We've been writing to each other for ten years, we know each other in the online world, and only now did I think of asking a simple question, "what do you actually do?" You can read the answer to this question in the following lines, and I have to say that I enjoyed every single one of Cyril's answers and I was excited about how far a young developer from the Czech Republic can go.
Cyril, we have known each other for about 10 years now. LsA, where you promote your application from time to time. However, I only recently discovered that your main work is something that might be of interest to our readers. Can you briefly introduce yourself, and especially what you do?
I'm sure I'd be very happy to, so let's see if readers will be interested... My name is Cyril, I'm 33 years old, and I've been programming for about 14 years, primarily for iOSI am currently working for the sixth year. Porsche AG with our neighbors in Germany, right at the headquarters in Stuttgart, where I am primarily responsible for the development of the My application. Porsche which I work on as iOS System Architect.
Pro Porsche I started working shortly after returning from Sydney after two years, where I also worked as a iOS Freel Platform Engineerancer.com, where we had about 40 million users at the time, so it was also really fun, especially in terms of Data Science, it was my first experience with Data Science / Data Driven Development.
As you already mentioned, in addition to my main work, I also develop my projects and program for smaller clients. I have already worked on many projects of various technologies, on which I am always developing as a programmer. But from my workshop, it is mainly Achieve Me, a motivational application that readers may already know, and for the last 3 years I have been working on a web application for analysis App Store /play Store applications, I also recently published an open-source book on modular development at iOS and macOS and last but not least, I have been attending conferences for the last 3 years where I mostly do live demos of security and reverse engineering at iOSfor developers. Last year I even managed to get to a conference in Seoul, sponsored by miniICT development for South Korea, it was really exciting. That would be about me in a nutshell.
You say that development for iOS you dedicate 14 years. Pro what did you develop before and what made you Apple and his iOS obtained?
Haha, that's a great question, unfortunately it can't be answered briefly. Apple I was interested when I was about 9 years old, my dad brought home a Macintosh Quadra 630 which was running Macintosh OS 7 at the time. Of course, it was a time when there were maybe a few dozen in the Czech Republic. Apple computers and no internet, all my friends had PCs and shared games, while I was stuck with Prince of Persia.
However, I already took a very strong stance back then and always said how much better the Macintosh was than the PC. Since any software repair on a Mac cost an incredible amount of money back then, after I had broken the whole thing about 4 times, I started to dig into it more and more until I stopped being afraid of it and started advising my dad and then a few friends what and how to do on a Mac, it was still somewhere around Macintosh OS 9.2 at the time, then of course with the arrival of OS X I already had a PowerPC G3 at home, and my first first generation iPod shuffle which was then stolen from me at the skatepark. I was completely lost by then Appyou.
With a feeling for Macs, I then went to study electrical engineering at a secondary school, then classics at the Czech Technical University, where I was kicked out in mathematics in the first semester, thanks to which I started working for Macwell, where I am still grateful to Mr. Kesl for picking me up from the street and letting me work for him. There I learned server administration, computer networks, film work and later also a little programming. After 3 years, I saved up money, left Macwell and went to study at university again, this time Software Engineering, where we started with about 60 people at the time and 2 of us finished it according to plan. There I was again focused on programming for iOS, where I worked part time as a junior programmer for iOSOne of the applications I also worked on as a junior was Škoda One App.
Let's get back to what you're currently doing, working for Porsche is probably a dream come true for many people. How many people are actively involved in the development of the application and what is your work on this project?
It's exactly as you say, I have a lot of colleagues who are big fans Porsche and for them the job was a dream come true, and many of my colleagues confirmed it to me. I, on the other hand, always wanted to work on large and complex projects, which I Porsche also fulfilled. 6 years ago Porsche had no internal mobile development, everything was outsourced to external companies, and of course that had a lot of unsolvable problems in the future, so I was hired as an internal iOS Tech Lead with three others iOS colleagues and of course colleagues who are on Android and a few project managers and managers. Our task was to carry out native mobile development within Porsche, so we started from scratch, which is really hard to see.
This is how we formed 2 teams with different tasks. I was mostly focused on architecture, infrastructure and software design with my colleague, and the other team was already involved in integrating various functionalities. This period lasted about two years, after which we had a strong enough foundation to be able to further scale the teams for developing functionalities. The two teams became 8, shortly after 12, then we were 19 teams for a long time and now we are 29 teams working on developing My Porsche application. It's hard to say exactly how many people are involved in the project, but on a daily basis I would say around 500 people. We have development centers around the world, many in Europe (thank you, including the Czech Republic), in China, and in America, so our project never sleeps.
