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CarPlay Is Additive

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Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#361

Post by mvdtnz »

wvenable wrote: post #227
mvdtnz wrote: post #77

> I literally will not buy a car that does not support CarPlay. This is silly. I have installed Android Auto head units into each of my last three cars. It costs a few hundred bucks and takes an afternoon. I simply will not buy a car that won't easily accept a double DIN head unit.

I think that ship has sailed, my friend. My last car could accept a double DIN head unit but I never put one in because then I'd lose any way to control all the settings in the car. And that was a car from 2014! The integration is even tighter now.

As long as used cars exist the ship will never have sailed.

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#362

Post by kalleboo »

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…

“Searching for destinations on CarPlay”

I think this is the difference for me - I’ve decided where I’m going before I get in the car. Either I’ve planned a route (on my phone) or got a destination through a message from a friend on LINE. Either way I already have a plan.. on my phone. So having to somehow get that into the car navigation is always going to be worse than just using my phone

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#363

Post by Telaneo »

I've never seen a normal car infotainment system I liked (at least beyond 'put in a CD, then use next and previous track'), and Carplay is such a massive improvement over that. It's good, it's consistent, it's the same everywhere, it's up to date, it uses data from my phone. There's nothing to not like. The rest of the infotainment system could literally not exist[1] (beyond integrating buttons to actually control Carplay), and I wouldn't care. The car's infotainment system could just be a Carplay runtime and I'd be good.

[1] There are probably some features I'm forgetting that probably count as part of the infotainment, but which Carplay doesn't touch, like AC and battery info and management. The AC in my own car is completely separate from the infotainment system, but that probably doesn't apply to all cars. But even in those cases, it'd be better if integrated into Carplay, or just left out of what's happening on screen, and instead be given seperate manual controls.

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#364

Post by zelos »

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…

Locations as well. Carplay picks up locations from calendar appointments, messages etc, so very often you just plug it in and click "Go".

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#366

Post by alerighi »

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…

I appreciate my 2011 vehicle that only has a car radio with FM tuner and CDs, and yes, I know that I could easily swap it but I didn't on purpose, let me explain why:

- all the controls that I need, that are basically volume, radio station or CD track, are easily accessible trough physical buttons and knobs, that I can use without taking my eyes off the street

- I get in the car, insert the key and the radio turns on instantly and start playing music, no things that have to boot, no things that have to connect, etc. I usually listen to the radio and I stay up to date with news, listen to programs, listen to music without the need to create a playlist, or not and always listen to the same songs, or worse paying a subscription to just listen to music

- if I want to listen something different I can just put in a CD, and considering it supports mp3 CDs a CD can contain up to 100 songs without a noticeable loss in quality

- the UI of the radio in general is well designed, no useless functions, everything is easy to reach, no distractions. The radio is well integrated into the car dashboard, the design has something to say, not like a boring 10' tablet

- no distractions, notifications from my phone stay on my phone, calls don't pop up, simply when I arrive at destination I recall saying I was driving, or respond to the message

- finally, the sound quality is good, much better than most of integrated infotainment in modern cars that have 2000 useless functions, a shitty touchscreen, and a very poor sound quality. If I turn the volume all way up it shakes the car, the quality of analog FM radio is much better than modern digital radio that have the quality of a low bitrate MP3, and we are talking about the stock radio of a VW Golf 6, a normal car (when I bought it in 2011), not something fancy.

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#367

Post by rbanffy »

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.

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).

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#368

Post by artisinal »

jnaina wrote: post #339
artisinal wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's a 997. it had the original OEM double din stereo with the Nav. Porsche offered the PCCM CarPlay upgrade, but decided the Pioneer unit was much better.

Nice one. Yes on the 997 a CarPlay screen will not look out of place!

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#369

Post by rbanffy »

dlcarrier wrote: post #356
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.

Even physical controls can be a downgrade if poorly implemented. R.I.P. Anton Yelchin, who brought us joy with his portrayal of Chekov in the Star Trek films, before losing his life at only 27, from a switch poorly masquerading as a brake lever.

In my mind it's always because he played Kyle Reese once and the car was just confused about it.

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#370

Post by Telaneo »

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…

Even if they can do better, will it be better than Carplay in 10 years? Or 20? Will I get free GPS map updates for that long?

Some brands don't even do OTA updates, so you'd have to get your car in for a service if there's a new feature or bug fix in an update you care about. I'd never want to do that for a map fix when I could just use Carplay where Google Maps (or whatever else) has already fixed it.

And even if they do OTA updates, they won't be updating those maps in 10 years, much less 20.

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