Today we announced that HashiCorp has signed an agreement to be acquired by IBM to accelerate the multi-cloud automation journey we started almost 12 years ago. I’m hugely excited by this announcement and believe this is an opportunity to further the HashiCorp mission and to expand to a much broader audience with the support of IBM.

When we started the company in 2012, the cloud landscape was very different than today. Mitchell and I were first exposed to public clouds as hobbyists, experimenting with startup ideas, and later as professional developers building mission-critical applications. That experience made it clear that automation was absolutely necessary for cloud infrastructure to be managed at scale. The transformative impact of the public cloud also made it clear that we would inevitably live in a multi-cloud world. Lastly, it was clear that adoption of this technology would be driven by our fellow practitioners who were reimagining the infrastructure landscape.

We founded HashiCorp with a mission to enable cloud automation in a multi-cloud world for a community of practitioners. Today, I’m incredibly proud of everything that we have achieved together. Our products are downloaded hundreds of millions of times each year by our passionate community of users. Each year, we certify tens of thousands of new users on our products, who use our tools each and every day to manage their applications and infrastructure.

We’ve partnered with thousands of customers, including hundreds of the largest organizations in the world, to power their journey to multi-cloud. They have trusted us with their mission-critical applications and core infrastructure. One of the most rewarding aspects of infrastructure is quietly underpinning incredible applications around the world. We are proud to enable millions of players to game together, deliver loyalty points for ordering coffee, connect self-driving cars, and secure trillions of dollars of transactions daily. This is why we’ve always believed that infrastructure enables innovation.

The HashiCorp portfolio of products has grown significantly since we started the company. We’ve continued to work with our community and customers to identify their challenges in adopting multi-cloud infrastructure and transitioning to zero trust approaches to security. These challenges have in turn become opportunities for us to build new products and services on top of the HashiCorp Cloud Platform.

This brings us to why I’m excited about today's announcement. We will continue to build products and services as HashiCorp, and will operate as a division inside IBM Software. By joining IBM, HashiCorp products can be made available to a much larger audience, enabling us to serve many more users and customers. For our customers and partners, this combination will enable us to go further than as a standalone company. 

The community around HashiCorp is what has enabled our success. We will continue to be deeply invested in the community of users and partners who work with HashiCorp today. Further, through the scale of the IBM and Red Hat communities, we plan to significantly broaden our reach and impact.

While we are more than a decade into HashiCorp, we believe we are still in the early stages of cloud adoption. With IBM, we have the opportunity to help more customers get there faster, to accelerate our product innovation, and to continue to grow our practitioner community.

I’m deeply appreciative of the support of our users, customers, employees, and partners. It has been an incredibly rewarding journey to build HashiCorp to this point, and I’m looking forward to this next chapter.

      

        

Additional Information and Where to Find It

HashiCorp, Inc. (“HashiCorp”), the members of HashiCorp’s board of directors and certain of HashiCorp’s executive officers are participants in the solicitation of proxies from stockholders in connection with the pending acquisition of HashiCorp (the “Transaction”). HashiCorp plans to file a proxy statement (the “Transaction Proxy Statement”) with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) in connection with the solicitation of proxies to approve the Transaction. David McJannet, Armon Dadgar, Susan St. Ledger, Todd Ford, David Henshall, Glenn Solomon and Sigal Zarmi, all of whom are members of HashiCorp’s board of directors, and Navam Welihinda, HashiCorp’s chief financial officer, are participants in HashiCorp’s solicitation. Information regarding such participants, including their direct or indirect interests, by security holdings or otherwise, will be included in the Transaction Proxy Statement and other relevant documents to be filed with the SEC in connection with the Transaction. Additional information about such participants is available under the captions “Board of Directors and Corporate Governance,” “Executive Officers” and “Security Ownership of Certain Beneficial Owners and Management” in HashiCorp’s definitive proxy statement in connection with its 2023 Annual Meeting of Stockholders (the “2023 Proxy Statement”), which was filed with the SEC on May 17, 2023 (and is available at https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1720671/000114036123025250/ny20008192x1_def14a.htm). To the extent that holdings of HashiCorp’s securities have changed since the amounts printed in the 2023 Proxy Statement, such changes have been or will be reflected on Statements of Change in Ownership on Form 4 filed with the SEC (which are available at https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001720671&type=&dateb=&owner=only&count=40&search_text=). Information regarding HashiCorp’s transactions with related persons is set forth under the caption “Related Person Transactions” in the 2023 Proxy Statement. Certain illustrative information regarding the payments to that may be owed, and the circumstances in which they may be owed, to HashiCorp’s named executive officers in a change of control of HashiCorp is set forth under the caption “Executive Compensation—Potential Payments upon Termination or Change in Control” in the 2023 Proxy Statement. With respect to Ms. St. Ledger, certain of such illustrative information is contained in the Current Report on Form 8-K filed with the SEC on June 7, 2023 (and is available at https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1720671/000162828023021270/hcp-20230607.htm).

