I'm still angry that I can't just run Android Auto directly anymore on my phone when I'm in a vehicle that doesn't have Android Auto support and my phone is just dash-mounted (or handlebar-mounted).
Usedtacould.
CarPlay Is Additive
581–590 of 764 posts
Re: CarPlay Is Additive
#582Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 worked at a car company. It's not arrogance, it's greed. They do want their own proprietary infotainment to be good, but it's more that they don't want to abdicate control, both out of a possessive feeling over what you're looking at, and over the potential for selling you access to their own stuff on that screen.
Every time I have to cycle through the SirusXM hardcoded ad in the AM->FM->Bluetooth->SirusXM cycle of my car stereo's mode picker, I get angry at Toyota.
Re: CarPlay Is Additive
#583Earlier quoted context omitted.
I use CarPlay all the time and I almost never use the touchscreen - as you shouldn't while driving. The car has buttons and knobs, on the dash and on the wheel, to call up all sorts of options in the UI. The only time I need to touch the screen is if I want a full screen map (instead of the three-panel usual view).
I'm unconvinced. Navigating the UI via knobs seems much more distracting to me. I have to reach farther in my vehicle, but more importantly, I have to watch the screen anyway to make sure the knob ends up on the right control. Am I missing something?
It really depends on what you are doing, but yes - if you need to look at the screen to do anything, you still fail safety. A knob is nicer than a touchscreen because you don't have to adjust to a moving vehicle to hit the right spot of the screen (for this same reason recent airplanes have buttons in addition to touchscreens).
Still, if you are very used to the UI, you can say the music app is one item down from the map, and the phone is two, so you can count presses. I was able to SMS people with a Nokia phone with a hand on the steering wheel and one on the phone (back when it was not forbidden).
Re: CarPlay Is Additive
#584Earlier quoted context omitted.
>For pure interaction, CarPlay as a generic solution is very hard to beat infotainment systems that are deeply integrated with the vehicle itself I can't find one instance of a car UI being as good or easier to interact with than CarPlay.
The Tesla UI is pretty good. It's the only built-in car software I consider good enough to use for navigation. In any other car I use my phone. But Tesla also understands that good software engineers need to be paid Silicon Valley wages. The other car companies hire B- and C-level software engineers and then wonder why their customers prefer to navigate with their phones.
I think more often, traditional car companies don’t have in-house talent to work on their infotainment… that’s contracted out to the lowest bidder, to predictable result.
Re: CarPlay Is Additive
#585Earlier quoted context omitted.
I admire the restraint the CarPlay designers have in adding features. E.g. in music apps, you can't click-through to an artist page from a song page. Annoying on the surface, but it actually naturally restricts your mucking about in menus. I bet any money that that one choice has saved lives.
Your thesis is right but in this example this is instead one of the “Alan Dye” hidden UI instances where the functionality is intentionally hidden (I presume in the name of aesthetic minimalism rather than safety, because this is what Apple design does outside CarPlay too). At least in Apple Music, I think you tap on the artist name in the now playing screen, and I think you get a menu to go to album or artist from t…
You can verify from my comment history that I love talking shit about Mr Dye as much as the next guy, but no. Car Play limitations are certainly not an Alan Dye decision. Everything in CarPlay is stripped down cause it's not safe to be navigating menus and doing deep interactions while driving.
The passenger can use the phone if you want to be able to scroll through an artist's catalog, rearrange playlists, etc. CarPlay's UI is a quick way to access your current library.
Re: CarPlay Is Additive
#586Earlier quoted context omitted.
>For pure interaction, CarPlay as a generic solution is very hard to beat infotainment systems that are deeply integrated with the vehicle itself I can't find one instance of a car UI being as good or easier to interact with than CarPlay.
The Tesla UI is pretty good. It's the only built-in car software I consider good enough to use for navigation. In any other car I use my phone. But Tesla also understands that good software engineers need to be paid Silicon Valley wages. The other car companies hire B- and C-level software engineers and then wonder why their customers prefer to navigate with their phones.
Pretty much every major manufacturer has a bay area satellite office these days. Toyota has a research center in San Ramon and a woven office near the broadcom campus in Palo Alto. GM has an office in SOMA and in mountain view. Ford has an office literally a block away from Tesla HQ. Mercedes used to be near Cariad at moffet field, but now they're down by SJC. Nissan is in Santa Clara.
Need I continue? And Tesla is generally understood to pay on the lower end among those companies.
Re: CarPlay Is Additive
#587Author 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…
I would love to buy a Rivian R2 but I will absolutely not drop that kind of money until they support CarPlay. To me - a refusal to support CarPlay is an extremely user-hostile decision.
Re: CarPlay Is Additive
#588What the auto industry should have really woken up to is the idea of a singular carplay for both android and ios. I have a 2021 BMW that only supported carplay and was fine for many years. It is wireless even. I love it. But now i have a pixel.
Re: CarPlay Is Additive
#589CarPlay is a nightmare for many because its premise only considers 2 options: use CarPlay, don’t use CarPlay.
If you want to mix and match features across what your car offers and CarPlay offers (e.g. use Podcasts app but stick with native navigation), the UX starts to breakdown very quickly.
Re: CarPlay Is Additive
#590Earlier quoted context omitted.
To voice an alternative that isn't touched much in this discussion: > - "It's on your phone" Straight use your phone. There is no need for the car to adapt, no updates, no back deal by the car manufacturer, nothing is tied to the car except Bluetooth. Current screens are IMHO big enough, moving to a tablet or foldables is also an option Mounting/unmounting is a solved problem since magsafe (or Peak Design like strong…
Literally everything you said is not true for me - My phone's screen is nowhere near big enough for me to "glance" at it while driving (to see if my turn is coming up, etc) - I'm not carrying around a tablet with me - my phone fits in my pocket - Mounting is _not_ a solved problem. It just... isn't. This is a whole topic on it's own, but mounting a phone in a good position, where it will stay without moving/falling/b…
Fully agree on screen size. In my car the dash screen over twice the physical size of my iPhone 16 Pro Max and is much easier to read maps from at a glance.