Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

jalopnik.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 438 posts

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

#311

Post by fallingknife »

urbandw311er wrote: post #260
bastard_op wrote: post #156

Automobile companies tried for years to make a decent infotainment system in cars, and almost universally they were all terrible no matter how expensive the vehicle. Finally Android Auto and CarPlay gave everyone what they wanted - decent access to music on their phone, call capabilities that actually work, and program integration with things they actually use with internet service they already have. Then manufacture…

It’s interesting how you correctly identify that this is a massive play for control by Apple and Google, and yet you still seem to sympathise with their position! I can completely understand why vehicle manufacturers are so wary. Just look at the history of how Apple, Google, etc companies have behaved when it comes to “partnerships”. Look at the App Store. Look at what Google did to supposedly open source Android. I…

Nobody is being held ransom. GM can win this any time by building good software themselves. This is just another example of tech companies gaining a market through the fair competition of building a better product.

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

#312

Post by lycopodiopsida »

antoinealb wrote: post #304
dontlaugh wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you need to plug in your phone anyway to charge it? And what about switching drivers and quickly switching phones? Or just having the passenger quickly switch to their music.

Well a lot of cars have a wireless charging pad available in the phone holder, so you just drop your phone there and it starts charging / connects to Android Auto.

Tbh, the charging pad is bad, if I would rely on it a lot, I would keep a cable in the car. I don't know why, but it heats up so much if you use it, that the iphone overheats and starts to throttle.

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

#313

Post by tarsinge »

urbandw311er wrote: post #260
bastard_op wrote: post #156

Automobile companies tried for years to make a decent infotainment system in cars, and almost universally they were all terrible no matter how expensive the vehicle. Finally Android Auto and CarPlay gave everyone what they wanted - decent access to music on their phone, call capabilities that actually work, and program integration with things they actually use with internet service they already have. Then manufacture…

It’s interesting how you correctly identify that this is a massive play for control by Apple and Google, and yet you still seem to sympathise with their position! I can completely understand why vehicle manufacturers are so wary. Just look at the history of how Apple, Google, etc companies have behaved when it comes to “partnerships”. Look at the App Store. Look at what Google did to supposedly open source Android. I…

Vehicle manufacturers are not (edit: end-user/OS) software companies, it doesn't make sense (or for any company for which it's not the core business) to build their own OS. Yes OS builders control the OS by definition. What's next, car manufacturers producing music so they get control back on what drivers listen to?

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

#314

Post by Nursie »

gambiting wrote: post #208
contact9879 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A USB-C to headphone adapter is $5.

And occupies your USB-C port, which you might want to use at the same time for charging while listening to music(I do while I'm in bed, I'm sure I'm not the only person who does this). My biggest issue with it is that it's been sold to us on a lie - the whole nonsense about "reclaiming the space" - it's BS. There is space for it in nearly every phone on the market.

That’s what wireless charging is for!

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

#315

Post by sokoloff »

sterlind wrote: post #243
mulmen wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, what? If my infotainment system is capable of influencing my steering or any safety-critical function then malpractice has been committed. Infotainment needs only read (one-way) capability on the vehicle.

I do wonder about the CAN bus. there's no access control on the CAN network, there's one shared bus for the whole car, and any controller can starve the bus by spamming with a high address, unless that's changed. you'd hope that there'd be some kind of filtering to prevent the infotainment system from sending (arbitrary) CAN messages, but I recall some crazy demos of researchers pwning a car's accelerator after rooti…

Most modern cars have more than one CAN bus.

(And it’s lower ID messages which have priority over higher, which is more trivia than argument against your premise.)

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

#316

Post by fallingknife »

sterlind wrote: post #243
mulmen wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, what? If my infotainment system is capable of influencing my steering or any safety-critical function then malpractice has been committed. Infotainment needs only read (one-way) capability on the vehicle.

