CarPlay Is Additive • Hacker News Board

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#601

Post by iosguyryan » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 2:43 PM UTC

nswest23 wrote: post #594

AlotOfReading wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 g…

then why is it that their software is a generation ahead?

The Rivian R2 makes Tesla’s look old and Android like. It’s very slick. The only thing I miss vs CarPlay is the voice Apple Maps uses, which is more natural.

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#602

Post by overgard » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 2:45 PM UTC

Software in cars ages like milk, and car manufacturers are not good at software. I would much rather just have a dumb screen my phone pairs with.

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#603

Post by Hackbraten » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 2:46 PM UTC

I will not buy a car.

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#604

Post by triceratops » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 2:50 PM UTC

grumbelbart2 wrote: post #260

_factor wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s just a line. More like, “We can collect our own data”, or “We can lock them in and collect subscription fees.”

Mostly the second point. They already collect and track you, even with car play. I strongly recommend this CCC talk, where they hacked a Volkswagen database that contained unfiltered, high-accuracy, timestamped locations of a large majority of electric cars from VW group. Based on that they were, for example, able to identify cars owned by members of Germany's security apparatus: where they work, where they live, whe…

Where's GDPR when you need it?

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#605

Post by kleiba2 » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 2:51 PM UTC

Telaneo wrote: post #429

kleiba2 wrote: post #326

And here I am, ideally not wanting any screen in my car, but just the good ole buttons and knobs of yesteryear... sigh ...

You can have a screen and buttons. If anything, a rear view camera is really useful, and you kind of have to have a screen for that to be of any use.

True, everything is better than a pure touchscreen cockpit.

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#606

Post by AlotOfReading » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 2:52 PM UTC

nswest23 wrote: post #594

AlotOfReading wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 g…

then why is it that their software is a generation ahead?

Leaving aside any quibbles about the quality of Tesla's offering, look up the story of CARIAD [0]. The scale and cultural inertia of OEMs is hard to overstate. That change can't happen quickly.

Toyota had the better idea, keep the software folks an independent business unit with internal competency/ownership, and only allow them to fix future platforms. Woven is apparently having great success inside Toyota. The side effect is that those changes still aren't apparent even years later.

GM had the same idea, but killed it recently.

[0] https://www.germanautopreneur.com/p/cariad-volkswagen-softwa...

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#607

Post by owlbite » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 2:53 PM UTC

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'm still astounded my Ford's infotainment system takes 5-10 seconds after opening the radio "app" to present me with the station selection UI. Most of that seems to be some sort of startup delay. The mind boggles.

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#608

Post by josefresco » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 2:55 PM UTC

Personally I found CarPlay to be incredibly underwhelming. Very limited app support beyond navigation and music. In addition I frequently have issues switching which phone it's using thanks to terrible iOS BT and of course the ever annoying issue where someone is using the phone that is projecting, and your music suddenly cuts out to play obnoxious audio.

The only advantage over a traditional car media center/nav is the always updated and personalized map/nav.

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#609

Post by drunken_thor » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 2:55 PM UTC

CarPlay is also a contract between mobile devs and automakers. It allows for things like displaying "current playing" on the dash, media buttons on the steering wheel that control apps, and turn by turn directions show on dash and HUD. A screen cast may be able to do this but not in a consistent dependable way.

Also no one is mentioning that maybe we should not encourage users to use 1000s of apps in their car? It would be irresponsible to easily allow users to watch youtube while driving. Keeping the set of apps usable through the car is a responsibility in automobiles that are already becoming too distracting as is.

Re: CarPlay Is Additive

#610

Post by josefresco » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 2:57 PM UTC

owlbite wrote: post #607

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'm still astounded my Ford's infotainment system takes 5-10 seconds after opening the radio "app" to present me with the station selection UI. Most of that seems to be some sort of startup delay. The mind boggles.

I'm frankly amazed at the speed at which the Ford and Chevy native UIs will take over from CarPlay for functions like reverse camera, lane camera etc. You'd expect some delay/lag but it's pretty responsive which obviously is essential for safety.