alt Hacker News> On the contrary, having cars stop trying to provide a bespoke more-proprietary outdated piece of software you have less control over, probably have surreptitious telemetry reporting back from, and might have to pay a subscription fee for, and instead just delegate to the smartphone you already have, is a huge and surprising win.
I'd agree if it worked.
Android Auto sucks. And I don't like that my auto manufacturer can wash their hands off it by pointing at Google.
> If you don't want to use it, don't use it; there's nothing forcing you to do so.
As long as the car manufacturer gives me basic functionality (radio, stereo, Bluetooth, etc). Nominally they do, but it sucks in a different way from Android Auto. So I have to ping pong between these two.
My prior car's aftermarket Bluetooth receiver was fantastic. The fact that I can't install something like that on modern cars is a huge regression.
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why on earth you need an aftermarket receiver of Bluetooth? The cost of the module is few dollars. My cheap ac has bluethooth, just to connect it wifi, i used it once in it's lifetime.
The entire idea that everytime you sit in the car you need to pair your devices, what if you have several devices in the car etc ? it's such a horrible, broken, neurotic idea.
> Android Auto sucks.
No, it doesn't. It's a very simple streaming protocol.
It's literally a gRPC-encapsulated stream of h264 frames over a USB connection. With touch events and some car-related telemetry streamed back. You can implement it in a weekend: https://github.com/mrmees/open-android-auto
You can create whatever you want, including just streaming videos onto the head unit or making it play Doom while driving (with steering wheel for input).
Android Auto sucks but I guarantee that any software that those car companies would have made in house would be many times worse.