around this topic? And I feel like I've distilled it in my mind to a very focused thing, which is this is a discussion around platforms, walled gardens, and who owns what. In a sad way, some of those questions have already been answered. We are living in a world where ownership over these things has really been taken away from us in so many ways. You buy a video on a streaming service, you own it kind of as, as long as the service exists, as long as the terms haven't been maintained the same way they've always been, then you own it. But it's not the same thing as owning a disco that you can then, lend to other people. Same thing with video games. So we've become very accustomed to this idea of not really owning things. but I think it's because we've sleepily entered into that state and when these topics come up and when you see corporations very clearly saying, Nope, this is mine and that's not yours, we get upset. So I realize that this is focused around CarPlay and car manufacturers locking down their ecosystems. So I was reading The Verge and they had a really nice title for their piece, which was, who owns the screen in your car? And I think that's the perfect distillation of the problem. This thing that I bought and cost a lot of money is now being taken away from me, but piecemeal, and it's being presented as a new phenomenon now because they're saying EVs are very different from internal combustion engine cars. So in that verge thing, they actually say this line, which I found really interesting. They say with EVs essentially being software driven, batteries on wheels, CAR OS will allow for over the air updates, more advanced automated driving, assistant connected car capabilities and native versions of power apps like Google Maps and Spotify. So the focus I really wanna draw, our listeners attention to is with EVs essentially being software driven batteries on wheels. That's not true. Our internal combustion engine cars are already that thing. If you ever just look up the main functions of the engine control unit, you'll see that thing is a software piece that handles so many aspects of running that car. It's a list of 20 items at least, that have to do with the fuel injection system, the ignition system, the how the accelerator pedal operates. So we've already given up a lot of control over the car. So. This is a platform battle. This is a question that's much bigger than just Apple CarPlay versus gm And to focus in on this idea that, you know, EVs are this high tech software thing, so only software companies can build on top of that. And so gm, you old, old, old industry, you have no idea what you're talking about So this is a little bit of a meandering thing, but I just wanted to paint the picture that is a debate about platforms and we should be having a debate about how much power do these platforms have. And when you look at the discourse online, there's a lot of just two walled gardens fighting each other, and GM is just exerting its muscle and saying, no, it's our screen, our car, stay away apple. And the apple bros are going, ah, you, you fools. You don't know how to make software. Apple is so wonderful. Open up your ecosystem, open it up. Don't be so greedy. And you go, you do realize you're defending Apple here, right? The most closed off ecosystem in the world. The people that cut backroom deals to access lower pricing and lower revenue share for their products. And we should be asking a broader question around how do we want our services, how our products interact with us? And maybe we should actually, instead of arguing that Google should be allowed in, or Apple should be allowed in, we should be saying, you know what? Just strip everything out of the damn car and I would, I don't want you or anyone else in there, and there shouldn't be any screens or whatever, like a minimal vehicle that is just, I just want the software to run the car and make sure it's fuel efficient and does the things it's supposed to do. Yeah, I was trying to really zoom out from the discussion because, The point is when people talk about owning the relationship with a customer, that to me has become now double speak for I need to lock this thing down and I need to keep you in my system, and then I'm gonna get recurring subscription revenue from you. This idea of recurring revenue subscription, I think lies at the heart of all of this. And that means that both parties are insidious because they both want to have that software revenue. of course Apple could wake up tomorrow and say, yeah, every time you use CarPlay, we'll charge you know, you wanna have CarPlay here. They can just push that into the system straight away. Change the terms of the agreement with us. Do we own our screens? No. Little mini rant. I just, I had to replace the TV because one of my little people decided to clean it, clean our old TV with a spray bottle and just spraying liquid. And then, yeah, it's the, the TV failed. and so I bought this new tv, it has, Google TV as the operating system. And I decided I'm not gonna log into the service. And what happens is that none of the ads on the screen show up because I'm not connected to anything. and so I thought, oh, this is pretty good. I actually have taken ownership back of my machine just to a little bit. But the point is that I couldn't use YouTube when I did that. And so the login screen for the YouTube app would just quickly blink up and say, login, and then disappear again. And then I realized, I think this is because I haven't logged into the TV's account system, and then I logged into the TV account system, and then lo and behold, the YouTube thing unlocked for me. And so it, I felt very. It's bad. I felt like I didn't own this TV that I'd spent a lot of money on and this big piece of hardware. Uh, and it reminded me just about what is the relationship that I have with these companies. I don't really control these surfaces anymore, so I got a little philosophical about this. I think we can get a little bit more in the weeds of the Apple CarPlay versus Rivian and, and those things and those aspects, but I just wanted to start there and then see what you think. Ernest, you know, I throw that out as a, as a starting point for us.