Promptly after filing the definitive Transaction Proxy Statement with the SEC, HashiCorp will mail the definitive Transaction Proxy Statement and a WHITE proxy card to each stockholder entitled to vote at the special meeting to consider the Transaction. STOCKHOLDERS ARE URGED TO READ THE TRANSACTION PROXY STATEMENT (INCLUDING ANY AMENDMENTS OR SUPPLEMENTS THERETO) AND ANY OTHER RELEVANT DOCUMENTS THAT HASHICORP WILL FILE WITH THE SEC WHEN THEY BECOME AVAILABLE BECAUSE THEY WILL CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION. Stockholders may obtain, free of charge, the preliminary and definitive versions of the Transaction Proxy Statement, any amendments or supplements thereto, and any other relevant documents filed by HashiCorp with the SEC in connection with the Transaction at the SEC’s website (http://www.sec.gov). Copies of HashiCorp’s definitive Transaction Proxy Statement, any amendments or supplements thereto, and any other relevant documents filed by HashiCorp with the SEC in connection with the Transaction will also be available, free of charge, at HashiCorp’s investor relations website (https://ir.hashicorp.com/), or by emailing HashiCorp’s investor relations department (ir@hashicorp.com).

 

Forward-Looking Statements

This communication may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, including statements regarding (i) the Transaction; (ii) the expected timing of the closing of the Transaction; (iii) considerations taken into account in approving and entering into the Transaction; and (iv) expectations for HashiCorp following the closing of the Transaction. There can be no assurance that the Transaction will be consummated. Risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements, in addition to those identified above, include: (i) the possibility that the conditions to the closing of the Transaction are not satisfied, including the risk that required approvals from HashiCorp’s stockholders for the Transaction or required regulatory approvals to consummate the Transaction are not obtained, on a timely basis or at all; (ii) the occurrence of any event, change or other circumstance that could give rise to a right to terminate the Transaction, including in circumstances requiring HashiCorp to pay a termination fee; (iii) possible disruption related to the Transaction to HashiCorp’s current plans, operations and business relationships, including through the loss of customers and employees; (iv) the amount of the costs, fees, expenses and other charges incurred by HashiCorp related to the Transaction; (v) the risk that HashiCorp’s stock price may fluctuate during the pendency of the Transaction and may decline if the Transaction is not completed; (vi) the diversion of HashiCorp management’s time and attention from ongoing business operations and opportunities; (vii) the response of competitors and other market participants to the Transaction; (viii) potential litigation relating to the Transaction; (ix) uncertainty as to timing of completion of the Transaction and the ability of each party to consummate the Transaction; and (x) other risks and uncertainties detailed in the periodic reports that HashiCorp files with the SEC, including HashiCorp’s Annual Report on Form 10-K. All forward-looking statements in this communication are based on information available to HashiCorp as of the date of this communication, and, except as required by law, HashiCorp does not assume any obligation to update the forward-looking statements provided to reflect events that occur or circumstances that exist after the date on which they were made.

Enlarge (credit: Ed Reschke via Getty)

Brace yourselves, Illinoisans: A truly shocking number of cicadas are about to live, make sweet love, and die in a tree near you. Two broods of periodical cicadas—Brood XIX on a 13-year cycle and Brood XIII on a 17-year cycle—are slated to emerge together in central Illinois this summer for the first time in over two centuries. To most humans, they’re an ephemeral spectacle and an ear-splitting nuisance, and then they’re gone. To many other Midwestern animals, plants, and microbes, they’re a rare feast, bringing new life to forests long past their death.

