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CarPlay Is Additive

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Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#341

Post by ZeroGravitas »

jwr wrote: post #336
rjrjrjrj wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Extremely important on rental cars.

Exactly! I can't stop wondering: are these executives just not thinking, or are they blindly repeating what they were told to? If I get into a rental car, do they seriously think I want to spend the next 30 minutes logging into Spotify, mapping apps, Overcast and anything else that I want to use but that needs to know me? And then worry about logging out of all that stuff once I return the rental?

It is hard to make an executive not enshittify something when his salary bonus depends on him enshittifying it.

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#342

Post by rkangel »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #338
ipdashc wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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'm in the same boat, though with Android Auto or whatever. I'm honestly surprised how many people seem to need CarPlay; a comment or two down there's a stat claiming 79% of buyers wouldn't buy a car without it. Is it that different from the Android implementation? Is there something spec…

> Is it that different from the Android implementation? Is there something special about it? It just works and it is, like others before me said, consistent. I can connect my iPhone to any car I drive that has CatPlay and the dashboard looks like I like it. And Spotify starts right from where it left off in the other car. Can't speak for the Android experience.

The Android Auto experience is very smooth and fundamentally exactly the same.

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#343

Post by throwaway2037 »

hamburglar wrote: post #271
bdavbdav wrote: post #236

Earlier 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.

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…

I hear so many complaints here on HN about "car UX". I am not a Tesla fanboy, but lots of people who review Teslas say they have great "car UX". Can you share some specifics about what you don't like?

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#344

Post by nutjob2 »

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…

> that's why more recent models move the screen higher up.

That's far from optimal, that would be where I have my phone, at eye level just to the left of my head, right in front of the pillar. It's perfect in every way, especially since I'm longsighted.

Slate has the right idea, car makers should get out of the user software/interface business and prioritize choice. The instrument cluster is fine, as are basic controls, but they just tend to screw things up and add complexity.

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#345

Post by HolyLampshade »

symfoniq wrote: post #9

I agree with the author: CarPlay is table stakes for me. Whenever an automaker says a car won't support CarPlay, I mentally cross it off my list. Which is fine, because there are plenty of other viable options.

I think what’s become more interesting/impactful for me is why they elect not to support it.

Most firms moving away from it (or who never implemented it) seem determined to either sell additional subscription services to their user base (connectivity) or sell their user base to a third-party (either as data, or eyeballs). And for a product at this price point I find myself very annoyed at the attempted payment extraction.

Either way, I’m with you. Lots of vehicle manufacturers out there that will support it.

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#346

Post by rkangel »

linzhangrun wrote: post #302

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 w…

The big thing for me is that the lifetime of a car is a lot longer than the technology development lifecycle.

I just bought a 10 year old Toyota estate (station wagon). It's got a reasonable screen and Bluetooth implementation etc. But I'm never going to want to use the built in navigation because it's just not as good as what my phone will do. And the audio integration isn't as sophisticated as it might be - I have to choose the app on my phone.

Whereas CarPlay/AndroidAuto is generic from the car point of view, and as phone features and software improve your car capability evolves too.

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#347

Post by darkwater »

brookst wrote: post #320
linzhangrun wrote: post #302

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 w…

You missed the biggest one: continuity. Start listening to music at home, take it to the car. Start a podcast in the car, finish it in the gym. CarPlay is user-centric, which is why users like it. All these attempts to force people into a device-centric experience make no sense. I spent an hour or two a day, at most, in my car. My phone is within Bluetooth distance every waking moment. Why in the world would I want m…

That can be achieved if you are app-centric as well (i.e. Spotify app in al lthe places), but your point still stand nonetheless.

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#348

Post by bestham »

benjymo wrote: post #306
hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The wheel in an Enyaq before the facelift is the same haptic one-button shitshow. They have some buttons that act like shortcuts below the infotainment. But it the screen is still essentialistisk for managing crucial functions.

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#349

Post by ExoticPearTree »

bingo-bongo wrote: post #304
bdavbdav wrote: post #236

Earlier 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’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…

I don't think they can. The infotainment is outsourced to who knows where and those people develop based on specs sent by the manufacturer: as cheap as possible and as fast as possible. Unless you actually spend time understanding what people want, how they want it, if they like it or not, you cannot have a superior product.

I have a newish car (2023 make) with an Android based infotainment system: the built-in maps move so slow, no online updates (I have to use a stick to update them once a year) and so on. Basically they put it there I think out of habit, not that the majority of their customer demand in-car navigation as a must to buy it.

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#350

Post by HolyLampshade »

jebarker wrote: post #305

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 th…

One of those silly little issues with inbuilt software that drives me insane is the number of times I’ve had to log back into Apple Music or Spotify (or one of the video services to occupy the kiddo while parked for extended duration).

That’s another one that phones have just solved with the integrated password manager. The friction of providing credentials on my other devices has been reduced, but all of a sudden I need to go hunting through that pwd manager, and hunting and pecking on the infotainment keyboard, to enter a 20+ char unique pwd that modern “best practices” has established. It got bad enough for a bit (swver changes resulting in needing to re-log in) that I stopped using all of these apps for 2-3yr on our Model Y because I got tired of having to do it.

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