Ernestit is a great point. I think your point about. Apple is, is very telling in that, apple would never allow a third party to subsume their interface on their devices. And yet, you know, here you have just as you were saying, all these people saying, oh, apple should be allowed to subsume the interface in my car. Uh, so there is a, an irony to that. And yet I do understand that impulse on the part of consumers of wanting that convenience, of having all the things they already have on their phones, uh, their music, their maps, their contacts, and just being able to project that into this screen that's in my car. Um, so it's a very, um, I. Understandable impulse on the part of folks to want that in their cars. And yet I also absolutely understand the perspective of the car makers as well. You know, because it's that same perspective that Apple has about their own devices. You know, it's this theme that we've talked about a lot over the past, you know, since we started of having a point of view and being opinionated and, that's what we want from our products. And, and that's, I think, a big part of Apple's success is that they're very opinionated that comes to life in their products. And, uh, up a, um, side effect of that is that their products are locked down because they have this very specific perspective on the sort of experience they want their products to deliver. And so, you know, you could say the same of say, Tesla. Which has never supported CarPlay or Android Auto. And they've said, it's because we want to deliver a very specific user experience in their case. I think, um, the rationale goes even a little deeper in saying, you know, there are some features we want to deliver that are only possible if we own that full stack. Like, for example, if you navigate to a Tesla, uh, supercharger station, the car will actually precondition the battery so that it's able to charge more efficiently and more effectively once you arrive at the charging station. So, that's a, a pretty cool thing that. They're only able to do if they own that full stack. Um, but overall I'd say the argument would be, we think that that interface that we present to you is part of the overarching experience of driving a Tesla. And I think Rivian would say the same thing. So to me that's a very understandable impulse as well from a, a, the perspective of someone who makes products. Um, so I, I absolutely see both sides of this. Um, I find that. cause I, I, um, participate in a lot of these car forums and I see a lot of these people with these very strongly held views of, I'd never buy a car that doesn't support CarPlay or Android Auto. And I have to say, I personally, I find that puzzling. I, I feel like it's, it is convenient. I have a car today that supports CarPlay and I do find it convenient. But, if a, a car offered an interface that was really good, I would be open to buying that car even if it didn't support CarPlay. So I guess I don't approach it with this kind of dogma. The crux of this is for, say, the Teslas and the Rivian and the GMs of the world. If you're going to take this stance, then you have the responsibility to actually create a really good user experience. if you're not gonna support these other platforms that obviously a lot of people really do like, then that's you saying that this is a core part of our experience. And so you have to invest in it as though it's a core part of your experience. the same way you invest in your engine and your engine software, in all the other aspects your car that you invest in, you have to invest in it in the same way. And clearly GM hasn't, there's lots of stories about they even have to take the ev blazer off the market because it just was, the software was so terrible and that's just not been a core compet competency for them. The consumer, the driver facing software experience. So I am of the perspective that it's that product maker's decision to make as to whether they're gonna support the feature or not. But if they're not gonna support it, then they just have to make sure that they're going to invest in it, and deliver a great experience that is at least as good, if not better, than this kind of off the shelf solution that exists. That's kind of my overarching perspective on the car experience piece of this, but it is a really thorny question. I agree. I you spoke to this as well, because there are new expectations on. Car makers, like in a lot of industries, their industry is changing. Where it used to be that you could just deliver this physical object and you were done basically, and that, you could offer service and so forth, but fundamentally, you made the widget, you delivered it, and that was, pretty much the end of your job. But now people expect that thing to continue to improve over time because that's the sort of experience we get from our phones and other, software driven devices. So I do think they're in a bit of a tough situation and that, there's an expectation. of kind of enhanced performance over time, but they don't have a business model that supports that. And, that's what's leading to these sorts of subscription based models, that haven't really been successful. Like, for example, BMW tried to, um,, make heated seats a subscription offering and they were just completely lambasted for that, which I think is, uh, rightly so. And GM has these ridiculous estimates. They projected that they're gonna make as much as $25 billion a year from sub subscriptions by 2030, which is just ludicrous. There's no basis in reality for that. But, it's just they recognize that if they're going to adopt this software like model, they need to have some kind of ongoing revenue stream to support that ongoing development. So it's a, it's a struggle for them. Uh, I'm kind of talking in circles because I think it is a really difficult problem. whenever you're in the middle of disruption. I think it's a very difficult challenge, but I'd say for me at least, I would always come back to that consumer need. What is that consumer need and consumer expectation? And start from there. And to me, the most interesting solutions I've seen are these holistic subscription services. For example I think Volvo and Porsche offer them where they've thought about the car ownership model in a very different way, where they're offering a subscription to the car. And I guess in a way it's a bit like a lease, but it's all encompassing. So it includes. The cost of the car, as well as the cost of service, as well as the cost of insurance. So you just have this one fee that gives you access to the car. that sort of model I think gets interesting in that it does get at that core I. Consumer need versus kind of creating these patches on the existing model, which maybe is, showing its, age showing its, uh, warts. I think that's where maybe there's some opportunity. But it's, it obviously it's difficult because there's all these other elements to the automotive model that make that difficult, like the dealership, model, you know, and the car makers don't own their dealers. but if I were, giving advice to car makers, that's what I would propose is think about this in a more, much more holistic way. The whole CarPlay versus not CarPlay is very much at the surface of it, but there are these fundamental disruptions that are coming. So I. like you were saying, take that opportunity to step back and ask those fundamental questions that might seem dumb, but I think are gonna lead you to more, promising solutions than just spending a ton of time debating whether we should support CarPlay or not.