From Nebraska to New York, 15 broods of periodical cicadas grow underground, quietly sipping watery sap from tree roots. After 13 or 17 years (depending on the brood), countless inch-long adults dig themselves out in sync, crawling out of the ground en masse for a monthlong summer orgy. After mating, they lay eggs in forest trees and die, leaving their tree-born babies to fall to the forest floor and begin the cycle anew. Cicadas don’t fly far from their birthplace, so each brood occupies a distinct patch of the US. “They form a mosaic on the landscape,” says Chris Simon, senior research scientist in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Connecticut.

Most years, at least one of these 15 broods emerges (annual cicadas, not to be confused with their smaller periodical cousins, pop up separately every summer). Sometimes two broods emerge at the same time. It’s also not unheard of for multiple broods to coexist in the same place. “What’s unusual is that these two broods are adjacent,” says John Lill, insect ecologist at George Washington University. “Illinois is going to be ground zero. From the very top to the very bottom of the state, it’s going to be covered in cicadas.” The last time that these broods swarmed aboveground together, Thomas Jefferson was president and the city of Chicago had yet to exist.

Entomologists around the world already have their flights booked for May. “We’re like cicada groupies,” Lill says. He promises that this once-in-a-generation spectacle will be even better than April’s total solar eclipse. During 2004’s Brood X emergence, Lill remembers walking outside at midnight. “For two seconds, I was like, ‘Wow, I didn’t know it was raining,’ because I saw water flowing down the street. As my eyes focused, I realized it was literally just thousands of cicadas crawling across the street.”

Some cicada devotees, like author and entomologist Greg Kritsky, have already witnessed Brood XIII emerge a couple of times. But for most of their predators, a brood emergence happens once in a lifetime, and it’s always an extremely pleasant surprise. “It’s a food bonanza,” Kritsky says, “like if you walked outside and found the whole world swarming with flying Hershey’s Kisses.”

Cicadas are shockingly chill, protein-packed, and taste like high-end shrimp—easy, delicious prey. “Periodical cicadas are sitting ducks,” says Lill. They don’t bite, sting, or poison anyone, and they’re totally unbothered by being handled. Dogs, raccoons, birds, and other generalist predators will gorge themselves on this flying feast until they’re stuffed, and it barely makes a dent in the cicada population. It’s their secret weapon, Lill says: In the absence of other defense mechanisms, “they just overwhelm predators by their sheer abundance.”

Much like an unexpected free dinner will distract you from the leftovers sitting in your fridge, this summer’s cicada emergence will turn predators away from their usual prey. During the 2021 Brood X emergence, Zoe Getman-Pickering, a scientist in Lill’s research group, found that as birds swooped in on cicadas, caterpillar populations exploded. Spared from birds, caterpillars chomped on twice as many oak leaves as normal—and the chain of effects went on and on. Scientists can’t possibly study them all. “The ecosystem gets a swift kick, with this unexpected perturbation that changes a lot of things at once,” says Louie Yang, an ecologist and professor of entomology at UC Davis.

From birth to death, these insects shape the forest around them. As temperatures rise in late April, pale, red-eyed cicada nymphs begin clawing pinky-sized holes in the ground, preparing for their grand May entrance. All of these tunnels make it easier for rainwater to move through the soil, where it can then be used by plants and other dirt-inhabiting microbes. Once fully grown and aboveground, adult cicadas shed their exoskeletons, unfurl their wings, and fly off to spend their remaining four to six weeks on Earth singing (if they’re male), listening for the sexiest songs (if they’re female), and mating.

Mother cicadas use the metal-enhanced saws built into their abdomens—wood-drilling shafts layered with elements like aluminum, copper, and iron—to slice pockets into tree branches, where they’ll lay roughly 500 eggs each. Sometimes, all of these cuts cause twigs to wither or snap, killing leaves. While this could permanently damage a very young sapling, mature trees simply shed the slashed branches and carry on. “It’s like natural pruning,” Kritsky says, which keeps hearty trees strong, prevents disease, and promotes flower growth.

