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Transportation Operating Systems Apple

Next-Generation Apple CarPlay Will Be a Whole Car OS (cnet.com) 118

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: The next generation of CarPlay will be compatible with a variety of aspect ratios -- from portrait to landscape -- and can even adapt to multidisplay dashboards, including vehicles with digital instrument clusters or with ultrawide pillar-to-pillar displays. CarPlay will be more integrated with all the host vehicle's systems. Beyond its current navigation and media consumption functionalities, Apple CarPlay will handle traditional instrumentation like speedometer, tachometer, temperature gauges and fuel or EV battery level displays. Users will be able to adjust their climate controls, activate seat heaters, monitor air quality and even tie into Apple's smart home technologies directly from the CarPlay interface.

As with the next generation of iOS on the phone, Apple is also giving CarPlay users the ability to customize how CarPlay looks with selectable themes, backgrounds and widgets. From loud pink analog-style gauges to slick numerical displays and bar graphs, CarPlay will be able to match a wide range of vehicle interior designs and personal aesthetic tastes. Perhaps most interestingly, Apple says that this new full-fat approach to CarPlay as a complete vehicle interface will continue to be powered entirely by the connected iPhone, giving Apple an unprecedented amount of control over the vehicle's operation as well as access to data generated by each host vehicle.
According to Apple, the first vehicles to support the new CarPlay update should be announced in late 2023. It lists Acura, Audi, Ford, Honda, Jaguar-Land Rover, Lincoln, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Porsche, Volvo and Polestar as partners that are "excited to bring this new vision of CarPlay to customers."
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Next-Generation Apple CarPlay Will Be a Whole Car OS

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  • by Viol8 ( 599362 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2022 @08:06AM (#62599780) Homepage

    I don't need or want endless display format options or silly animations or everything controlled by a touch screen with common functions buried in a menu thats not safe to access while driving. I just want a car thats comfortable, reasonably responsive and cheapish to run. Is that asking too much from the kidults who seem to have taken over interior car design?

    Having tried some of the useless touch screen lash ups in the latest models I wonder if any of them even have a license or their entire car experience is being driven by either mum and dad or an uber.

    • by Reiyuki ( 5800436 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2022 @08:28AM (#62599856)
      "Sorry I was late to work, my car wouldn't start until it finished doing automatic updates"
    • I blame the mandatory back-up camera requirement for this. You'd previously be able to escape these stupid in-vehicle touch screens by getting an economy car, but now even the cheapest vehicles have them so the camera feed can be displayed. I'm just thankful the only thing it does in my car is control the radio. The HVAC controls are still real knobs, and the instrument cluster looks straight out of the 90s - just the way I like it.

      My father recently got a new pickup truck and the damn dashboard looks li

      • by mjwx ( 966435 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2022 @08:38AM (#62599882)

        I blame the mandatory back-up camera requirement for this. You'd previously be able to escape these stupid in-vehicle touch screens by getting an economy car, but now even the cheapest vehicles have them so the camera feed can be displayed. I'm just thankful the only thing it does in my car is control the radio. The HVAC controls are still real knobs, and the instrument cluster looks straight out of the 90s - just the way I like it.

        My father recently got a new pickup truck and the damn dashboard looks like the bridge of the Enterprise. It also has auto braking, lane assist, adaptive cruse control, etc. Oddly enough, he's okay with having all that crap.

        You know we've had reversing cameras for years before touchscreens were the norm.

        I blame cheap manufacturers who want to cut corners by putting everything into a touch screen (Ford and Vauxhall I'm looking at you) and shitty car journalists who see a physical control you can use without looking at it and whine "ugh, so backwards" but then see a giant touch screen and squeal "Such future, so tech" between fellating Elon Musk.

        Given that the auto industry is both highly incestuous and well established as well as this looking like a solution to a problem no-one has, I see Apple's CarOS going absolutely nowhere. Both in the metaphorical sense (as in no-one will buy it) and the physical sense (as in it won't move).

        • I don't think it's car journalists that think physical controls suck.

          I've been looking at the Ioniq 5 and EV6, and the reviews generally praised the physical buttons and gave a ding to Kia with it's touch buttons (not screen) that are dual purpose based on a toggle.