Joachimthat is a really productive direction to push into Ernest, that you've just touched on this idea of the, subscription based model. When you think about sustainability and you think about the possibility of cars being built from the ground up to be fleet vehicles, and the manufacturer understands that it's not a one and done thing, five years is kind of the horizon that they think about. If they say, well, I gotta hold onto this car for at least 10 years. So at least a couple of rounds of owners, how do I design the car from the ground up to have some element of modularity in it so that I can yank something out and it's not gonna break the whole thing? Right now everything is so tightly packaged, it can only work one way. And that's a result of all of the efficiency gains that we've had from mass production. But now we've got lack of resilience in the system and a lot of fragility built into that I can't swap parts across. And car manufacturers have also locked down their systems in many ways. If I put in non-original equipment parts, um, sometimes computers will detect that and they can lock the whole car down. I mean, there's a crazy example actually, fun anecdote. some guy had just bought a pretty expensive Ferrari. all Ferraris are expensive. Um, but uh, he then for some reason he wanted to change the seats in the car. They started messing around with the seats and they somehow triggered an antit tamper software device, and it locked down the whole car. Basically bricked the car now. If it was an official Ferrari person, they could have just pulled out their laptop and hooked it up and then reset and everything would've been fine. However, this was a person taking control of the car that they wanted, right? They're just changing seats out. It's not a big deal. so they would have to call Ferrari to do a remote unlock and confirm that they're doing this for all the right reasons. The problem was the car was in a basement garage, and so it had no cell reception and they couldn't do it, and they couldn't start the car. They couldn't undo the hand brakes and get it into neutral, so it was a whole faf. They had to get a truck down there, they had to lift it up, put it in, and drive it outside, and then when it had reception, it could, be unlocked. It's a very silly example because it's slightly self-inflicted, but it also brings home just how much of these systems are already locked down. And car manufacturers are also very guilty of the software industry's approach of treating their software as intellectually sensitive and materials, and therefore fall under the DMCA and you could be imprisoned if you started tampering around with these things despite the fact that you own that stuff. So, just a little side anecdote to that and to the point of they have built these systems to be locked down and not to be resilient, modular, renewable, and regenerative so that they can keep running them for a longer period of time. It reminds me of something that we were talking about before, which is if your business model is built on locking people into your system and not giving them choice, something about that feels incredibly fragile either because legislation will come in that will change the game, or someone just comes along and says, we're not doing that anymore and we're fed up with that. You're right, Ernest, about thinking more broadly around debate about how do we treat these, durable goods that have to have multiple years of use out of them. They are very expensive, they're environmentally very difficult to produce, even if they're an electric car. Of course, batteries are very expensive and dangerous for the environment. How do we build resilient infrastructure around that so a company can continue to innovate but treats their vehicle more as a platform, physical platform, not tech platform, software platform. A physical platform that's allowed to be modularized. Reminds me a little bit about Dita Rams, the industrial designer from Brown who inspired a lot of Apple products. His thinking now has evolved to the point where he's asking, how do we create more of these leasing models, even with household items and I don't think anyone's really sat down to tackle that question. I wonder to what extent as well the, our obsession with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto and the convenience of those things, I feel like is also, maybe this is a bigger philosophical question, but is it because we treat cars as extensions of our living rooms? And should we not be doing that? Should we really be going into a car and expecting the seats to be as comfortable as a lazyboy and the screen to be as big as our laptops so that we can do things? Teslas insistence that we need video games on the screen suggests that there's some strange cultural phenomenon that suggests that the car is your living room or something like that. And if you are so obsessed with the, convenience of having those things, maybe you've got your priorities wrong. You know, as you're saying, people saying, I'm not gonna buy this car 'cause it doesn't support X, Y, ZI think you're, maybe you're not testing your cars properly, mate, you should be getting behind the wheel and making sure that the steering wheel gives you enough feedback from tires and you can feel what the car has grip and doesn't have grip. These really basic things that manufacturers used to focus on so obsessively. As you were pointing out, moving to these other more visible features such as the screen and the fantastical subscription revenue, that's gonna come from Heaven. Again, boosts a short share price in the short run. But we're left with the consequences of these terrible decisions. The average car price now is around $50,000. I suspect that there will be a moment of reckoning when, people realize that there's actually space for the strip down car. And maybe we'll see. Some Chinese electric car manufacturers come in and that lower price point and undercut everyone and surprise the whole industry when they realize, oh, no one actually cares about this. They really care about the price, the quality of the car that they can drive. And that's about it. All of that to say, I think there's also a chance that everyone is so focused on this convenience aspect, they will forget the simple thing that the price has been creeping up and someone is gonna see that margin as an opportunity to come in. Always right? Your margin is someone else's opportunity to undercut you. And it sounds very very aggressive to be talking in those terms, but maybe that's what it will take to end this discussion will just say, there's a screen. I don't care how much does this car cost.