After about 3 years, I got the position iOS System Architect, which I actually do to this day. Now, with 29 teams, we have our own team of architects, where we support the development of the remaining 28 teams and also take care of the development of architecture, infrastructure, DevOps, cybersecurity, CI/CD, releases, team productivity, and so on. We certainly have enough work. Pro entertainment, my colleague, the very first iOS developer in Porsche was given a Toshiba laptop for programming. Such was the knowledge of mobile development in Porsche 6 years ago, today it's really on a completely different level, and I'm very happy about that.
Now please don't take this as rude, but honestly, do I really need 500 people to remotely unlock my car or check my fuel consumption? Proprogramming is completely beyond me, but how many times do I see incredible applications that many people can do and one or two people worked on them. So what is it about My Porsche so complicated that it requires so many people?
Well, you can't really look at it from the perspective of a single user functionality. Porsche is a huge corporation that has, if I'm not mistaken, around 40 employeesancs, continuity with Volkswagen and 75 years of history. What for you as a user is one click of a button, after which, for example, the car is unlocked, from the application's point of view means support for all cars that have a given functionality, unfortunately for us programmers, different car models can also have different systems that have different behavior, we are also talking about systems that were delivered to cars many, many years ago, therefore they do not carry any modern technological elements and the like. All this adds to the complexity.
But I think this is generally true of any software development for larger companies. There is always some "legacy" that is undergoing various transformations or needs to be supported and maintained for various reasons. My Porsche it also has a lot of extensions, such as Apple Watch, Car Play, or maybe Apple Maps EV routing – where Apple Maps communicates through We Porsche appwith the car, I think Car Play from which you can directly control car functions such as lighting, radio, heating and Apple Maps EV routing, we had or maybe we still have as the first car company. Readers can find information about interesting updates here, for example newsroom.porsche. Com /porscheextensive-update-my-porsche-app, or here newsroom.porsche.com/en/2023/products/porsche-we-porsche-app-provides-new-features-within-apple-carplay and this article is also worth reading newsroom.porsche.com/en/2023/products/porsche-support-for-apple-maps-ev-routing.
The application is not just aboutonecar activity, generally with the decline of the web, it is a customer touch point with Porsche, even if they don't own a car yet. At the same time, the application is available in all countries where Porsche operates, including for example China, where the functionality and overall design is dramatically different from, for example, European or American. The functionality of the application may also vary depending on the country the user is in. Countries / continents also have different systems for, for example, charging stations or electromobility.
Each country also has different legislation to which the application is subject, for example the GDPR known in our country, or the Digital Service Act. New regulation is also coming in June European Accessibility Act, where every application must meet mandatory standards for people with disabilities, just meeting all these requirements requires an incredible effort. Just for comparison, Spotify has 6 engineers, I click on a song and it starts playing..., thanks to the fact that I have a few friends among them, I have a (limited) idea of what's behind it all...
All apps that have "My" in the namecar"They seem basically the same to me in terms of design and functionality. Is there some kind of uniform standard or why doesn't someone come up with their own solution?
Does Spotify feel the same to you? Apple Music? On iOSWell, I definitely do, it's the same domain, it's the same in automotive. I don't know how other brands use "We", but we have everything our own in terms of design and UX.
What was the most difficult thing for you as a development team in the case of My? Porsche? I mean what function was the hardest to program?
There are currently 29 development teams, each dealing with a different domain and issue in the application, so it is difficult to categorize it. However, almost at the very beginning, when we were only 2 teams, we programmed commands for the car, such as unlocking, locking, heating, air conditioning, etc. That really took us a while. We worked on this functionality for about a year before we could release it at least internally for all cars, and as we became more and more familiar with the behavior of different cars, we also kept improving this functionality from a code perspective. The original software design is still there, but it is still being improved and improved.
Among some recent things I would say, for example: Apple Maps EV Routing was also a nice touch. Since we were the first to integrate this functionality in cooperation with Applem, debug it so that everything works as it should on both our side and the other side AppIt took a lot of work... The funny thing was that after the update I think iOS 18.0.1 Apple released a bug where this functionality stopped working completely, fortunately they fixed it quickly.
Are there any features you would like to add, but it limits you? iOS? Or everything you can do on the car side, it's no problem to do on the iOS?