          More than one reviewer said something along the lines of "it's great that the features aren't hidden on a touch screen" and they universally expressed dislike for climate control on a touchscreen especially.

          I think it's consumers not hating it an

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          I think it's mostly just incompetence. If you look at cars with good HMI, like the Honda e, newer Volvos running Android, even mid tier ones like the Kia/Hyundai platform, it shows that they can get it right if they try hard enough.

          On the plus side, videos of people trying to park Teslas with the yoke and touch screen gear shift are hilarious.

          • "On the plus side, videos of people trying to park Teslas with the yoke and touch screen gear shift are hilarious."

            It parks itself and it also drives itself.

            • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

              You forgot the asterisk on your glib response.

              I have a Tesla, so I'm speaking from experience. The auto-park is a party trick you use to show off, but don't actually use to park the car because it's slow and always makes me think it's going to hit shit. It takes forever to recognize that you're ready to park and give you the control to activate it - usually I'm already halfway into the space by the time it figures out I'm parking, and my attention is on the mirrors or over my shoulder so I don't even see

      • My father recently got a new pickup truck and the damn dashboard looks like the bridge of the Enterprise. It also has auto braking, lane assist, adaptive cruse control, etc. Oddly enough, he's okay with having all that crap.

        I rented a car for a long drive last year and found that the lane assist and adaptive cruise control were useful for the stretches where there was little around to provide visual stimuli. I prefer simpler interfaces that support second-device functionality (I use a Roku on a relatively dumb TV at home), but the new safety features on cars are welcome, at least from my perspective. The complaints I see from people about lane assist, etc., remind me of Slashdot 20 years ago where people were complaining about

        • I rented a car for a long drive last year and found that the lane assist and adaptive cruise control were useful for the stretches where there was little around to provide visual stimuli... The complaints I see from people about lane assist, etc., remind me of Slashdot 20 years ago where people were complaining about anti-lock brakes and auto-tensioning seatbelts.

          I mostly agree with you. Some "safety" features can be downright dangerous though - I'm thinking of the auto high-beam in my wife's CRV that almost got us killed one night, and which required something akin to magic incantations to disable. The safety tech is useful, but the override procedures need to be obvious and instantaneous.

        • remind me of Slashdot 20 years ago where people were complaining about anti-lock brakes

          I STILL hate fucking anti-lock brakes.

      • by chill ( 34294 )

        Nope. My back-up camera (2015 Chevy Silverado 1500) displays on my rear-view mirror. Until I replaced it with an aftermarket unit, the radio was a simple device that had a CD player and optional hookup for satellite radio.

        Routing to the touchscreen is an option, but it is just a standard RCA jack video cable.

      • by sinij ( 911942 )
        He is OK with it for now, while it all works. Wait until all these systems are a few years old and the car is out of warranty.
      • My father recently got a new pickup truck and the damn dashboard looks like the bridge of the Enterprise.

        Which one? The original Enterprise actually had switches and levers and such.

      • " The HVAC controls are still real knobs, and the instrument cluster looks straight out of the 90s - just the way I like it."

        But you're from the 50ies according to your uid.

      • The backup camera in my Toyota Tacoma is in the rear view mirror. No screens were added to the vehicle to accommodate the camera.

      • by Junta ( 36770 )

        I think there is a place for a display in a vehicle, but that doesn't mean everything should be under it.

        For example, I most of the physical controls I have ever had in my car, plus a touchscreen. The one thing lost is I no longer have hard buttons for radio station presets, instead just a 'next/prev' to cycle through. Meanwhile the display is a handy place for GPS, camera, and a somewhat extensible media interface.

        If I drove a Tesla, then sure, I'm not even allowed mechanical vent adjustments in their obs

      • My father recently got a new pickup truck and the damn dashboard looks like the bridge of the Enterprise. It also has auto braking, lane assist, adaptive cruse control, etc. Oddly enough, he's okay with having all that crap.

        Why is that crap? IMHO, all of that stuff is great. Why would you be surprised that he likes any of that?

        I demand physical HVAC controls (and driving controls, lol). Beyond that, there's not much of a car's user interface that I access that much, that often.

