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CarPlay Is Additive

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Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#301

Post by benrutter »

There's so many comments on the lines of "I would never buy a car without android auto/car play support". I 100% used to be on this camp, "A car without android auto, what am I, a caveman!?".

Anyway, separately to anything car related, I got fed up of some of google's treatment of android and switched to Murena's /e/os which is a de-googled spin of android. It doesn't support android auto, and that held me back from switching for ages.

Long story short, I don't miss android auto at all. Bluetooth is absolutely fine for playing media from my phone etc.

(my car does already have functionality like google maps built in though, so I might feel differently if it didn't)

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#302

Post by linzhangrun »

For pure interaction, CarPlay as a generic solution is very hard to beat infotainment systems that are deeply integrated with the vehicle itself. Its advantages are mainly these:

- Consistency. You get into a new car, all you need to figure out is how to open CarPlay, no need to learning a completely different and often complicated infotainment system.

- "It's on your phone". You can decide what playlist to play or where to navigate before you even get into the car.

- Stays up to date over the long term. Just look at cars from five years ago. Most built-in infotainment systems are still stuck in that era, no matter how smart they once looked. CarPlay uses your phone as the main computing platform, and the car's infotainment system only needs to act as a thin client for I/O, it keeps updating with iOS.

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#303

Post by benjymo »

happymellon wrote: post #286
hnlmorg wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

How can they be "bringing it back" if they already offer it? So they can't be currently catering for it. Also, the Jaguar F Pace was a big screen with the only knob being the vents, so they did take the majority away.

They did away with a lot of physical buttons in the past. Now they are in the process of bringing them back. There are some models still sold with the old design while all new models have physical again.

Also some of their brands had physical buttons all along. I think Skoda never removed them in the Elroq or Enyak.

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#304

Post by bingo-bongo »

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.

I’ve had ~15 cars over the past 25 years, different make and models, some really cheap, some fairly expensive. One thing they all have in common: their terrible infotainment UI.

I’m sure they are trying and it has gotten slightly better lately - but it’s still not great imho. If they really want to do it better than Apple etc., they seriously need to up their game - and I really wish they would, but I don’t see that happening, the cost is too high.

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#305

Post by jebarker »

As an R1S owner I feel like the elephant in the room is that the Rivian developed infotainment software is just not very good. For example, the Spotify app has weird scrolling issues and the interface for offline downloads is clunky and unreliable. The maps/route planning is fine but not really any better than Apple/Google Maps (or ABRP). So I find it hard to give much credit to their argument against CarPlay when they’re not providing a better experience via their native apps.

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#306

Post by benjymo »

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.

VW is bringing back physical buttons in their newer models, e.g. ID.3 Neo and Polo. Skoda never did away with them.

It's also part of the safety rating of Euro NCAP, and AFAIK China mandated physical buttons for important functions as well.

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#307

Post by mschuster91 »

namdnay wrote: post #251
IgorPartola wrote: post #217

I am clearly in the minority here but I have driven cars with and without CarPlay and honestly do not care whether a car has it. I use my phone for navigation and mount it such that when I look at it I am not taking my eyes off the road. I find this to be far better than having to look down at the center of my dashboard but CarPlay navigation UI via Google Maps or Waze also works fine so it’s not a huge difference. R…

> having to look down at the center of my dashboard that's why more recent models move the screen higher up. it sometimes looks a bit silly (like they glued an ipad on top of the dashboard), but it's a lot more usable > HUD that projected my location, speed, heading and turn by turn navigation (with lane info!) onto the windshield the latest carplay implementations are compatible with the inbuilt navigation aids, so…

> it sometimes looks a bit silly (like they glued an ipad on top of the dashboard), but it's a lot more usable

... until there's some child walking right into that visual "dead space".

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#308

Post by cromka »

stavros wrote: post #287
jackvalentine wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought a BYD that is as close to that as I could. https://esv6hz7yeij.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/b...

But still no pause button, only mute! Just maddening, do they think I only listen to radio?

Presumably pressing Play will pause when already playing? Like it's been a case for like 40 years or so?

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#309

Post by mattrighetti »

physhster wrote: post #299

At this point it's very easy: no CarPlay, no buy. So no Tesla (obv), no Rivian.

Opinionated, but Tesla's interface seems better than any CarPlay?

The thing with CarPlay that I hate the most is that it is laggy. I have it on a Series 5 BMW and Spotify has a delay of at least 4s when you select a song and when it actually starts playing. Same thing when you rapidly skip tracks - the interface changes but the speakers (or any other non-CarPlay interface) can't really keep up. It really is a joke, especially on that kind of vehicle.

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#310

Post by stavros »

cromka wrote: post #308
stavros wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But still no pause button, only mute! Just maddening, do they think I only listen to radio?

Presumably pressing Play will pause when already playing? Like it's been a case for like 40 years or so?

Well, either I'm very dumb and didn't think to press play on the car I own to solve the problem I've had for years, or you're missing the fact that there is no play button on BYD cars.

I wonder which it is.

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