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CarPlay Is Additive

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Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#271

Post by hamburglar »

bdavbdav wrote: post #236
valgaze wrote: post #4

Author says "I literally will not buy a car that does not support CarPlay." From July 2022: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/22/apple-carplay-could-be-a-tro ... Apple engineering manager Emily Schubert said 98% of new cars in the U.S. come with CarPlay installed. She delivered a shocking stat: 79% of U.S. buyers would only buy a car if it supported CarPlay. “It’s a must-have feature when shopping for a new vehicle,” Schu…

Not only does it irritate me not having it in a practical sense, it’s also an arrogance on behalf of the manufacturer. “We can do it better than iOS/Android”, or “We have a better reason to do it”. No, and No.

They all think they can do better, and it is sheer arrogance, because even the best of them is utter garbage compared to software that is actually built with fast iteration, UX research, and real user testing. No car manufacturers do a good job of this, and they all bake their atrocious UX into a $50k piece of hardware you keep for decades and which *never* gets a significant software update. The fact that they don’t see how impossible it is for them to win at this game is why they will never win. Sorry Rivian. Your vehicle is great but you’re handicapping yourself with software hubris.

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#272

Post by bux93 »

MBCook wrote: post #168
Loudergood wrote: post #100

There should be a standard. (Yes I know the XKCD) Apple and Android each having their own is ridiculous and actively prevents smaller competitors(one can dream)

For what it’s worth I’ve heard they’re basically identical. It’s just some two-way data and an h264 video stream. There’s a reason basically everyone supports both. Seems to be really easy. I don’t know whether the auto makers actually forced them to be compatible or it was a choice in Google’s part to get into cars that already had CarPlay. But it really doesn’t seem like it’s a big hassle. Most of it is probably ju…

My car has wired carplay/android auto, but I have a nifty little USB dongle that receives carplay/android auto wirelessly and passes it to the car via USB. Sometimes called an AI box, I think.

These things contain a whole System-on-a-Chip board. I presume what it's acting like a middle box; pretending to be the headunit to the phone, and then sending the phone's output to the headunit, pretending to be a phone.

Since they need a quite beefy CPU to do that, I'm guessing they don't just pass along packets, but actually speak the protocol on both ends, and perhaps transcode the a/v stream.

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#273

Post by Groxx »

Every time I've used CarPlay or Android Auto, I just remember how much better the experience was with a tablet velcro'd over the main display. Immediately obviously better in every single way, and dramatically cheaper and easier to replace if desired.

I get the goal, and I'm glad there's at least some semblance of a standard. But it's still bad.

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#274

Post by madaxe_again »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #85
appden wrote: post #25

I’m fully bought into the Apple ecosystem, and I’ve had Teslas for 8 years and we currently also have car that supports CarPlay. The CarPlay interface is overall far inferior, especially with navigation. First of all, searching for destinations is terrible on CarPlay compared to Tesla! Even worse, Apple didn’t even add multi-touch support to CarPlay until iOS 26, and the vast majority of cars (including ours) don’t s…

Curiously, being herded onto tesla's software is the number one reason I won't buy one. I don't like the navigation or media software and the rest would feel better as a physical control or just seems useless in a car.

I find the media stuff all works just fine - gotta say I control it all almost exclusively by voice, and it Just Works - but the navigation… sucks donkey ass. I hate that it only treats superchargers as possible charging stops - where I live they are few and far between, yet other high speed chargers are common. The routing is often abysmal. It’ll be like “heavy traffic ahead. Taking you into it.” The traffic camera database is incomplete. The behaviour between the mobile and in car app is wildly inconsistent.

You know, I don’t care so much about having CarPlay as I care about having Waze or ABRP or just any routing app other than Tesla’s.

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#275

Post by [deleted] »

artisinal wrote: post #254
commandersaki wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about Rivian, but I'm generally less distracted on the road with CarPlay due to Siri & Voice Control. I wish I could extend it to my native car controls such as climate control etc.

> I'm generally less distracted on the road You should be not distracted at all.

[deleted]

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#276

Post by sokoloff »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #242
xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A TPMS doesn't make your car easier and safer to drive???

You can buy a tire gauge at a gas station for $10 and check your tires when you clean your car. But then again, I am old enough perhaps to have been taught to regularly check your tires before driving to begin with.

Did I just read an argument that it’s easier or safer to manually check your tire pressures rather than having the car do it automatically every time the car drives fast enough to “wake up” the TPMS units?

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#277

Post by hamburglar »

Induane wrote: post #192
jghn wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in this camp: I will not buy a car without CarPlay. And I put so few miles on my car that while I'd like a new one, if the vendors make this impossible then no one gets my money.

Are there vehicles that support it in a way that isn't buggy? I have a few friends with it and I don't think I've been on a single ride with them without a glitch. Freezing interface, spontaneously jumping to regular Bluetooth, music playing but no actual volume, plugging into usb power causing some kind of mode-shift that makes the screen hang or briefly cease to work, all kinds of nonsense. Also kind of weirdly bad…

I own a Ford and a BMW, both with CarPlay. The BMW is flawless. The Ford just refuses to connect about 10% of the time and requires the infotainment system to be rebooted. It also occasionally connects but leaves audio coming out of the phone speaker. So yes, implementations vary.

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#278

Post by artisinal »

jnaina wrote: post #114
MBCook wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since then GM has dropped CarPlay. Rivian has appeared following Tesla and refusing to support it. And I thought there were some other existing manufacturer who was either getting rid of it or thinking about it. Basically despite the popularity the market seems to be moving against it slowly. And the more those cars succeed the more other auto makers will be willing to follow.

Same here. CarPlay is in the top 10 features for my next Car. Even for my older 911 which I bought second hand, the first investment was a Pioneer head unit with CarPlay.

In my opinion, anything older than a 996 shouldn’t have an infotainment screen. Looks very out of place. Just use a phone mount for navigation or use audio navigation through a period correct radio.

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#279

Post by ahepp »

danielheath wrote: post #72
throwaway_7274 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I literally will not buy a car that has a microprocessor in it (I will, apparently, never buy a car)

I mean, "no microprocessor" means no engine designed in the past 30 years, because the fuel pump needs one. "No antenna/modem I can't readily remove" might be _slightly_ more achievable.

I'm guessing you mean fuel injector? The pump that pushes or pulls fuel up from your tank is not very sophisticated, afaik.

Fuel injector timing and quantity, along with ignition timing, is generally computer controlled, certainly on any modern vehicle.

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#280

Post by hnlmorg »

hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #119
faitswulff wrote: post #104

Surprised no one's mentioned it so far, but CarPlay / Android Auto aren't just features, they're consistency . Across makes, models, years. I know what I'm getting when I connect my phone - and if anyone uses my car with their own device, they get their own dashboard, as well. One interesting use case I saw was a couple where one used a left-to-right interface and the other a right-to-left UI. CarPlay makes this easy…

I would prefer knobs and buttons over a screen flow in either direction, but no modern car caters to this anymore.

Lots of modern cars cater for this. It’s actually a marketing point with manufacturers like the VW group publicising how they’re bringing back tactile interfaces. And some ranges of cars never took that away (for example Jaguar).
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