CarPlay Is Additive

Author 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,” Schubert said 
  during a presentation of the new features.

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’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 support it, so you have to hunt for and tap the zoom controls, which is pretty barbaric compared to the fluid pinch and zoom gestures that work on Tesla and our other devices. Also on our CarPlay car, it never seems to know the direction the car is facing until it starts moving, which becomes incredibly frustrating navigating out of a parking lot. The final major downside is having to switch apps out of navigation to control music then switch back, whereas on Tesla (and Rivian) you can choose and control music while keeping navigation on your screen.

Maybe it’s cause I’ve never actually used it, but I really only care about a stable / well supported Bluetooth connection.

I have a holder for my phone for when I use GPS and basically never interact with it directly after it’s set. Only real interactions are media controls via the steering wheel.

The only use cases I can see car play helping with are those who take a lot of calls/texts in their car while driving and those who listen to music and want to listen to specific songs.

I’m with Casey on this: I will not buy a car without CarPlay. Of course, I haven’t bought a car since 2013. That one is a Tesla Model S and I think its UI is pretty decent for maps and playing audio, but I have rented enough cars since then to know that I would much prefer CarPlay support. If I had to replace my car today, I’d probably buy a Volvo EX90, which is the electric version of the XC90 Casey talks about.

As someone who only had 20+ year old cars and motorcycles, I don't see what's CarPlay supposed to solve? All I need is a Bluetooth-capable radio and a phone holder to display the navigation, so I can listen to my music and focus on driving. Phone doesn't need to be touched unless changing destinations. Do people seriously need to be constantly entertained while driving?

When I bought a Rivian I missed CarPlay. There were a few things that really stood out.

1. Proper Voice Texting

2. Google maps for routing with (good) traffic data.

The Voice Texting just a release or two ago - its okay so far but not as good as CarPlay. Google traffic landed a while back (in Rivian's map which I prefer over Google Maps)

I'll take the voice texting for what is otherwise a very elegant and well designed UI - that keeps getting better.

Full disclosure. Even when I have a rental with CarPlay I just use Spotify and google maps. Both of which are integrated into the Rivian UI. So YMMV

I hesitate to propose ulterior motives, but given there have been several seemingly obtuse objections to projection from Rivian, perhaps the CEO is concerned that, if Rivian supports projection, it will harm the perception of the value of their software stack? Related, I think they licensed their stack to VW.

"You can read Wassym’s full answer at the episode link, but here’s the part that stuck out to me:

The challenge with screen mirroring solutions is that they take over every single pixel in the car, and that’s not the way we see ourselves interacting with our users."

I kept reading past this part thinking I didn't misread the title, because as he explained, a mirroring solution that takes up every pixel could potentially be addictive, and it made sense that he didn't want the UX to fundamentally change when people drive Rivian's cars. And for that, kudos.

But now I realize your case is that CarPlay is additive. Ok, great! I do wish I could use Android on my car, which is newer than your 2017 one but only features Bluetooth, music and Phone, pairing, rather than a full OS mirror.

Do I wish it had more? Yes. But am I less distracted on the road? Yes. So I would buy a Rivian.

They want to hold you captive to subscription plans. If they allow CarPlay, it gives consumers more options for cellular connectivity, music, navigation, and other apps.

Over 90% of new vehicles sold in the U.S. already support Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

So it is kinda expected to be there: if it is not there then a car needs to be something special. So I think buyers don’t even ask for it because they assume it will be there (and absence becomes much more noticeable than its presence).

CarPlay is bad for the car manufacturer and is far worse than the modern car software. People who complain about loosing CarPlay are not using the new software but reacting in fear thinking the old car software will come back.

The author acts like manufacturers get CarPlay for free when it has a high cost, high constraints, and gives over most or all of the dash over to another company.

It's difficult for me to admit - because I really dislike Apple, Google, and the other predatory monopolies - but I wouldn't buy a car without CarPlay either.

Like I said, it's not because I'm a fan of Apple. Honestly, fuck Apple. Fuck their stupid walled garden and their $99/yr developer fee and their planned obsolesence and their lack of a headphone jack and everything else. But fuck Google too. And especially fuck all the car makers with their crappy infotainment software.

The truth is, I put up with an iPhone and with CarPlay simply because it is slightly less shitty than all the other shitty options.

I don't think I can honestly say I've seen a car UI done so well I'd forego CarPlay on the same vehicle.

MAYBE in the rare case it has wireless CarPlay only, but can play music over USB from my phone. Maybe.

I imagine the Venn Diagram of Rivian buyers and Apple users is basically a circle (or one small circle inside a much larger one), this seems like a wildly obtuse position for them to take.

There are a bunch of CarPlay devices on Amazon, for example, with all kinds of screens, designed for Tesla and other cars that don't support it, that cost about $200 for a nice one. Why not just buy one of those and who cares if it's natively supported?

Don't like Siri but want CarPlay? oops, nope.

> Let me help you, [Rivian Chief Software Officer] Wassym

Casey Liss, let me help you:

Apple and Google are monopolies.

You are boot licking an invasive species trillion dollar company.

These two megacorps are trying to put their greedy tendrils into the automotive industry and extract even more money from an industry that is not healthy and very difficult to succeed at.

It's high time the governments of the world told Google and Apple to fuck off and leave both consumers and other industries alone. Told the both of them that it's time for their platforms to become an open standard.

That phones themselves must be an open standards. With open web installs without scare walls and deeply hidden settings.

The inversion of control needs to make Apple and Google the bitch here. Not the automotive industry that can't even dream of the insane margins the tech industry has.

Cars should be able to interface with any phone without having to subjugate themselves to Google and Apple. Because this is a perverted inversion of control.

People own cars. Not two tech titans.

I’m not even that old, but I’d really love to argue to simplify the entire auto infotainment stack. I don’t even need a screen. I just bring my own by magnetically attaching my phone that I’ll use to navigate and Bluetooth music or podcasts. If CarPlay becomes the standard that allows me to not pay for whatever crappy tablet UI automakers are pushing, fine. But that doesn’t make CarPlay a necessity, it just makes it the least bad option.

I don't particularly care about Android Auto (I generally prefer standard bluetooth for audio, and directly setting the phone up for navigation), but if a manufacturer supports CarPlay and not Android Auto, they can get lost. I hate how Apple stuff is an assumed default.

> There exists a flavor of CarPlay — CarPlay Ultra — that does take over every screen of the car.

I wish software leaning Internet people stop framing that center console tablet as "the car". It's worse than people pointing at display monitors and calling it computers. They're just cheap complimentary tablets attached to the car. If we were to fully embrace the line of thinking that frame the touchscreen being the car, the Slate Truck cannot exist, since it lacks the car of the car. In reality it does exist, because that thing is just a tiny add-on unit of a car.

The reason why there's been zero cars with CarPlay Ultra is because those cheap tablets remote controlling features of the actual car that hosts it, like speedometer, is weird, and way too complicated, and plain unworkable, on top of being too controlling.

I'm not defending car brands, I find conversations with misunderstandings like this less than ideally productive. The 5.25" DVD drive unit is not the computer.