Far from useless. RS carried an extensive line of home security, from free standing smoke and motion detectors that covered a single room, to the 49-450 hard wired alarm system. The single room alarms would pop off if motion was detected in a room, or a door was opened, to alert the people living in the house if there was an intruder.
The 49-450 could be hard wired to reed switches on every door and window, as well as motion detectors. If you wanted a phone call when your crib was being broken in to, there was an optional device that, when tripped by the alarm, would dial a pre-programmed phone number and deliver a pre-recorded message. I sold flox of these alarms over the years This is one of the product categories I couldn’t believe RS abandoned. They made a nice, three figure, ticket, and they had a high GP.
Gee, I wonder how Verizon can make money giving phones away?
I can’t convince you, but you need to understand that you represent a shrinking Luddite minority. Most of the auto industry has already recognized that the computer-on-wheels is the future. The car manufacturers even had a conference about it last year where they discussed how software would be what differentiated car brands in the future. The car makers that are still around in 10 years will be the ones with the best software. Cars will soon be just computers with transportation functionality.
Mostly by not giving me the phone unless I pay for the sub. You know - not what we’re talking about? They don’t give me a free phone - bricked or not - and then leave it up to me to decide later if I want their service.
My laptop is a computer that has telephone functionality. While I use it for phone calls from time to time, I primarily and constantly use it when not engaged in telephones. The same thing might be said for most smart phones - they are computers with telephone functionality.
That will never be true of cars - because no one will ever use their cars for anything other than transportation. It won’t be “a computer with wheels,” because you will never use it as a computer other than when driving (or being driven). You won’t use it as a substitute for your home computer, you won’t head out to the car to do a day’s work. Virtually all of the computing power of the car is in service to the core transportation function. Just like airplanes - modern ones of which have a lot more computing power than a car - since all of the computing is directed solely towards flying or entertaining passengers while flying, we don’t think of them as computers with wings. Cars with advanced processors are just cars with computing processors, not a computer on wheels. The function of the object is the transportation, not the computing.
If industry analysts were saying that warranty coverage would be what distinguished car brands in the future, we wouldn’t then say that cars were just “warranties on wheels.” Same with sound systems or the comfort of their interiors - they’re not stereos on wheels or sofas on wheels. You can have an attribute that carmakers distinguish themselves on, but is still completely subordinated to the primary function of the car as a transportation device which doesn’t invert “car with a radio” to “radio on wheels.”
It’s not the perfect analogy, but it’s not a bad one. You pay a low price for a smart phone and basic communication and internet service. Verizon then offers for subscription whenever you want a bunch of other functions from games to international calling to spam blocking to in-car wifi. And you can always upgrade to more data or faster data. It will be much the same with cars. You buy a basic model that provides a basic driving experience, with the opportunity to add more functionality at anytime after purchase through subscriptions.
So what? Who defined computers as something that can’t be used for transportation? The computer chip and software will be to cars of the future what the gas engine is to ICEs. The computer part of the car will defined the performance of the car. We are at the early stages but the trend is accelerating. Because of that, the economics of automobiles will increasingly resemble that of computers. The business model of automobiles will increasingly resemble that of computers. For most everything relevant to economics, the car will be a rolling computer.
There are lots of different computer makes, but within a category they all look very similar. What most significantly differentiates one laptop from another is its operating system. Not much difference between an HP and a Lenovo, but huge difference between either and a Mac Air. That’s how it will be with cars of the future. There may be lots of brands, but they will all pretty much look the same. The differentiator will be their software.
It was a Radio Shack in Marina del Rey, Los Angeles, and it was a true horror show of crappy electronics gear. I looked around the shop before I asked the staff where to look and they said they no longer carried “that stuff” and suggested I go to Fry’s in El Segundo…
Radio Shack still exists here in Mexico. Visiting there out of curiousity I concluded that its business plan was ever more poisonously positioned on selling cheap crap and rip offs…
Company owned store, or franchise “dealer”. The quality of RS gear really took a nose dive after 90 or so, the same time the “JCs” were taking a lot of money away from the store staff. Mike, the manager of that little, very profitable, store, in the former fish and chip shop, saw his pay cut from, iirc $45K to $25K/year. The guy that followed me at Easttowne Mall made $18K, where I made $28K. A couple years later, they cut the comissions of the salesmen too. I remember reading product reviews of an RS brand VOM in the late 90s or early 2000s. The verdict was near universal, the thing was a piece of poo. It also blew fuses often, and RS did not carry replacement fuses.
Meanwhile, my 1977 vintage RS VOM still works fine. My 1986 phone still works. The 1987 vintage cassette phone answering machine lasted until 2010. My 1992 RS stereo receiver still works well.
Now, RS is slipping even farther into the mire, as a crypto platform.
When you start name calling you know you’ve lost the argument.
The simple fact is you don’t get to redefine words to your liking. If you said “cars are becoming computerIZED” I would have no argument. To say they’re becoming a computer is just ridiculous. You might as well say my air fryer is becoming a computer, because pound for pound it probably has more programming capability than a car.
Cool. So if I want to parallel park, I can put a quarter in the slot in the dash like those old vibrating beds in motels in the 50’s? Seriously, other than “self-driving”, which requires updating and regular adjustments - and perhaps real time traffic info, I don’t really see a lot of other subscription services taking off. They tried it with Apple CarPlay, and failed. They tried it with “seat warmers” and failed. Heated steering wheels? Seriously? Throttling the air conditioner unless I pay a fee? Let’s see how long that lasts. (Probably, I suspect, as long as BMW’s attempt at CarPlay.) GM’s OnStar does OK, but again it has ongoing costs (live monitoring) and people understand that. You want me to pay to turn on my air conditioner? The “nickel and dime” thing will kill any loyalty they might hope to get.
In other news, here’s a concept car from Audi which turns an SUV into a pickup truck. I note that most of the cool whistles and bells are hardware implementations: electro mechanical shifting of the dash, doors, etc. There is also a segment about software, although why someone would wear a VR headset or use the other (illustrated) augmented reality while driving is beyond me, I admit.
Video: cool platform transformation starts at 3:00 in:
The hardware seems like a bunch of wasted effort. If you’re already wearing VR, just program it to look like you’re driving a pickup, or an Abrams tank, or a Star Wars antigrav landspeeder.
I am not redefining any words. You just seem to be assuming that the concepts of car and computer are mutually exclusive. My calling a car a computer is no different than an ICE being both a car and an internal combustion machine. Just to be clear, I’ll spell it out for you.
An ICE and a BEV are both cars. But the former is an internal combustion machine and the latter is an electric machine. The Chevy Bolt and Model 3 are both BEVs, but they differ primarily because the latter is designed to process data and execute software, i.e., the Model 3 is on its way to becoming a computer.
To put it another way, I think we can agree that a laptop is a computer. Suppose someone takes that laptop, attaches it to a cheap battery, electric motor, and wheels, and installs self-driving software. He then uses it solely for transport. Is it now a car and no longer a computer? Perhaps to you it is, but to me that is a pointless distinction. To me it remains a computer that can now function as a car. And that is because the central part of that contraption is the computer.