      • I blame the mandatory back-up camera requirement for this. You'd previously be able to escape these stupid in-vehicle touch screens by getting an economy car, but now even the cheapest vehicles have them so the camera feed can be displayed.

        Huh?

        All the cars I've tried simply switch on the camera when you put it in reverse. That's it, no touch screen needed.

    • by Mspangler ( 770054 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2022 @08:48AM (#62599914)

      Have you experienced GM's idiocy of their touch screen regularly displaying a message about the hazards of using the screen while the car is moving, which in order to clear it requires you to take your eyes off the road and press the on-screen button. Bonus points awarded for requiring you to take off your glove in the winter in order to press the on-screen button since the touch screen doesn't work with gloves.

      • by JBMcB ( 73720 )

        Have you experienced GM's idiocy of their touch screen regularly displaying a message about the hazards of using the screen while the car is moving, which in order to clear it requires you to take your eyes off the road and press the on-screen button.

        It only displays those when the head unit starts up, and will clear itself if you leave it. It is annoying, but from what I've heard from people in the industry it's an insurance requirement and/or recommendation.

        • "It only displays those when the head unit starts up, "

          That part is definitely false, at least on my truck. I'm not sure how long it will stay there. Next time it comes on I'll have to wait it out.

          • In my truck, the warning message pops up when you start and as soon as I'm moving a tiny bit it goes away. It's probably on for 2-3 seconds.
    • by sinij ( 911942 )
      I completely agree, I don't want my cars to be digital and connected. Especially annoying are infotainment systems that demand you sign-in. I hope someone soon will offer un-digital just car, otherwise I will keep driving my current cars into the ground and beyond.
      • I completely agree, I don't want my cars to be digital and connected.

        I see the push toward "connected" vehicles as related to the push for eliminating cash. Society is rapidly moving toward a state wherein everything we do can be tracked in real time, and to a large extent controlled or outright forbidden by the operators of these oh-so-convenient "services". We're being serviced right up the ass.

        At least the Chinese are being upfront about their "social credit" regime; here in the West much the same thing is being promoted as "cool" and "convenient" and "futuristic". It's n

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Google has been doing this with Android for cars (not the same thing as Android Auto, this is the entire infotainment system running Android). Volvo use it, among others.

      It's been well reviewed. It's responsive, well designed, supports Apple Carplay if you want that. The UI is good, it's not like the crappy ones that car manufacturers build where it seems like they never tested it to see if it's at all usable. It supports physical buttons, and although Google has guidelines for what ones should be available

    • Ah, the slashdot Luddites come out whenever there is a cool technology. Are you this +5 modded guy from 2005? https://hardware.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org]

      Note, I wasn't part of that crowd: https://hardware.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org]

  • by e3m4n ( 947977 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2022 @08:12AM (#62599808)
    So now one has to pick a car based on their smartphone? While I use an iphone and a few apple products, I cant say Im overly happy with the way they handle bugs with a complete lack of acknowledgment they are even aware of the bugs despite countless posts. Imagine a bug causing your speedometer to register 15mph lower than normal after a CarOS update, but not linearly. Maybe at 15 youre really doing 18 but at 70 youre doing 85. If they handle that bug in the same unknown vacuum of silence, will we even know how much of a priority they give it? Will google suddenly announce GoogleCar that can be counted on for unauthorized 3rd party apps that track your driving habits and interrupt your display with ads for penis enlargements?
    • by cob666 ( 656740 )

      Imagine a bug causing your speedometer to register 15mph lower than normal after a CarOS update, but not linearly. Maybe at 15 youre really doing 18 but at 70 youre doing 85.

      Something like that would cause MAJOR problems for Apple at the federal level in many countries as the speedometer is legally required to NOT under report the speed and may over report the speed by a certain percentage.

      • As a result my last 3 cars read 4km/h less than actual speed, and everyone else is in the same boat. If you have an accurate speedometer, people think you're speeding, surely we can get a better tolerance than that by now.

        • As a result my last 3 cars read 4km/h less than actual speed, and everyone else is in the same boat. If you have an accurate speedometer, people think you're speeding, surely we can get a better tolerance than that by now.

          Three words for you: "different tire sizes".