Once mating season winds down, so does the cicada’s life. “In late summer, everybody forgets about cicadas,” Lill says. “They all die. They all rot in the ground. And then they’re gone.” By late June, there will be millions of pounds of cicadas piling up at the base of trees, decomposing. The smell, Kritsky says, “is a sentient memory you will never forget—like rancid Limburger cheese.”

But these stinky carcasses send a massive pulse of food to scavengers in the soil. “The cicadas serve as reservoirs of nutrients,” Yang says. “When they come out, they release all this stored energy into the ecosystem,” giving their bodies back to the plants that raised them. In the short term, dead cicadas have a fertilizing effect, feeding microbes in the soil and helping plants grow larger. And as their remnants make their way into woodland ponds and streams, cicada nutrients are carried downstream, where they may strengthen aquatic ecosystems far beyond their home tree.

They may smell like bad hamburgers, but Yang says that if you’re lucky enough to host a tree full of cicadas this year, it’s best to just leave their bodies alone to decompose naturally. “They’ll be gone soon enough,” he says. If the pileup is especially obtrusive, simply sweep them out of the way and let nature do the rest.

The thought of billions of screeching insects in your backyard might make your skin crawl, but you don’t need to be a passive observer when they arrive. Researchers are clamoring for citizen scientists to send in photos of their local cicadas to help map the upcoming emergence. The Cicada Safari app, developed by Kritsky, received and verified 561,000 cicada pics during the 2021 Brood X emergence—he hopes to get even more this time around.

“This is an amazing natural phenomenon to wonder about,” Lill says, “not something to be afraid of.”

This story originally appeared on wired.com.

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Long gone are the days of sous vide being relegated to fine-dining restaurants. The dead-accurate, low-temperature cooking is now an easy (and arguably more convenient) way to cook your finest steak or make vanilla extract or creme brulee.

Now, I’ve owned a Breville Joule sous vide machine since 2015 when it first came out. But, I’ll admit: I’m guilty of considering sous vide a weekend (or even special occasion) method. I don’t want to wait 30 minutes-plus for a water bath to preheat on a Tuesday night, you know? So when Breville released the Joule Turbo Sous Vide earlier this year, my gadget-loving ears pricked up. It’s the first time Breville’s made a hardware change to the Joule since the immersion circulator’s inception. The Turbo promises not only to be faster but that it will “make your favorite sous vide dishes in as little as half the time of conventional sous vide,” the company says. 

I put the Breville Joule Turbo to the test, evaluating its accuracy, speed, and compatible app.

The Tests

• Water Bath Test: I timed how long it took the Joule Turbo to heat a gallon of cold water (63°F) to 190°F. When the water bath was at temperature, I used an instant-read thermometer to check the temperature throughout the bath, evaluating its accuracy. I then checked the bath’s temperature every 10 minutes for an hour, to see if the temperature was stable.
• Chicken Breast Test: I timed how long it took the Joule Turbo to heat a gallon of room temperature water (72°F) to 150°F. Then, I lowered two chicken breasts in a vacuum-sealed bag into the water bath and cooked them for one hour, setting a timer on the Joule’s app. 
• Turbo Filet Mignon Test: To see how the sous vide works with its app and its app-guided recipes, I made Breville’s recipe for a filet mignon that utilizes the sous vide’s Turbo feature.
• Vessel Versatility Test: I tried affixing the Joule Turbo to various sous vide containers, including a 6-quart Cambro, Dutch oven, and stockpot.
• User Experience Tests: Throughout testing, I evaluated how easy the Joule Turbo was to set up, how well it worked with its app, and how useful the app was.

What We Learned

The Breville Joule Turbo Was Accurate and Wicked Fast

Like the Joule, the Joule Turbo is spot-on accurate. It had no problems reaching and maintaining its set temperatures. 

As far as speed, the Joule Turbo heated up a gallon of cold water in about 22 minutes and room temperature water in just under 13 minutes. While the room temperature water is on par with our other favorite immersion circulators, its cold water speed was exceptional. Compared to the Joule and Anova, the Joule Turbo was 13 and 38 minutes faster, respectively. 