ErnestRight. That's my great hope as well, that market forces will actually finally, prevail and you'll see someone enter the market in that way of saying, yes, we're just gonna offer you this bare bones car. And like,, to your point of the Japanese cars, um,, I forget, I guess in the eighties, nineties that we're really made as a platform for aftermarket add-ons, and that it still is a thriving aspect of, um,, that kind of Japanese car community, the ability to mod your car. what you were saying also brings to mind something you mentioned, I think it was back in the episode where we were talking about vr, around the risks associated with autopilot in the, in airlines it was found that You can't mix modes between autopilot and human piloting. you have to create very clear distinctions between the two and in, piloting, it's possible in that a big bulk of the flight can be handled via autopilot. But there are these distinct parts of flying that are. Explicitly, uh, done just by human pilots. the industry found that you had to have these explicit distinctions because there's no safe way to blend auto and non-auto, human interfaces. And I think we're gonna find that the same is true for cars. That there's just no safe way to blend self-driving, quote unquote self-driving and non self-driving. And that humans need to engage in the activity of driving. that's the only safe way to drive. I hope that we come to that realization sooner rather than later. But, I think that's something that's going to have to happen. To your broader point too about modularity, one example I've seen that has me really excited is Bang and Olsen, the high-end audio products maker. A few years back, they adopted this modular platform for their, higher end speaker systems that is designed to allow those speakers to be upgraded over time. So the core compute portion of their speakers is modular so that because they recognize that, these specifications, airplay, Bluetooth, et cetera, they're always constantly changing, constantly being updated, and it just is insane to think that you'd have to replace like a $5,000 speaker just because there's a new version of Bluetooth that's been released. And so acknowledging that they've come up with this fundamentally modular system for their high end speakers, which is, so fantastic for so many reasons. from a. Consumer's perspective, it allows you to buy their products with confidence because, historically speakers are something you could own for decades, and they would continue to be fantastic and, deliver great value. It was only in recent years as they became more software dependent, that they became these things that only lasted for a few years, which is, ludicrous. I think From our perspective that's great, but also from their perspective, it, it allows them to make products that are gonna be more sustainable because they last longer, they're more durable, and they're easier to repair as well. So. I think that is, that's excited me because that's a,, premium brand, that is very design driven because that's one excuse I think that's been made particularly on Apple's part as to why they can't make their products more modular. It's because, well to achieve this beautiful design there's such tight tolerances, we can't have modular design, but Bang and Olufsen's all about beautiful design and very high performance, and they've managed to make their systems modular so that they can be more lasting and more resilient, and more repairable over time without sacrificing any of that beautiful design or any of that high performance. And in fact, making the performance even better, because it's something that, can be upgraded and, repaired over time.
JoachimJust to say, just to interrupt briefly, So what's interesting about the Bang on Oleson example, earnest is of course this huge margin that they're putting on top of it being a premium product. But that margin doesn't represent them power over you and the ability to lock you in it represents the fact that they're bringing you in. 'cause you know, this thing has many more years of life ahead. So that's not an opportunity for another person to come into undercut unless they themselves have developed and devised a way to modularize their product and offer the same guarantee that says, this is gonna last for at least 10 years, trust me. And they found a way to do that cheaper bang on all of them. But I don't think that's possible. I think there is a premium aspect to it that represents this is an investment. That's really how we used to treat expensive things, right? We used to treat them as investments for the long run. You get a nice wristwatch. I did it with a little wink. For the listeners because of Ernest and I, obsession with the wrist watches, but they used to represent investments. I have this watch for decades and I know that I'm paying premium for this because it's gonna be, first of all, the company's gonna be around for a long time and they'll be able to repair this thing. They'll be service, they'll be, will be a sustainability component to this investment. so margin when it's based on long run value, I feel like doesn't look like easy opportunity for someone to undercut. They can only undercut really by offering a worse product. and then just a brief tangent on what you're saying about Apple's laptop, approach. We actually have a really great example in the framework laptop that's out there. I'm not sure if you've encountered this Ernest, but framework make. A 13 inch laptop that looks pretty great. but it's real trick is that it's totally modular. every component can be replaced by the end user. The basis of the laptop is, are these little modules that you insert into slots, and you can hot swap them. So you can swap out a hard drive. A-U-S-B-C interface as an HDMI connector. More memory, less memory. I mean, you can go nuts with what you want to do there. And that product is highly repairable, highly sustainable. And the very, very cool thing is, you can save a little bit of money by building it yourself. So they'll send you the kit. It's not super complicated. A small screwdriver and a little bit of patience, and you can assemble this thing. And I think they can sell that at about $900 before tax. New modules come along, you can replace the chips, the memory stuff, it's totally doable. And the device, I think it's comparable to a great Dell laptop. but with that added benefit of all this modularization and repairability a really fascinating product. I'm glad it exists. You know, come on, apple. This is a challenge to you guys, they're able to hit these tolerances and spend years on, designing how two aluminum pieces are supposed to fit together and how they glue in everything. So everything is nice and tightly packed up, but I think I would sacrifice some of that, slickness for a thing that is truly repairable. and the challenge is how do you do that and still maintain the cool design language of Apple? And if I was a designer, I'd want to take on that challenge, and I'm sure they're probably designers inside of the company that would love to do that. And then a finance person tells them, think like a business person and then everything will be clear to you. You can't do that. Just make something that we throw away after a couple of years and force the customer to upgrade again. So, those were just a few things that popped in my mind as you were describing.