      • And, what does Apple care. It will be a smallish fine and they will continue as normal.
      • by Zak3056 ( 69287 )

        WOULD it cause issues for the IT company? Waze misreports my speedometer values when running via Carplay. Been an issue for four years, been reported multiple times by multiple reporters, hasn't been fixed.

    • by Tx ( 96709 )

      Just because it can do all that stuff, doesn't mean that auto manufacturers will actually use it for all that stuff. I just can't see cars where the only instance of primary instruments like the speedometer and fuel gauge depends on the drivers smartphone. I'm not sure regulations would even allow that.

      • No, regulations wouldn't allow it, and it's not how it would work at all. It wouldn't rely at all on the driver's smartphone. The phone would be a source of data and supplemental apps. Like Google Automotive, this is just the OS for the car, something that every vaguely recent car already has (and sometimes more than one).

    • So now one has to pick a car based on their smartphone?

      This same jump to conclusions arose when Google announced Android Automotive, a similar product to CarOS. There's nothing stopping either company from developing an app that works on the other company's vehicle OS. Google has said that it's up to the vehicle manufacturer, but Google isn't stopping Apple from getting CarPlay to work on it--nor should they, from several perspectives. First, there's the antitrust element. Locking out your biggest overall market competitor just looks bad in court. Second, and m

      • That's a rosy picture, but Apple has already shown their willingness to make things worse for you if you dare step outside their ecosystem, or even know anyone that steps outside their ecosystem. See: iMessage, Apple Watch.

        It's far more likely that they'll have their car OS thing, and it will have a default mode that does what you need the car to do with the hardware in the car (FM radio, instrument controls, HVAC, etc.) and basic shitty bluetooth SBC audio input from a non-Apple device because they basica

    • by sconeu ( 64226 )

      Imagine a bug causing your speedometer to register 15mph lower than normal after a CarOS update, but not linearly. Maybe at 15 youre really doing 18 but at 70 youre doing 85.

      It's not just on digital systems. I had this on an old '78 Chevy Monza. Analog dash, of course. Got a ticket for doing 70 on the 55MPH freeway (shows how long ago this was), because the damned speedometer was out of cal in almost the exact way you described.

    • "So now one has to pick a car based on their smartphone?"

      Not at all, no pick necessary, you see from the list, Audi, Porsche, Mercedes-Benz ...these people would not want to be caught dead with an Android phone.

      • by e3m4n ( 947977 )
        some people swear by the hardware in a Galaxy S series. Ive never personally had a Galaxy S, but the tech specs seem to be on par with a pro series iphone.
    • There's no indication you have to own an Apple phone for features to work. It certainly facilitates phone integration, and that experience will likely be better with an iPhone, but most of the reasons you would want to connect your phone (music, mapping, call integration) will already be handled by the car's computer itself. You can do call integration pretty well with just regular bluetooth.

      A speedo bug like you describe is rather unlikely to happen, and in any event is something that could already happen

    • Now let me go the other way - if you change your overall wheel+tire diameter via custom wheels / tires, because the speedometer is software controlled you can actually update the math it's doing to keep it accurate. Tesla does this [teslamotorsclub.com], where every other car on the road will have the speedometer become inaccurate if they fit a different diameter wheelset to the car, and there's likely no way to adjust it at all.

      And no, it's not a "you fucked around with your car for looks and now it's out of OEM spec" kind of

    • So now one has to pick a car based on their smartphone?

      The car I drive supports both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. I use my laptop to download map data and updates to the car's entertainment / navigation system to save on an SD+ card. My car provides a dedicated USB-A port, but could also connect via bluetooth. My steering wheel has a microphone button so I can give simple commands (turn radio to Bob FM, call wife, navigate to [address or name of contact]) if my phone is plugged in. If I put my car in reverse, the backup camera takes over the screen and turns

  • Wow !

    What a wondeful time to be alive.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    What do you bet it can't even play FLAC or Opus yet.