Good question, iOS is certainly very restrictive, however, in terms of development Apple allows developers to access various secure parts iOSusing so-called Entitlements, some of which are generally available, such as Push Notifications, but some are on-demand, such as the aforementioned Car Play.
At the moment, I wouldn't say that development in terms of user features is limited. iOS, as far as programming in general is concerned, you certainly can't afford as much as our Android colleagues. Specifically, I can think of limitations right now iOSuv Siri, where Siri currently does not allow arbitrary text to be input. Siri works on a predefined input that you can change a few parameters for. Nowadays GPT, this seems like a big limitation to me, but I think it's just something to consider Apple It's already working and it will be soon. Siri he will also be able to.
I mean Siri application extension, where for example you program functionality where Siri will trigger something in your app. For example, you can say “Hey Siri, warm up my car to 22 degrees.”, where the 22 is an optional parameter, but you can no longer say “Hey Siri"I'm extremely cold, turn on the car." That's something you shouldn't GPT understood and could automatically estimate the temperature to which the car will preheat, etc. However, as I said, I think we will see these functionalities soon.
If you're talking about warming up the car, it was three years ago Apple showed the world CarPlay New Generation. However, it has not actually appeared in any car since then. One of the first cars in the world to feature it was supposed to be SUVs from Porsche. Don't know where it's stuck and how the development is? Or are you participating in the development together with Applem?
Haha yeah, I know where it's stuck, but unfortunately I can't talk about it. Yes, that's right, the first cars they should have Car Play The New Generation is Porsche and Aston Martin. But I think that with a clear conscience from what we know from publicly available information we can say that Apple severely underestimated integration Car Playe.g. into displays that show speed and other critical driving functionalities, such as car error reporting, tank status and so on.
As for development, I would again point out Car Play with the car control that we integrated, which I would say was actually the first step for Car Play New Generations. Specifically, these are functionalities where through Car Play and therefore yours iPhone se they can control car functions, such as massage seats, lighting, and so on. Now actually Applu and car companies are "only" missing an expansion to other car screens.
I understand that you can't talk about some things, but can you tell us what you would like to add to your app in the future? Or what is the developers' dream, what should the My app look like? Porsche in 2030 for example?
Unfortunately, that's also beyond the scope, but I think I can say that we have a lot of great features planned for the coming years, both in cars and in appevents that I personally can't wait for. So there's definitely something to look forward to. Pro world news Porsche I recommend watching then newsroom.porsche. Com. All news is presented there, including those about Me. Porsche app.
I'd also be interested to know whether you personally or someone from your team also collaborates directly with the developers of the software for the cars themselves, or is it basically handled separately? Didn't you invent the Pit-Stop button for the GT3 RS? :)
Haha, I have to google what it is first. No, I definitely didn't invent the button. Yes, as far as development is concerned, there is definitely cooperation, after all, the application has to make the functionalities that the car has available to the user, so it wouldn't be possible without cooperation. :)
Do you also get to drive and test new cars? Or how does that work?
I must say that it is quite a privilege in Porsche so that you can drive the cars and take them for weekend test drives and the like, but fortunately, since I work directly on the development of car features, our department has this privilege. We have about 12 cars in total, which we rotate quite often, or if we need something special, other departments will supply it to us.
So in conclusion, I'll ask you what your favorite is? Porsche?
Since I've driven all the cars, even on the race track, I'd say that each one has something and it's hard to choose a favorite. On the track, the Cayman was probably the most fun because the engine roars right into your head, but once I drove it for about 600 km and that didn't seem so great to me because no one had invented a button to mute the roar of the combustion engine yet and my head almost exploded.
The 911 is of course fantastic, tuned for the driver down to the last detail, that's beyond debate. However, today my favorite is probably the Taycan, I like it for its design and I think it's the most beautiful car on the road right now, except for my own Skoda Octavia 3 after the facelift with black accessories, not even the Taycan has this beauty.
Hey, for me it's probably the GT3 RS, we considered the Panamera for a while, but it's terribly low for loading a stroller and things like that. Thank you very much for the interview and when there's another major update, We Porsche, so I'll look forward to hearing from the most qualified person, you, to tell us about it. Can you leave us some contact information for you in case the reader is interested?
Sure, best to do it via LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/cyril-cermak or alternatively through my website: www.cyrilcermak.com.
Great interview, thank you!!!