To delve deeper into its speed, I reached out to Breville to see if the company could share any insights into the Joule Turbo’s construction. While the Joule Turbo and Joule have the same wattage (1100), the Turbo “has a software update and the algorithm is better able to sense what is happening and relay data for faster results,” a company representative told me. 

"When heating the water, the new Joule Turbo Sous Vide has an updated PID controller that allows it to heat the water a bit faster than the previous Joule," says Douglas Baldwin, senior mathematician and food expert at Breville. "This updated controller also helps the Turbo algorithm cook tender cuts in about half the time of the previous Joule." PID stands for Proportional Integral Derivative, which is an algorithm-driven temperature control module. (Our favorite Breville espresso machines also have this.)

The Breville+ App Was a Massive Improvement

Compared to the original Joule app, the Breville+ app has a whole lot more connectivity and functionality. The app is chock full of videos and tips, like a step-by-step guide for cleaning your immersion circulator. The recipes include videos of each step, too. All in all, the app is now a well-rounded sous vide resource instead of just a place where you go for recipes and to set your sous vide’s time and temperature. 

The Turbo Feature Worked

Another notable app feature is the Turbo in Joule Turbo. Not every Breville+ sous vide recipe is Turbo, but the ones that are denoted by a little airplane in the bottom right corner and a lightning bolt in the top right corner of the recipe. 

To see how the Turbo feature worked, I tried the app’s Turbo Filet Mignon with Peppercorn Sauce and Air-Fried Garlic Mushrooms but just made the steak portion of the recipe. The app selects the time and temperature based on your preferred steak’s doneness. To further hone in on accuracy, the app also walks you through measuring (the Turbo even includes a small ruler for this very task) and weighing the steak, then spits out the temperature and time range based on these numbers. With Turbo, you add your food while the water is cold (yes, cold!) and immediately start the timer and water bath. My filet mignon was ready in 41 minutes flat. In comparison, a standard sous vide steak takes at least an hour after the water bath is heated.

The Verdict

Pros

The Joule Turbo is ultra-powerful, incredibly accurate, and heats a cold water bath lickety-split. Its app integration is incredibly helpful and the app itself is packed with helpful videos, guided recipes, and tips. 

Cons

Like the Joule, the Joule Turbo doesn’t have an adjustable clamp, which means its vessel versatility is limited unless you invest in a Big Clamp. However, the Turbo still has a magnetic base, which means it’ll stand upright in, say, a Dutch oven. It lacks an on-board display, which may be unappealing to the app-averse.

Key Specs

• Materials: Polycarbonate; stainless steel
• Wattage: 1100
• Connectivity: Bluetooth
• Warranty: 1-year limited 
• Price at time of publish: $250

FAQs

What does a Breville Joule sous vide machine do? 

A Breville Joule sous vide machine heats a water bath up to a set temperature and holds that temperature for a specified amount of time. To cook food in a sous vide bath, you’ll want to either vacuum seal it in a bag or press as much air out of a zipper-lock bag as possible before slowly lowering it into the water bath. The water bath cooks the food gently and slowly and the bag retains moisture, so it’s nearly impossible to overcook something. 

What can you cook with a Joule sous vide?

We have plenty of sous vide recipes on this very site (like sous vide duck confit, steak, and carrots). The Breville+ app also has plenty of guided recipes. 

Can I use Ziploc bags with my sous vide?

Yes, you can use a Ziploc bag to sous vide food. You’ll want to make sure you squeeze as much air out of the bag as possible before sealing it. 

Why We’re the Experts

• To test the Joule Turbo, we tested its temperature accuracy, speed, app connectivity, and more. 
• We’ve reviewed 18 other sous vide machines, so we know a thing or two about the appliance. 
• Riddley Gemperlein-Schirm is the senior commerce editor for Serious Eats. She’s reviewed kitchen gear professionally for more than five years and has written reviews of air fryers, dinnerware sets, and more.

Editor’s note: We received a press sample of the Breville Joule Turbo, but all of our opinions are our own.

When anyone middle-aged or younger dies, It’s a cliche that they died much too young. Sometimes, it’s really true, though. Someone dies who’s a true, innovative leader who was changing the world for the better. Such a person was Kris Nóva.

