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GM says it's dropping Apple CarPlay and Android Auto because they're unsafe

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Re: GM says it's dropping Apple CarPlay and Android Auto because they're unsafe

#91

Call it what it is.. they like the control of their in car entertainment systems and they don't want external companies taking that part of the pie. It's okay gm, we understand. Let's hope you are able to make a compelling competition to this, otherwise your sales will suffer. Traditional car software is very very poor for whatever reason. I don't think that car manufacturers have the mindset and capability to make e…

Unfortunately consumers don't really punish companies for doing these kinds of things, at least I presume that's the story since high-end cars often have very shitty in-car computer experiences, like BMW or Porsche.

I've tried Android Auto a couple of times and it was much worse than the BMW's iDrive for navigation and for the entertainment. Perhaps different consumers have different preferences?

Re: GM says it's dropping Apple CarPlay and Android Auto because they're unsafe

#92
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I got my first car with CarPlay in 2015. That’s 8 years ago. iPhones are always faster than the infotainment systems in cars due to development cycles and cost. Now my iPhone is eight years newer than the one that was already better than my car. So it’s obviously faster. Apple has delivered numerous new features in those eight years, the car never received a single update. That wasn’t even an ability on the car.…

I dunno, I got my first car with Car Play a year ago. I'm not super impressed. It's buggy and slow and the interface is clunky. It's better than using my phone directly, barely, but I still would have bought the car if it didn't have it. All I really want is music and maps anyway, and I can just get a cheap phone mount for my dashboard like I did with my old car so I don't have to look down at it.

[deleted]

Re: GM says it's dropping Apple CarPlay and Android Auto because they're unsafe

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect they don't want to pay what great software engineers cost, and even if they did, most such engineers probably wouldn't want to put up with GM's bureaucracy. It's probably kinda the same story with great mechanical and industrial engineers, which is why approximately nobody finds GM cars exciting.

It doesn't take much more than not going for the cheapest offshore team possible to make better car media center code than we get. I'm sure most of us could easily do it ourselves in a month or less. It seems like such a simple problem. Play songs and interface with some controls/radio receiver/etc while being at least a tiny bit conscious of efficiency.

This is an incredibly myopic take bordering on arrogance. The infotainment system of a vehicle needs (as in, is mandated) to be as safety compliant as the rest of the vehicle's software so your steering doesn't lock out when the display crashes. Writing software for safety critical systems is not a task most developers are familiar with.

Re: GM says it's dropping Apple CarPlay and Android Auto because they're unsafe

#94

Call it what it is.. they like the control of their in car entertainment systems and they don't want external companies taking that part of the pie. It's okay gm, we understand. Let's hope you are able to make a compelling competition to this, otherwise your sales will suffer. Traditional car software is very very poor for whatever reason. I don't think that car manufacturers have the mindset and capability to make e…

Tesla is the exception here: they seem to have mastered making a car software experience that doesn’t suck, and they don’t even support CarPlay. But Tesla is a tech/software company that happens to make cars (of dubious build quality), I don’t think conventional automakers can replicate that.

Re: GM says it's dropping Apple CarPlay and Android Auto because they're unsafe

#96
post #53

I went ahead and googled if tesla uses android auto or carplay and apparently it doesn’t either. Neither does Rivian.

Tesla absolutely refuses for some reason. Rivian has said they might add it later, but they didn’t seem to think it was enough of a priority over everything else they were doing. That’s somewhat understandable. If I was in the market for a car, they would both be a no-go though because of that. I like CarPlay too much.

> Tesla absolutely refuses for some reason.

That reason might be the $10/mo they get people to pay for live traffic, satellite maps, and access to music streaming.

Re: GM says it's dropping Apple CarPlay and Android Auto because they're unsafe

#97
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a GM problem. I've never had Carplay connectivity issues across 4 different brands.

I've had connectivity issues with wireless CarPlay in my BMW, though admittedly they've been very rare recently.

I don’t have connectivity problems in my BMW, but sometimes have my GPS location 100 meters off, and will try to turn on and off Bluetooth to fix that. It sometimes works.

Re: GM says it's dropping Apple CarPlay and Android Auto because they're unsafe

#98

Call it what it is.. they like the control of their in car entertainment systems and they don't want external companies taking that part of the pie. It's okay gm, we understand. Let's hope you are able to make a compelling competition to this, otherwise your sales will suffer. Traditional car software is very very poor for whatever reason. I don't think that car manufacturers have the mindset and capability to make e…

Tesla is the exception here: they seem to have mastered making a car software experience that doesn’t suck, and they don’t even support CarPlay. But Tesla is a tech/software company that happens to make cars (of dubious build quality), I don’t think conventional automakers can replicate that.

Tesla software experience far outshines CarPlay and Android Auto.

Re: GM says it's dropping Apple CarPlay and Android Auto because they're unsafe

#99
post #15

Call it what it is.. they like the control of their in car entertainment systems and they don't want external companies taking that part of the pie. It's okay gm, we understand. Let's hope you are able to make a compelling competition to this, otherwise your sales will suffer. Traditional car software is very very poor for whatever reason. I don't think that car manufacturers have the mindset and capability to make e…

Calling it car software is very generous. More like abandonware.

I want abandonware in my car. Don't include alpha-grade software in a mid-five-figure product. If you can't get it right don't ship it.

The navigation/infotainment space is a thoroughly solved domain. We don't need biweekly OTA updates to add the latest trendy thing. I don't want controls moving around or menus changing based on a perverted engagement metric.

BMW "pathced" several mechanical features of my car. This is called a "recall". Auto manufacturers try to avoid them.

Re: GM says it's dropping Apple CarPlay and Android Auto because they're unsafe

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Try..catch”—what the hell is that? When I craft my performant error-free code, I only use the finest bug-squasher: On Error Resume Next. No need to wrap anything. You declare it once and cruise to your solution.

Fun-fact: if you compile VB.NET code that uses On Error Resume Next it results in output IL that wraps every statement in its own try/catch+swallow block.

Wow. I didn’t know the .NET version still supported that. I remember it from VBA code in Excel and VB6 stuff way back when.

I guess if I’m forced to support an “ignore all errors” feature, doing implicit try/catches in the IL is as elegant as it’s gonna get without having to maintain custom IL to support VB of all things.

I do kinda miss VB6 though. I wish RAD was still a thing in desktop applications.

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