ErnestI'll definitely look up this framework laptop, but I also shared your sentiment. You mentioned the role of legislation, few minutes back. And I do think that is the one thing that is forcing Apple to change their ways. these right to repair laws that are being enacted, increasingly, I think will force their hand eventually and force them to start thinking, in a more modular way. But I am disappointed that they're not taking that as an, at a, as an opportunity to innovate and, leading instead of being dragged kicking Andre, uh, screaming into this. because it reminds me, sometime back Apple had this highfalutin video about like their design and how amazing their design is and a thousand no for every Yes. Blah, blah, blah. But, you mentioned Dieter Rams and it's just, it's remarkable how much they've cribbed from Dieter Rams, when you see his designs, it's like carbon copy of his designs in the iPod and in the iMac But what they haven't copied is are his principles, you know, one of which was good design is lasting. And so that's been such a disappointment that they've, really not innovated on that front. Coming back to cars, I've been excited to see, these modular concepts that were introduced recently, I think late last year by both Toyota, I believe it was, and Kia, they're these very small trucks, the kind of trucks that you see very commonly in Japan in particular, where you can really easily change the configuration in some really fundamental ways. So using the same base, you could make it a pickup or something that's more like an SUV or something that's more like a food truck or something that's an ambulance. And one, excited to see those concepts, but also excited to see the excitement that, those concepts, sparked in the broader car community. So it gives me a lot of hope that if they're taking this approach to the vehicles themselves, maybe they'll actually start to think that way for the things inside the vehicles, just exactly what you're saying, a more modular approach to that user experience layer as well. And this is something that I think Kieran had touched on as well, because late last year, apple also announced CarPlay two, or it might have been middle of last year, where, not only can CarPlay take over your center screen, but also could take over your speedometer, you know, the,, the information aspects of the car interface. And to me that as a car maker, would've been a much clearer line where I would've said, no way, you know,
JoachimYeah.
Ernestfor these elements that are central to your experience of using this product, this vehicle, I'm not going to give those up to this other device, that I don't control. Because, I think one of the good arguments for not supporting CarPlay that GM brought up was that it's one of the, if not the most, common source of complaints about their vehicles is plan Android Auto. And, even though the problem may be in the phone, it's the car maker that's always blamed because, oh, it's not working in my car, so it's problem with the car. so giving up control of something as central as the speedometer, it just feels very clearly to be a step too far
JoachimYeah.
Ernestwhen you know you, you might not be at fault for it not showing properly if you allow control for that to be, you, offloaded to this phone that's doing all these other things at the same time. so to me that's a clear one, that man, I would not give up control of that interface to the phone. Kan actually gave this example of the way that Mini is doing it in their new interface. So in their newest car that has this beautiful circular OLED display and it supports CarPlay in what's very clearly a window on that circular screen and then that window surrounded by these other interface elements that are controlled by mini. So the climate control things like that, are still within the context of the broader mini interface. and that feels like a pretty obvious middle ground where, for the things like playing your music or your maps, we'll offer you the ability to plug in your phone whether it's physically or wirelessly. but for the aspects that are central to. The operation of the car, we're gonna maintain control over that because that is a part of your experience of using the car. Another example that I, came across just recently, I've watched, MKB HD's, review of the Kia EV nine, their three row EV, SUV, and he noted that they support CarPlay and Android Auto. But if you use their built-in navigation system, then it does do preconditioning of the battery. So if you navigate to, a charging station, it'll precondition the battery so it'll charge more effectively when you get there. So, they're offering that. As a competitive advantage, but they're still giving you the choice of, Hey, if you still want to use your built, you know, your CarPlay maps or your Android auto maps, you can do that. But we're gonna offer you some added functionality and hopefully, win on the merits, of the added conveniences that we're gonna offer you. And they also still control the speedometer and other, vital car control interfaces, with their own UI versus letting that go to car flight, Android Auto. So I guess, if you were to just say, what would I do? Given the current state of things to me that would, that feels like a reasonable middle ground, to offer up those third party interfaces as a, something that you could do to control things like music and maps if you want. but for the things that are central to the operation of the car, as an automaker, you should keep control of those things. and then maybe down the road, take this much more modular approach where, yeah, if you wanna plug in aspects from your phone, go ahead. But there are gonna be these things that are central to the operation of the car that we're always going to make, maintain control over.