I can’t claim to have known Nóva well, but she impressed me. Most people who’d met her would agree. Her job title when she died from a climbing accident was GitHub Principal Engineer. But, she was far more than that.

Not even 40, Nóva had co-founded The Nivenly Foundation. This organization is a member-controlled and democratically-governed open source foundation. Its goal is sought to bring sustainability, autonomy, and control to open source projects and communities. Specifically, it governs the popular tech Mastodon site, Hachyderm Decentralized Social Media, and the Aurae Runtime Project. The latter is a Kubernetes node workload management program.

Many people claim to be “thought leaders.” Only a handful really are. Nóva was one. Her Kubernetes clusterf*ck talks were famous for revealing what’s what with Kubernetes and security. She also co-authored Cloud Native Infrastructure, a must-read for anyone considering running cloud native architectures.

Nóva also authored Hacking Capitalism, a book modeling the tech industry as a system. This book is interesting for anyone who wants to know how tech works.  It’s specifically for marginalized technologists who need tools to navigate the tech business. You should read this if you’re a programmer or engineer constantly flustered by tech’s management, social, and business sides. It will give you the insight you need on how investors, top leadership, and entrepreneurs view our ruthless, but predictable, industry.

She wasn’t just a speaker and writer, though. She was also an open source developer who contributed significantly to Linux, Kubernetes, distributed runtime environments, Falco, and the Go programming language. Altogether, she had created 388 GitHub repositories. In a word, she was “impressive.”

As Josh Berkus, Red Hat’s Kubernetes Manager, said on Mastodon, We lost one of the leading lights of tech this week. Relentlessly driven, astonishingly brilliant, and one of the bravest people I ever met, Kris Nóva was both an inspiration and a friend to dozens, if not hundreds, of people (including me). While it is fitting that she should have left us doing what she always did — taking risks — we are all poorer for having lost her.”

Indeed, we are.

Last Wednesday evening Kris Nova had a climbing accident and died.

All of us that loved her are heart broken and stunned. She was an amazing person that lived out loud and built connection and community wherever she went. She will be horribly missed. pic.twitter.com/zx8ODLrUx5

— Joe Beda (@jbeda) August 20, 2023

The post Good-Bye Kris Nóva appeared first on The New Stack.

As much as I want to move over to Mastodon full time, there’s one thing I feel that is massively holding it back. Yes, you can laud the big things about federations and freedom as much as you want. However, one thing I’ve seen hanging out in the fringes of the Fediverse that will ultimately hold Mastodon back is the hostility toward brands.

Welcoming The Crowd

If you’re already up in arms because of that opening, ask yourself why. What is it about a brand that has you upset? Don’t they have the same right to share on the platform as the rest of us? I will admit that not every person on Mastodon has this outward hostility toward companies. However I can also sense this feeling that brands don’t belong.

It reminds me a lot of the thinly veiled distaste for companies that some Linux proponents have. The “get your dirty binary drivers out of my pristine kernel” crowd. The ones that want the brands to bend to their will and only do things the way they want. If you can’t provide us the drivers and software for free with full code support for us to hack as much as we want then we don’t want you around.

Apply that kind of mentality to brands venturing into the Fediverse. Do you want them to share their message? Share links to content or help people join webinars to learn more about the solutions? Or do you only want the interns and social media professionals to be their authentic selves and pretend they aren’t working for a bigger company?

The fact is that in order to get people to come to Mastodon to consume content you’re going to need more than highly motivated people. You’re going to need people that are focused on sharing a message. You’re really going to want those that are focused on outreach instead of just sharing random things. Does that sound a lot like the early days of Twitter to you? Not much broadcast but lots of meaningless status updates.

That’s the biggest part of what’s holding Mastodon back. There’s no content. Yes, there’s a lot of sharing. There’s lots of blog posts or people clipping articles to put them out there for people to read. But it’s scattered and somewhat unsupported. There’s no driving force to get people to click through to sites with deeper information or other things that brands do to support campaigns.

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Tom’s Take

You’re going to disagree with me and I don’t blame you one bit. You may not like my idea about getting more brand support on Mastodon but you can’t deny that the platform needs users with experience to grow things. And if you keep up the hostility you’re going to find people choosing to stay on platforms that support them instead of wading into the pool where they feel unwelcome.