  • I have cars ranging from 1st gen bluetooth only to current all bells and whistles CarPlay. CarPlay is over rated. Wow, you can cast waze to your screen ? Having all the possible types of in car, a smartphone clipped to the dash does everything you need. Stream Bluetooth and you get music too. The last thing I want is less buttons and dials, and more iPad as my car's controlling mechanism (Ahem Tesla and all the copy cats). Dirty secret, the guys who code in car electrics hate car play, it fights with
    • by Chexum ( 1498 )

      Carplay *is* mighty useful in countries where using the phone with your hands (or even looking at your phone) is illegal while driving, but poking the dashboard is allowed; which is true for most countries I'm driving.

      It's great that the apps (and maps) are updated much more frequently than the car satnav.

      It's sort of useful (at least for complying with the appropriate laws) that the apps are intentionally limited in ways that make it somewhat safer to use. It can have some input from the car as well,

      • Carplay *is* mighty useful in countries where using the phone with your hands (or even looking at your phone) is illegal while driving, but poking the dashboard is allowed; which is true for most countries I'm driving.

        Same here in my Canadian province. Can't touch the phone while driving or heavy fines. They also set up stings whereby undercover cops pose as beggars on the side of the road, or ride transit buses to look down into adjacent vehicles, and then radio ahead to a marked unit for you to be stopped and ticketed.

        Using the built in systems are A-OK though, nevermind that using the nav system in my BMW is incredibly tedious compared to using my phone. It makes people wonder if the rules are really about safet

        • Meanwhile, when you get pulled over, the cop prints the ticket from a full-on computer inside the car with a 14" display.

    • by suutar ( 1860506 )

      I think that's why they're doing this, so instead of fighting their stuff it does the stuff they need done.
      I'm just wondering if they've really internalized the "this is a core system of a moving vehicle and _must_ work" mindset, as opposed to the "this is a consumer app and to some degree looks beats flakiness" mindset.

  • Please, oh please (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2022 @08:45AM (#62599902)

    Please, PLEASE have the brains to keep the operation of the car separate from the user space entertainment system. We're not talking about a gaming console, these things can kill people if they go out of control.

    • Please, PLEASE have the brains to keep the operation of the car separate from the user space entertainment system. We're not talking about a gaming console, these things can kill people if they go out of control.

      Something something "barn door", something something "horse escaped". We've already had real-world demonstrations of "off-the-shelf" cars being compromised by and under the significant control of a remote hacker.

      Car manufacturers simply don't give a fuck - they'd rather save money by putting everything on the same data bus. It's a CoB decision, and liability for customer accidents and deaths costs them less than building entirely separate systems.

      • Car makers seem to go one of three ways:

        A: Lots of stuff running on the same CAN, so a hacked entertainment console, or a compromised USB flesh drive plugged in can hose up engine timing.

        B: Tons of stuff on the CAN bus, all vendor, black-magic voodoo stuff, all checking serial numbers and signatures with each other, just to ensure that if that stuff breaks when the car is out of warranty, the car has to be crushed, as it can't be repaired, with zero public documentation of what does what, making a check e

  • I have a 2018 Mercedes which has an absolutely awful infotainment system. It integrates with CarPlay. Kind of. When it feels like it. But not over Bluetooth. Is it Mercedes problem or Apple's?

    So with this new CarOS Who gets to set the API standards and data formats? The automobile manufacturer who has to design and build the actual hardware or the IT company who wants to put a shiny face on it?
    • Not over bluetooth on my Toyota either. Cable only.

    • CarPlay is mostly a MPEG video stream from the phone to the car's display.

      Some cars can do wireless CarPlay, but it requires 5 Ghz wireless built into the head unit to support it. From what I read, the 5Ghz requirement was to serve as a way to screen out OEM head units with garbage hardware wireless as well as some level of RF interference in the 2.4Ghz band.

      I'd guess in a more ideal world, CarPlay would be an RDP client running on the head unit and passing the UI through some kind of high efficiency remot

      • Hyundai Santa Fe

        One trim level has wireless charging, but not wireless carplay
        Another trim level has wireless carplay, but not wireless charging


        No model has both. So much for "wireless" if you want to use CarPlay. The reasoning I've seen online seems to align with what you said - garbage hardware doesn't have enough juice to do it. The ironic part is its the more expensive trim level that can't do wireless CarPlay. They couldn't spend the extra pennies to make it truly wireless.
        • I wonder if wireless charging has some impact on Wifi signals.

