Well, one of them broadcasts his crimes pretty publicly, via social media, and the other wrote a book about it....

It would if they had money. See: Simpson, Orenthal James and Trump, Donald John.

Disagree. My iPad fills two niches: I read on it, a lot, both eBooks and general web browsing. I could do these things on my significantly smaller iPhone but that hurts both my eyes and wrists after a while. The other niche, streaming video, on the road and at home when away from the TV (e.g., in bed, out on the porch, etc.) Streaming video isn't as fun on an iPad as it is on a large 4K television but I can't take the 4K TV with me on a flight or intercity rail ride, and while the iPhone could do this, the iPad is the perfect balance between screen size and portability.

Another minor niche, video calls with friends. I tend to prefer an actual laptop for this use case but if it's unavailable or I'm too lazy to go get it, the iPad is better than the phone.

I'll confess I don't understand the folks using iPads as a laptop replacement. I get illustrators who use them, I have a contingent of those at work I support, but the road warriors I see in airports using iPad Pros as a laptop replacement, uhh, why?! It's just as large as a real laptop -- hell, some of the extreme iPads are LARGER -- and a lot less flexible.

Are you really using the program you can launch with a single keypress (PrtScn) as an example of why the UI is terrible?

They can try but I can tell you as a consumer the deletion of CarPlay/Android Auto would be a deal breaker for me. I suspect many people feel the same way. Very few people are interested in Yet Another Subscription that duplicates functionality they already have.

Your comment below tells me you don't understand nearly as much about this subject as you think you do. Tell me, how does shielding the radio keep an external antenna from picking up on EMI generated by your alternator? Power window motors? The drivetrain motors on an EV and regenerative braking system on EVs/Hybrids? It's shielding these disparate sources of EMI/RFI that's complicated. It's not an unsolvable problem, just one the auto industry would rather not deal with. Unless this mandate compels them to do so, you can fully expect your mandated AM radio to have incredibly lousy reception.

The alternate kit of fix-a-flat and portable air compressor that shipped with my car retails for close to the same as the spare wheel + tire + jack. If you care enough to go down the rabbit hole, this trend started in the mid 2010s, and nearly all industry watchers attribute it to the need to squeeze every last ounce of weight and fuel efficiency out of automobiles so they can meet mileage standards.

Who is "they"? My last three cars had satellite radio capability but aside from a few e-mail/snail mail nags, nobody ever tried to push it on me, wasn't even mentioned by the salesperson that sought every other opportunity (extended warranty, dealership financing, blah, blah, blah) to make himself some extra bank.

I'm sure the automobile makers don't mind the tiny bit of revenue sharing they get from satellite radio but how serious of a market is it these days? I would imagine that satellite radio isn't competing against AM/FM, it's competing against streaming music served via Bluetooth/CarPlay/Android Auto. How many people do you know who DON'T have a smartphone and some sort of streaming music service? If you can endure ads, they're free, and if you want to pay, well, pick your platform, they're all cheaper than Sirius XM.

About the only argument in favor of Sirius is it doesn't need Internet connectivity. Of course, neither do offline playlists with the popular music apps, but I suppose if you frequently drive through cellular dead zones Sirius might have some appeal. I drive through them rarely enough that I just go to an offline playlist and/or find the nearest NPR affiliate on AM/FM.

The need to meet mileage standards these days is so pressing that my recent vehicle purchase omitted a spare tire. Omitting the <50lbs of spare tire, jack, and associated equipment has a pretty insignificant effect on mileage, but it's not zero, and when every drop counts...

I wholeheartedly agree with you about EMI shielding, for what it's worth, but the FCC has precious little control over automobiles. The EPA and NHTSA on the other hand.... :(

How well will your crystal radio work inside a metal box that significantly attenuates the desired signal? How well will it work when literally surrounded by sources of EMI? It's the shielding against EMI that adds weight to an automobile, reducing range whether electric or gas powered, plus the not insignificant design challenge of incorporating a decent antenna into the vehicle without ruining the aesthetics that most consumers value.

Read this article as a primer and continue deep diving EMI if it doesn't answer all your questions. The broadcasters aren't the ones that want to get rid of AM. It's 100% the automobile manufacturers. They want to be in the automobile design business, not the antenna/radio design business, and they (quite correctly) think that the next generation of consumers is streaming music from their phones, not radio.

The public safety argument is a valid reason to mandate automobiles retain AM/FM radio, although, as someone who has lived in both tornado and hurricane ally, I've often wondered why NOAA Weather Radio isn't mandated for automobiles. It's FM and close enough (161-163MHz) to broadcast FM (89-108MHz) to not require a wholesale antenna redesign. Mandating NOAA Weather Radio would probably do more for public safety than mandating AM radio and it's a lot easier to shield FM from EMI than AM.

It absolutely adds cost and complexity to the design of a modern day automobile. Effective AM antennas are not exactly small and you have to incorporate one into the design of your vehicle in a way that minimizes interference (much harder with EVs) without ruining the aesthetics of the vehicle. If that was as easy and cost free as you think there'd be no incentive to remove it in the first place, your tinfoil hattery notwithstanding.

Now, the additional cost isn't really all that significant in the grand scheme of a five digit automobile, but the margins on non-luxury automobiles aren't huge, and if you're thinking like an MBA asshat and multiply the individually insignificant cost savings by the millions of automobiles you hope to sell....

I can see the argument for the mandate, even as someone who virtually never uses AM radio, but don't pretend the mandate will be cost free.

Found the winner of the thread. :-)

My added emphasis to your text. You're arguing for basically what happened, at least with Windows. Windows 7 introduced the search concept but kept the old Start Menu structure. Windows 10 obfuscated it a bit more but it was still there. It's only in Windows 11 that it really went away and went away is relative because it's STILL THERE, if you care to dig deep enough to find it, but in the day to day why would you have to?

I call it "muscle memory" and it's not like you can't still take advantage of it. Programs I use in the day to day are pinned to the task bar / dock regardless of the OS I'm working with. I'm not using Spotlight to launch Chrome or Excel. If it's not something I use in the day to day, muscle memory isn't going to be terribly useful for finding it, and that's what search is helpful for. Neither OS requires you to remember the full name of whatever program you're looking for. The first letter will get you there more often than not. Our access control system is managed by this crappy user space application whose name I can't be bothered to remember, I only use it once a month or so, but I know it starts with an 'E' and that's enough to find it with search.

Look, this is very much an IT Guy complaint in my experience. Over the years, I've transitioned thousands of end users to newer versions of Windows and macOS where search displaced the traditional means of navigation. Nearly all rapidly adapted and were happy with the outcome. The few outliers weren't exactly slaying productivity on the older OS versions. The people I've heard the strongest bitching about it from are all IT peers/colleagues.

I lived in the Southern USA for 5 years as an adult and 3 as a teenager. It's depressing how much MODERN DAY politics in this South still relies on these tactics. We'll convince poor whites to vote against their own economic self-interest by turning them against the n***ers. Yeah, you're living in a trailer park, and your oldest kid just died from an opioid overdose, but at least you're not black.