JoachimThat idea of actually generating more value with your operating system and still leaving it open to everyone, that is really the approach that you'd want to take because it's not a lock-in approach. It's one that's saying, feel free to do what you want. There's a little bit of a, at your own risk kind of thinking, which says, well, you're not gonna have the benefit of the battery being ready for the charge. But I appreciate that giving back the agency and winning on merit, as you said as the path forward. Makes a lot of sense. Then the other thing that you touched on About right to repair and the fact that Apple is somewhat being forced to take on some of these things, give credit where credit is due. American farmers are really to thank for a lot of that work, and they have been at the forefront of this for many years now because they have experienced the total lockdown of their agricultural equipment by a few manufacturers, and it has really, really affected their ability to run their businesses. and so farmers, have been for many years unable to fix tractors from John Deere in particular, naming and shaming right now, because they have, they've been the main focus here, but they have been responsible. John Deere has been responsible for locking down. Their tractors, and these are hugely expensive pieces of equipment. They've put in all sorts of bells and whistles to help improve the product. But all of that comes with a price that if something fails on that tractor, something mechanical fails and you can see that part. If you pull it out, that's it, game over. You're not allowed to replace it with anything else, and you lose all of the support that the company provides you with. I know you're in the middle of nowhere, but you need to go, 200 miles that way to get to a service center. that's crazy, crazy power and can really hit the bottom line of these farmers over something so ridiculous as not being able to fix that. So farmers have been really working hard on right to repair and one of the things that they've done to be very subversive is not to upgrade their equipment. A lot of them are running old equipment that they can repair themselves and they've created these communities where they trade spare parts. So a community driven solution has come about and. They're saying, we're done, we're out of the market and we've created our own marketplace here where we are actually gonna trade old machines and old parts, and we know how to fix them. And we have a community of people that know how to fix them so they don't even upgrade and get locked in. They stay out. And that's a lot of lost revenue there. But because of their constant legal battles, this notion of right to repair has really become part of our discussion and and technology circles as well, because John Deere has been so awful at this. and a side note about how powerful this really is. If you recall when the Ukraine War started, when Russia invaded the Ukraine, John Deere was able to remotely kill tractors and so they had these bricks that were just lying there now that were completely useless because the software had just shut them down. So. Kind of cool in this moment of an invasion where you can say, okay, power move. You've stopped them from being able to use their tractors. But, think about also the power that the company has over your product then and on your food supply. And not just that John Deere has that, but they've opened up a vulnerability that anyone can exploit. So again, if the car companies continue to push more into software, which they've already been doing for the last decade. They've been able to remotely kill your car for a while. It gets pretty worrying. Now we have very few central nodes that are failure points for the whole economy. We've seen enough examples of the fragility of our modern system. The high efficiency that we've driven for has led to no redundancy in the system and central points of failure. I mean, we've had a couple of outages just on certain locations because someone made a bad software patch inside of Amazon. Some one junior engineer, can bring down huge things. So I think it's a good time to just broaden the discussion and really get into how do we create modular products, long lasting, sustainable products. Maybe this CarPlay discussion is the way to start getting that focus, talking about right to repair as we have done pulling in all of these things to, take in a holistic perspective that this is not just about a screen in your car this much, much deeper problem and we've already. it's a deep, deep problem that is so interwoven with every aspect of technology and, and product innovation right now.
ErnestI am so glad you highlighted that example of farmers and John Deere equipment. That's such a great example of where this is headed. If we just keep going on this path that we're on, where, you as a buyer really actually have no ownership of these things that you, bring into your life. I think that's such a great, example to cite. I think to your point too, that there, this is just one, kind of tip of the iceberg of a much bigger issue.
Implications for People Making Products
ErnestBut if we were to take a step back and think about this from the perspective of people making products, is there a way that you can think of to abstract this of, if you're faced with this core question of should we take on something ourselves or should we offload it to a third party, allow a third party solution? is there some heuristic or framework that you apply to help answer that question?
JoachimOh, okay. Very practical question. I would, yeah, I would approach it, touching on all the things we've been saying. resilience and fragility. It really comes back to that and the thing that has been winning out in all of these discussions is efficiency, and usually efficiency defined in a pretty sloppy way. So don't worry about the long run consequences. So I think my simple heuristic would be, does building it in-house give you resilience to shocks? And you have to be very. Realistic about those drugs, and you have to be, to some extent, maybe mildly apocalyptic. What if AWS goes down? What if Google Cloud goes down? What if we get hacked? What if apple gets hacked? What if a virus is inserted into a device and it takes over the cause? You should be asking yourself, well, we've been giving away this control so much to software. How do we get resilience back into the system? And is this a good idea? So redundancy resilience and anti-fragile steal lops, adjective, anti-fragile anti fragility, maybe being the goal there. And that means you take a, you naturally take a long run perspective. You're naturally thinking about long run revenue, naturally thinking about the, long run lifespan of your customers and of your business. What about you, Ernest? What's the rules of thumbs that you would draw onto to figure that out?