          I occasionally use wireless charging at home and I don't seem to lose my wifi connection based on the UI display, but for the most part I can't actually use my phone in any serious way without holding it in my hands so Its hard to know what the data throughput is like when its on the charger.

          There are some in-car phone holders that will do wireless charging, so if you had wireless carplay you could probably get total wireless that way.

          While I'm s

  • I can't browse my complete music library when the car is in motion. I can only use a limited subset. When the car is stopped, the whole library becomes available. It's a "safety" feature to prevent distracted driving.

    However, when I'm on 300km of straight highway with extremely sparse traffic (which I often am), I don't want to have to stop to dial up something that I have an urge to hear. That nanny feature is annoying as all hell.

    • I can't browse my complete music library when the car is in motion. I can only use a limited subset. When the car is stopped, the whole library becomes available. It's a "safety" feature to prevent distracted driving.

      However, when I'm on 300km of straight highway with extremely sparse traffic (which I often am), I don't want to have to stop to dial up something that I have an urge to hear. That nanny feature is annoying as all hell.

      With my car, I'd just push the microphone button on the steering wheel and say "Play [name of song or album]". I'm not sure if my car's infotainment system would truncate my library.

  • Will it be Apple or the car manufacturer that resells the telemetry that you generate? This is horrendous.
  • My recollection of using CarPlay is mostly how frequently it would crash and the only recourse was to fiddle with it on the phone. Either the app you were running would lock up in some way that you couldn't use the car's display to interact with it, or the entire CarPlay system would lock up. Sometimes this could be fixed by unplugging and plugging the phone back in. Sometimes this required entirely rebooting the phone.

    If you haven't tried rebooting a recent iPhone, the process is moronic. It used to be tha

    • Except before that works, you must first press Volume Up, and then Volume Down,

      Not sure why you thought that was the case, but that has never been true on any iPhone or any version of iOS as far as I know... on al modern iPhones I just hold down power and volume up at the same time and pretty much instantly it's asking me if there's an emergency, or to power off...

      • by _xeno_ ( 155264 )

        That gets you to the Power menu. But what it doesn't do is actually reboot the phone. Powering it off that way doesn't restart everything, it puts the phone into a lower powered state that it can quickly resume from. Doing a complete, actual reboot involves the button combination I'm referring to.

        They're actually entirely different menus, too. The button combo you're referring to also shows you the Medical ID and Emergency SOS sliders. The one I'm talking about is only for rebooting the phone and only shows

        • That's a force restart, but the first method I listed does completely power off the phone so it is a reboot when it comes back up... force restart is only for when even the power down sequence is not working. See Apple docs here [apple.com] that talk about both.

          If you see the Apple logo when it starts up again, that means the device has been rebooted. Which it does when powering off and back on again.

          • by _xeno_ ( 155264 )

            Having tried this, I can 100% guarantee you that turning the iPhone off and back on again will not recover a crashed CarPlay instance. The only way to do it is via a force restart. This is something that will come up frequently if you ever try and use CarPlay because CarPlay is just buggy as all hell.

            • I don't know if I'd be so quick to blame the phone.

              My 2019 Subaru has a Harmon OEM'd head unit and it had terrible stability problems with CarPlay initially which had nothing to do with the phone.

              Most of them seem fixed now, but every so often I get in a situation where the ONLY fix is to force the head unit to reboot *and* then shut off the car.

              Rebooting the phone by any means (power cycle or hard reset) never solved any issues.

    • You're confusing CarPlay with CarOS. You won't need an iPhone to run the car.

      Same thing with Android Automotive, which is not Android Auto.

      The marketing droids need to learn some product space isolation techniques to reduce confusion.

      • by _xeno_ ( 155264 )

        You're confusing CarPlay with CarOS. You won't need an iPhone to run the car.

        No I'm not - Apple called this "the next generation of CarPlay" and heavily implied it was the phone driving everything. The Cnet article linked also says that the car is just mirroring the phone. During the keynote Apple explicitly said it was your iPhone driving the "widgets" on the dash.

