Plug in a wire, it’s great.
So we've got a 5g router with wifi in there - if that's on whilst you're driving the phone, whether iphone or android, will not connect to the headunit so no Carplay / AA.
These things are still extremely buggy which is hilarious considering how long they've been around.
(not to mention losing the connection on both AA and Carplay when going through a toll booth in France)
Otherwise, CarPlay itself has been solid and I'd never even consider purchasing a car without it.
They are certainly all hoovering up any data they can about you and selling to 3rd parties though.
Android Automotive, pay attention. GM, I'm looking at you.
I'm guessing that user customization is waay down the list here.
What I guess I don't agree with is that Apple has a monopoly on car interfaces. There's a similar duopoly here between Google and Android.
Still I think the ideal might be... light integration with the automotive operating system, with that mostly controlled by the automaker, while the entertainment center is largely user-controlled, including options to use the phone-provided in-screen systems like CarPlay and Android Auto.
It hasn't, historically, been a strength of automakers to make great integrated automotive operating systems, but it is somewhat of a differentiator for buyers so we can hope that competition improves things. If someone like Mazda continues to make a fast, fluid, intuitive operating system that also supports Android Auto and CarPlay, that's great.
But... the auto sales model, I think, works against proper competition. Because there are other major factors that buyers use to make their decisions. While every GM electric car article has a few vocal "no carplay, no buy" comments, GM is still steadily increasing their EV market share. It'll never be fully... discrete.
(Not like when it was more popular to rip the whole radio out of the dashboard and put your own Pioneer/JBL/etc system in there.)
...in all, I think it should make leaning on CarPlay more palatable for auto manufacturers. Exclusive "Ferrari Red" speedometers (aka: CSS-for-CarPlay), and there's the bland-ish basics that can be provided by Apple and used in any car.
Oh god, no.
Not only is this awful, it gives the big tech companies huge leverage over the automakers. It's another industry where they'll embrace-extend-extinguish.
These companies will use smartphones as leverage to crush the automotive giants. It's another reason why we need antitrust enforcement to catch up with 30 years of being asleep at the wheel.
The automotive companies should be in charge of their industry and their destinies. Tech companies shouldn't be ensnaring them.
The phone giants already control how software is made and distributed (and they tax it 15-30%), insert themselves into digital payments and communications, place ads on your maps and navigation, etc. Soon they'll be taxing the car companies for integration, forcing the car companies to do what they want, and those car companies will pass that pain onto you, the consumer.
You’re right that phone giants have too much power, but car companies are already selling our data and injecting ads or preferred partners into the infotainment. It’s CarPlay that currently lets you avoid the abysmal and often subscription-based experiences they’re pushing.
I would love to see more open systems that would allow third-parties or users to provide software for vehicles.
And if you look at the picture from the article, all the physical buttons are there.
Then you wrap your car around a pole, who is to blame?
This is why certification is needed on both sides for integration this deep.
Like the sibling comment said, I should be able to choose to be able to pair my phone with my car.
Google wins this round I’m afraid.
First, at least in the U.S., Apple iPhones are more popular than Android.
Second, there aren't "winners and losers". It's not anywhere near that black and white. And Android Automotive is... annoying when the automakers choose to block actual Android Auto and force you into only using apps that Android Automotive support, and in the case of GM, after 3 years you have to start paying a $40/month subscription to keep using apps. That's not winning in my book. A lot of people (at least on the internet) seem vocally opposed to the GM vehicles that do not support Android Auto.
If automakers are strictly only supporting Android and not iPhone, they will likely lose out on sales to the buyers who really prefer iPhone + CarPlay.
But also, they can block CarPlay and Android Auto, like GM does in their electric vehicles.
Pretty much all my friends feel this way too.
Some better integrations, sure. I can see wanting the carplay maps able to know the charge of the battery/fuel levels to plan out trips that include chargers/gas stations on the way.
But, taking over the entire dash? Nah, let's not overcomplicate things too much.
So even if you never use this feature, you should still want it, because it’s the feature that is meant to keep CarPlay relevant
> Anything that good hackers would find interesting
> Please submit the original source
This fits those two guidelines.
I won't buy or rent a new car without car play so this is a smart move. Hopefully the OEM customisation is on tight rails so they can't mess up the UX too much.
Same. When GM announced they were going to drop Car Play and Android Auto I was like this is going to be a historically bad move lol.
It also seems like every in-car map interface except CarPlay supports pinch-to-zoom these days, including the OEM maps from manufacturers like VW and Tesla, Android Automotive, and Android Auto. VW won't even let you see your backup camera while you're driving because they think it might be too distracting to have another way to see what's happening behind you, but they think pinch-to-zoom is just fine.
Yes - all-touch controls suck. I know, I have a car that's mostly all-touch. It's so stupid. But the displays are lovely. As long as they don't take over UI in a car and replace physical controls for key functions that you control while driving, like climate, lights, wipers, volume.
Tesla has the most terrible UI of ALL cars by far. I personally think the Volkswagen cars up until 2021/2022 have the best UI (and I even dare to say the only good UI), although some things (like the map) could have benefited from a better design. (Of course, only my personal preferences, but I work with a lot of cars so yeah)
I don't think that you have. (I haven't either!)
I will say my wife's Mazda has a UI I love. You push buttons and turn knobs to control things.
There is a competent powerful computer here, running a standard platform (the web). Load whatever software you will! Add some new web-sensors that are car specific like throttle, rpm, fuel efficiency.
A little trickier is harnessing the physical inputs of the car. Sure many of these could probably map to gamepads fine, but there's probably some extra needed.
Of course it keeps going. There's so many peripherals. Multi-zone climate control, windows, adaptive cruise control display. Projecting backup and 360 cameras into getUserMedia. Ideally you don't stop at a single user mode, ideally somehow side & rear passengers also fit into the model.
But the root idea holds very well in my mind. A powerful canvas for software, using perhaps the world's best hypermedia engine. "Run this URL" is kind of all it takes!
Shout out to defunct Webinos, a very interesting project that had some inroads on automotive, where the car privately securely made itself accessible over a secure virtual private network to the owner. Less about porting interfaces in, but still amazing pro-user IoT that the world has only ever fallen away from in the decade since.
Or really any huge manufacturing industry. If the EU said today "Apple you have to use USB-D now", it would probably take them 3 years. The next 2 years of iPhones are probably pretty close into the bag already.
How do you design a widget that car designers might want to give different fonts, different levels of visual density, crammed into unexpected shapes and sizes, that must never get into a situation where information appears glitchy in a way that could cause a real-world accident?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLf44BXd0SE is a WWDC 2024 presentation that speaks to some of these challenges. I recall a great prior discussion thread on HN about this, but can't find it at the moment.
https://www.jalopnik.com/the-aston-martin-lagonda-was-a-tech...
I've gone so far as to create a Shortcut to play a silent song on Apple Music, but it's a hack and it only works sometimes.