ErnestYeah, I guess my, I have a framework that's pretty similar to yours. Um,, there's three questions that I would ask, and the first is actually rooted in something that, Jeff Bezos has said about innovation that, you know, I think there's a lot you can criticize Bezos about, but I think on this point he. Was very wise. he noted that he frequently gets the question, what's gonna change in the next 10 years. people when they talk about innovation, always focus on what's gonna change. and he said I think that's a very interesting question. The question I almost never get is what's not going to change in the next 10 years? And he says, I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two, because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time. and he goes on to say that's, you can innovate against these things that you know, won't change because you know that, they'll continue to be important. And he gives the example of delivery. You know,, I know people aren't gonna wake up one day and just say, boy, I wish stuff took longer to get to me. Uh,, he knows that getting delivery faster is always gonna be a meaningful need. So.. That's something he can feel confident, investing against. So, to me that would be the first question. Is this a lasting need? Is this thing that's going to, is something that's going to continue to be important for the customer? The second thing is just, are there existing solutions that can meet this need effectively? To that point of efficiency. If there's something out there that I could tap to solve this, that does the job really well, then that feels like um,, something worth being aware of. But then the third one is, would we as a company gain a significant advantage by doing this ourselves or be at a significant disadvantage by not doing it ourselves? And related to that point is something very close to your point about resilience. Would this, would us not doing it, create a fundamental dependency on a third party? that would put our. Existence at risk. And, I think if you can answer those three questions, it kind of helps to get you to the ultimate answer of should we do this ourselves or should we rely on the third party? Do the, to do this. And so that's kind of what leads me to my perspective on the whole CarPlay thing today is, in terms of just allowing, someone to,, project their music and, maybe their existing maps into the car. Yes. That feels like that's a good existing solution. Is this gonna be a significant disadvantage for us not to do that? I don't think so. But if it gets to the, taking over your entire cars interface, that is, I think, a very significant disadvantage that um,, gets at your, your company's ex reason for existing, you know,, product's, the reason for existing. So that is why I would say no, to that. So I think if you can give, it's kind of a dumb, dumb checklist I guess, but I've found that helpful for me to kinda answer these questions of whether it's worth trying to roll your own, in any given situation or, uh,, whether it's worth, um,, adopting a third party solution. But your point about this never ending quest for efficiency, I think is a really good call out. It's related to something we talked about previously. As well. When you don't have anyone looking at the whole picture, it's very easy to fall into these traps because these individual decisions all make sense. And you can say, yes, it makes us more efficient, but it can be so easy to lose track of that ultimate and picture, like that example I mentioned of that car maker that will remain unnamed, where they had this incentive structure where, you know, anyone who comes up with an idea to, reduce the cost of the product, they'll get a bonus and that solution will get worked into the product. One or two of those maybe makes sense, but over the course of several years of a product being in development, you end up with something at the end that's just completely unrecognizable, because no one had that bigger picture in mind. So yeah, I think that's such a great call out that, we can't just, Give up our judgment. We, you know, Obviously big corporations need systems and processes, but you can't give up your judgment, um, over the course of the making a product. Um, There just still needs to be some common sense applied.
JoachimI think it brings us back right to the beginning of asking a dumb question. And I think that's maybe the purest heuristic that you could do is just ask this silly question.
ErnestMm-Hmm.
Joachimdoes this mean everyone's gonna hack us now? does this they can steal the cars? And you kind of sound like a dilletante, who doesn't understand anything, but you are asking a fundamental question where are we going with this? You know, what's the plan here?
ErnestAnd to have some empathy for your customer, you know,, put yourself in their seat. And just imagine for a minute, how would you feel if you couldn't repair your own tractor? Right? I mean, when your livelihood depends on the tractor and you can't repair it and like you said, you have to take some service center 200 miles away. Can you do that? Yes, obviously you can, but should you, I think that's where you have to apply some judgment and some empathy. But, uh, now that you've heard our perspectives, we want to hear from you, RGM Tesla and Rivian justified in their exclusion of Alpha CarPlay and Android Auto, or are they swimming against this inexorable current and burning precious resources in the process. uh, you know, Or these other things we talked about: the importance of right to repair and modularity. We want to hear what you think about these, really big, meaty topics. So please let us know what you think by emailing us at
Weekly Recommendations
ErnestLearnMakeLearn@gmail.com. Now let's move on to our recommendations of the week. Joachim, what has you excited this week?
JoachimSo I'm keeping it in line with what our discussion was about. I'm submitting the Morgan Motor Company from England. A very, very oddball car manufacturer that. Operates in a way that no other car manufacturer on earth operates on. They're efficient enough, but they still do most things by hand. And in the late eighties, early nineties, it was clear that they were probably gonna go outta business. their products are opinionated. On the outside it really looks like an old car. We'll, of course share a link. It looks like something from the 1930s, 1940s. In the early two thousands, they had a little bit of budget and they created a new car. And this is how I was reminded of this company because, the article that I was reading and that we will share here, was about a design intern who was given the job of. Creating this new car, that was a closed top. So they already had a design for an open top version, and so they thought well give the intern the job to put a closed top on this thing for a very specific customer. So the story is incredible. Yeah, he had to keep it very secret. so he was on secondment there, but also still a student. No one in their right mind would give the intern something so important, but it just reminded me of how wonderful this company is in many ways, that they're such a strange, oddball outfit. There was a very famous PPC documentary, by the former head of ICI, which is a huge chemicals company in Britain. He hosted a TV show called Troubleshooters, and he would be dropped into a company and like a management consultant had to fix what was going on. And he was dropped into the Morgan company in the nineties and he said, you have to rethink a lot of the things that you're doing. I, I like that you are hand making the car, that makes sense, but something has to change and you're just so slow to change. It doesn't make sense. And he was really giving them a hard time. And the father and son team just said, absolutely not. We're doing this our way slowly. People like the way we do things. and then 10 years later they revisited the factory. and some things had changed. They, they had taken some version of the advice on, but they were still managing to survive. But ultimately the company still operates in a very similar way that they used to really opinionated and they just do what they want to do. So, I wanted to share the company, these two documentary pieces and the article about an intern that I thought was really funny, that they would let someone like that design a car.