        Although you could be right, I guess, it's unclear how much of the "next generation of CarPlay" involves software running on the car itself and how much is running on the iPhone. Apple claimed "deep integration with the c

        • It's an OS to run the car. It can't be tied to the phone, or it won't pass regulatory scrutiny in any country. Of course WWDC is going to play up the integration aspect--it's a marketing day for Apple. What they were referring to is some extra integration with CarPlay so that the things happening on your phone will be better integrated into your car so that you're not distracted by the little device that can fall between the seats. CarOS will work with Android Auto, too (with perhaps not as deep an integrat

          • by _xeno_ ( 155264 )

            The summary itself says:

            Perhaps most interestingly, Apple says that this new full-fat approach to CarPlay as a complete vehicle interface will continue to be powered entirely by the connected iPhone, giving Apple an unprecedented amount of control over the vehicle's operation as well as access to data generated by each host vehicle.

            Now granted Apple has not made anything here clear. We have no idea how much Apple software is going to be running on the cars themselves and how much is going to be hosted on the iPhone. But it really doesn't sound like Apple is building a "CarOS" here, it sounds like they're just building an interface for the car and phone to communicate and leaving the car side of that equation to the car manufacturers.

            My guess is that the car will mostly be a "dumb terminal" for the iPhone, prima

  • I'll do this if it's finally wireless Carplay *and* if you can customize the screen to add apps like Pandora. (New to Apple so I haven't been able to see this in a car.)

  • "Siri, deploy the oil slick."
    "Oh, James!"

  • dealer only repair lock in will be an big part of this!

  • I love my 2006 WRX. It has a fancy Pioneer head unit that can connect via Bluetooth to my Google-services-free LineageOS phone where I can play my music and podcasts. No Internet connected to my fucking car. It's fast, it's fun, it's in perfect condition, it's a manual and it doesn't have the Internet-of-Trash connected through it; yet I still get the modern benefit of music and podcasts.

    If I ever have a wreck, I'm going to cry uncontrollably because such a car is only going to continue to be insanely expen

  • The examples that Apple showed looked childlike. Nothing elegant, nothing classic.
    Are carmakers just giving up to save development money?
    What happens when the driver leaves the vehicle with their phone to run into a store?
    Does the interface pop back to some default with everything moving around?
    If the driver is a passenger, does the car glom onto their phone when they get in?
    Will you have to buy an iPhone or iPhone module just for your car every couple of years?
    What happens after every annual iOS refresh?
    Wh

  • While I don't love the trend of instrumentation and inputs becoming all digital, if it's going to happen I'd rather tech companies do it than the automakers. The automakers have proven over and over again that they are terrible at software and digital user interfaces. At least Apple can make that sort of thing relatively intuitive and with limited bugs.

    • I think car makers realize that much of this digitalization has gone past them and they can't catch up. Even their OEM partners are so far behind the curve they can't catch up. And who knows how much of it is locked up in patents.

      • The patent angle is a good point. But there was just no way the automakers and first tier suppliers were ever going to attract the same level of tech talent that the Apples and Googles of the world can. But the automakers have to be careful as vehicles increasingly become transportation robots - there's a reason why there has been serious speculation of an Apple car.

        • The automakers engineering culture was never going to be able to embrace the silicon valley ethos enough to attract the workers capable of "wow" digital technology..

          Plus, as products, the major automakers never seemed to have figured out a way to sell software upgrades to their cars. They prefer to just abandon them at revision X even when they might have been able to sell software updates that could have been potentially lucrative sales to people otherwise not buying new cars.

          Case in point -- my 2019 Suba

    • Apple also tends to be good at keeping stuff updated, where Android devices have mere months of updates, maybe 1-2 years at most, and automakers tend to rarely update existing cars unless it is a safety recall. If Apple could keep vehicles updated for 5+ years, that would be quite useful, and can't hurt resale value.

  • >with a variety of aspect ratios -- from portrait to landscape

    I'm trying to think of a time that I might *possibly* want a car display to shift from portrait to landscape, other than rolling it, when it would be low on my priority list.

    Oh, wait, sudden and catastrophic seatbelt failure!

    And that attention tracking feature can keep it aligned as I spin (well, at least until I break through the windshield . . .)

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