I do wonder about the CAN bus. there's no access control on the CAN network, there's one shared bus for the whole car, and any controller can starve the bus by spamming with a high address, unless that's changed. you'd hope that there'd be some kind of filtering to prevent the infotainment system from sending (arbitrary) CAN messages, but I recall some crazy demos of researchers pwning a car's accelerator after rooti…

Is that really a security issue, though? If someone has access to your center console, they have access to your car. If someone has access to your car, they can cut your brake lines or do a million other things that are impossible to defend against.

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

#317

Post by Xcelerate »

esyir wrote: post #263
urbandw311er wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s interesting how you correctly identify that this is a massive play for control by Apple and Google, and yet you still seem to sympathise with their position! I can completely understand why vehicle manufacturers are so wary. Just look at the history of how Apple, Google, etc companies have behaved when it comes to “partnerships”. Look at the App Store. Look at what Google did to supposedly open source Android. I…

Turns out doing it better influences people's preferences. The problem is fundamentally that the carmakers do such a shit job. If infotainment systems matter at all to consumers, we'd expect to see GM take a hit for this, and get their market share eaten by competitors who don't do so.

> we'd expect to see GM take a hit for this, and get their market share eaten by competitors who don't do so.

I think there’s a better chance of this happening than they believe. I bought a new Camry in 2017, right at the start of their 4 year upgrade cycle (i.e., the 2018 version). I chose a Camry due to their well-known reliability.

However, none of the new vehicle models that Toyota sold had CarPlay at that point, and it was unclear whether Toyota would ever offer it at all. After a few months of driving my new car and then getting the chance to use CarPlay in a rental car, I decided I would not buy another Toyota in the future because it was so annoying to be aware of the experience that could easily exist involving navigation, music, etc. but that did not.

Toyota eventually relented in 2018, and luckily my Camry had upgrade support to install CarPlay (so clearly it had been planned a while ago for this model). But they would have lost me as a customer otherwise, and I doubt my perspective on this is unique. It’s sort of curious that such a trivial-to-implement aspect of the car’s design can have such an outsized influence on a purchase decision.

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

#318

Post by nfRfqX5n »

tarsinge wrote: post #313
urbandw311er wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s interesting how you correctly identify that this is a massive play for control by Apple and Google, and yet you still seem to sympathise with their position! I can completely understand why vehicle manufacturers are so wary. Just look at the history of how Apple, Google, etc companies have behaved when it comes to “partnerships”. Look at the App Store. Look at what Google did to supposedly open source Android. I…

Vehicle manufacturers are not (edit: end-user/OS) software companies, it doesn't make sense (or for any company for which it's not the core business) to build their own OS. Yes OS builders control the OS by definition. What's next, car manufacturers producing music so they get control back on what drivers listen to?

sure they are. there's a ton of software running in cars outside of the infotainment system

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

#319

Post by fallingknife »

shiroiuma wrote: post #115
dreamcompiler wrote: post #20

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.

>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. IMO, the bureaucracy isn't that big a problem; all big companies have this problem. The big problem for GM is their locations: who the heck wants to move to Detroit? Or any of the other places their suppliers tend to locate?

And since software is built in big factories just like cars are, there is absolutely no way for those engineers to build those systems without moving to Detroit.

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

#320

Post by outime »

pmg102 wrote: post #146
bluefirebrand wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am dreading the future of cars, where they somehow are worse than a car I could buy right now but also I have to pay a monthly subscription for the worse experience. The enshittification of everything is making me want to go berserk.

There's no obligation to buy a new one. Keep your existing cars on the road or replace them with other low mileage used ones. I bet repair costs on used are less than depreciatiom + finance costs on new, and there's pleasure to be gained from a retro aesthetic.

>There's no obligation to buy a new one

Maybe at your location. For example in Spain, many people will just not be able to drive in many places in 2024 if they don't qualify to have a good-enough "environmental distinctive" which is a label you put in your car that shows how much your car pollutes. No label or too bad of a label? You can't drive in many places.

Note: In reality it's bs as many other regulations since e.g. any ECO-labelled car (2nd best distinctive) can be a 600 CV Ferrari with a tiny electric engine.

Post reply on HN