ErnestThat's awesome. I love that. That's such a great example. I was actually going to share an automotive, recommendation as well, but based on the conversation, I'm gonna actually switch things up and instead recommend a film that I saw just last night. And I think this is gonna be right up your Alley Joachim as well, in that it's, directed by a German director, but it's a Japanese language film set in Japan, and it's called Perfect Days. and it's I think just a remarkable movie. it's kind of cliche to say, but it's the kind of movie that just isn't made anymore. and. I wanted to recommend it for a few reasons, but I think,, fundamentally what's super interesting is that the genesis of this was that the, like Tokyo, Tokyo had this program called the Tokyo Toilet, where they hired very, renowned architects to design public toilets across the city. And so. you may have seen a lot of, uh,, YouTubers made videos about the toilet, where it's fully glass and uh,, you can see into it and until you lock the door and then the glass becomes opaque. So that's just one of several of these public toilets that were designed by these, really renowned architects across the city. But, they wanted someone to make, they wanted vim vendors with the director. They engaged him about making a documentary series about these toilets. You know, it would've been your traditional documentary where he would've interviewed the architects and, blah, blah, blah. Talked about, um,, the impact that these toilets have had. But, vendors as an artist came back and said, I'm not really interested in that. What if we made it a movie? what if we made a narrative around this? I think for people making products, I think it's such a great call out that we've, I think, become so cookie cutter in the way we story tell around products. everyone does the same things. And you had mentioned the importance, in the previous episode about artists like, um, Ursula Luin and thinking and bigger realities. And that's the great thing that artists do. And that's what vendors did here. And, saying, forget that. Let's make this a story about a person who cleans those toilets and create this beautiful narrative around that. And so he worked with, a person named Takuma Takasaki to write this story, uh,, about this person who, has this job of cleaning these toilets. And so you still see these beautiful toilets, but you. Engage with them in such a, a richer way than you would've if it were just this dry documentary. Right. Also, why I wanna talk about this is, you talked about the wonders of physical media and the main character, Hirayama, is a huge fan of physical media. He has this huge collection of,, audio tapes,, uh, as well as of physical books. And, music plays a huge part in his life and in the story. And it's not in a self-conscious way of, being a hipster. It's just that these were things that played an important part in his life. And so they continue to be important for him. similarly, he's a photographer and, takes physical photographs, not digital photographs, it's just such a beautiful story. I think it's also, it's not for everyone, it's a very deliberately paced, but something I realized in watching it, my wife and I, we saw it last night was,, like big action movies are often referred to as thrill rides. and I think that's an apt description because you really feel like you're on this ride and you get on at the beginning and you can shut your brain off. And I think that's great. But movies like Perfect Days are actually so much more interactive in their deliberate pace. They force you to engage with the themes of the film as you're going through it. And I found both, we were talking about my wife and I about the film afterwards, and we talked about how we both were thinking so much about how the movie, as we were watching it, forced us to think about our own lives in the context of the central character's life. And forcing us to reevaluate our lives, as we were engaging with the film. And in that way it was so interactive. And, I, it did take me a little bit to get into it because I'm just so accustomed to much faster paced type of media. But as I got into it, I just, I was so engrossing. I don't know the name of the main actor, but it's an incredible performance by the main actor. but it also, the film introduced me to this concept that I hadn't heard of before. You may be aware of it. It's called komorebi. and apparently it, there's no direct translation into English, but it's a Japanese word that describes sunlight shining through the leaves of the kind of tree canopy, creating these overlapping layers of light and darkness. And it's just, yeah, the appreciation of that moment, that's never the same. You know, You're never gonna experience that in the same way. Twice and. The central character has this appreciation for that, and it really is all about the appreciation of that. and so it just felt like it was really fitting, given this broader conversation we've had. Yes, there's a place for these awesome technologies as a, lifelong tech geek, absolutely, I appreciate them, but there's also a place for these other aspects of life as well. And, I hope that we can find more of that balance. The reason I love this film is that it really reminded me of the importance of that balance. So it's called Perfect Days, and I would really encourage people to see it in a theater if they can, because of that pacing. It's beautiful, but it's actually shot in like a TV aspect ratio, more like almost a square aspect ratio. So it's not like this, you know, oh, you need to see it on a big screen. But I think it's the focus that you get in a theater experience. Um, it's the sort of film that really benefits from that focus, and that transportive feeling you can have in a theater that you don't get when you watch a movie at home. So, um, yeah, if you can, I'd say watch it in a theater and it's,, it's just a beautiful film.
Closing & Preview of Our Next Episode
ErnestAlright, well I think that does it for us. Thank you so much for joining us here at Learn, make Learn, and thank you as and for suggesting our topic today. And as I mentioned earlier, we wanna hear from you, whether you have questions, feedback, topic ideas. Please share them with us at LearnMakeLearn@gmail.com. And tell your friends about us. For our next episode, we're gonna build on today's CAR-centric theme with a focus on something called restomods, which strictly speaking, is a type of vehicle restoration that combines a vintage cars classic design with modern technology and components. Restomods are becoming more and more popular in the automotive space, but is this something that could apply beyond the world of cars? Could the restomod concept applied more broadly, offer a path to more sustainable product creation? We'll share our own experiences and perspectives on this topic on the next Learn, Make, Learn.