Enlarge / Use your freedom of choice. (credit: Apple)

A long while back, Toyota told me it didn't want to give up interior real estate to Apple’s CarPlay. The automaker felt that losing that space to the tech company would be a huge mistake. Fast forward a few years, and after what I assume were some internal struggles, it caved and now you can get CarPlay and Android Auto on your fancy new Highlander, Prius, Tacoma, or Camry. It seemed like a silly decision had been reversed. Now it’s GM’s turn to go down the same path.

Today, news dropped that GM would be phasing out CarPlay support in future EVs. In its partnership with Google, it hopes that all the features you get from mirroring your iPhone can be replaced with an Android Automotive feature. GM, like Toyota before it, wants to control the digital real estate in its vehicles. It’s a revenue-based and walled-garden (ironically against Apple) decision that will cost them.

Software-driven vehicles should be about choice. Instead, GM is making a short-sighted decision based on a trickle of revenue under the guise of better integration. Owning all the data that a vehicle generates while driving around could be a great source of cash. The problem is potential customers have become accustomed to choosing which device they use to navigate, chat, text, and rock out within their vehicle. They’ve grown weary of being mined for data at the expense of their choice and they’re really not all that keen on in-car subscription services.

For years, automakers have been sharing their vision of a future where cars can drive themselves, and the passengers are kept entertained by a plethora of features that are meant to keep their attention as they roll without worry to their destination. If in this far-off future, a person were to get into their vehicle and be restricted from using their service of choice—CarPlay in this scenario—why would they even buy that vehicle? What’s the point of telling people that, in the future, they can use whatever they want if, as a company, you don't let them.

GM’s move is based on its desire to offer tighter integration with navigation and other in-car systems. Charging along routes isn't really possible within projected versions of Apple or Google Maps in many vehicles. That’s a solid reason for GM to make its mapping solution better. It’s not really a reason to reduce the choices it offers consumers. Yes, GM will offer Spotify, but if you use Apple Music, you’ll have to use Bluetooth, which means now you’re picking up your phone to make choices, and that’s far more dangerous than using the projected version of Apple Music on a vehicle’s touchscreen.

There’s also the loss of apps that GM might never want in its vehicles. Alternative EV route planning apps, navigation apps, messaging apps that read messages and support voice-to-text replies, podcast apps, and anything available now that GM and Google will determine they don’t want being offered to drivers.

Will this decision hurt Apple? Sure. But what it also does is damage GM’s reputation and potentially its bottom line because it gives people who are part of Apple’s ecosystem (for better or worse) pause when they are shopping for a vehicle. The news could be that GM is phasing out CarPlay support for EVs, but the average person sees “GM is killing CarPlay.” As a result, they look elsewhere.

This decision is particularly weird when new players worked hard to make sure their vehicles support CarPlay. Polestar may have taken longer than expected to bring CarPlay to its vehicles (something automotive journalists pointed out repeatedly), but it finally delivered. Lucid just announced that CarPlay is landing in its Air sedan and will be part of future vehicles. Both these automakers saw what the market wanted and delivered.

The software-driven vehicle revolution should be a place of choice. If the hardware can handle it, automakers can deliver it. GM is extremely proud that its Hummer EV has Unreal engine support. I’m not sure if people were clamoring for intense graphics for drive modes, but hey, you can get that now with a GM product. What I do know is that many people use CarPlay. It’s easy to set up and use, and more importantly, it’s familiar.

Nearly every modern vehicle supports CarPlay, making it easier for folks to move from vehicle to vehicle without learning a new UX while behind the wheel. That’s a huge win for safety.

GM sent over a fact sheet about its decision that states:

“This go-forward strategy will help us intensify our focus on designing the best integrated infotainment solution, reduce complexity and feature duplication, continuously innovate by adding more features and apps over time, and manage the overall in-vehicle experience in a more holistic way.”

This sounds like good news. But it doesn't have to come at the expense of what people already use and, in many cases, prefer. GM should create a better infotainment system that’s better integrated into the information coming from the vehicle, but it should offer its customers a choice. Because if GM doesn’t listen to what people want, plenty of other automakers are more than happy to swoop in and offer CarPlay support.

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