Automobile companies tried for years to make a decent infotainment system in cars, and almost universally they were all terrible no matter how expensive the vehicle. Finally Android Auto and CarPlay gave everyone what they wanted - decent access to music on their phone, call capabilities that actually work, and program integration with things they actually use with internet service they already have.
Then manufacturers realized they were losing control to Google and Apple, and want it back. So now I guess we're back to random garbage half-baked solutions that no one likes, just so they can sell subscriptions for seat heaters and music players. Back to the walled gardens everyone, move along.
I'll never buy a new vehicle again, particularly GM now, and simply stick to something older I can either put any standard double-din deck into, or a vehicle with 3rd party mods that then add Android Auto like my Infiniti that shipped with the worst infotainment system ever.
It’s interesting how you correctly identify that this is a massive play for control by Apple and Google, and yet you still seem to sympathise with their position!
I can completely understand why vehicle manufacturers are so wary. Just look at the history of how Apple, Google, etc companies have behaved when it comes to “partnerships”. Look at the App Store. Look at what Google did to supposedly open source Android.
It begins with some generous offer of allowing access to the UX/platform in exchange for innocent sounding things like control over user data/login. It ends with the platform completely taken over, GM being held to ransom, and no in-house systems or staff left to revert back to their own solution.
I don't want to have an infotainment system in my car I need to spend hundreds of euros to update the software for. Or order a Totally Legit Upgrade DVD from Slovenia via eBay for only 50€. That just happens to require me to insert a CD that says "unlock" on it first :D
Then the upgrade took two hours, 1h 50min of which the device was totally unresponsive and I wasn't sure if it would be OK to turn off the car or not.
Oh, and the maps were always out of date. It cost more to get the "update" (which was always old) than it would've been to buy a separate GPS unit.
And this was a premium VW car, albeit a bit older at the time.
I'd much rather use the device in my pocket that has eons more computing power than all the CPUs in all the cars I've ever owned combined, with up to date maps, traffic data and regular free software updates. The device I can upgrade separately from my car at any time I want.
If a car doesn't support CarPlay, I'm not buying it. (One of the top5 reasons I haven't bought a Tesla)
I don't read GP as sympathising with Apple/Google at all, they just want a nice experience in their car; say that they think they get it from A/G, and that they didn't for years before that from car manufacturers.
i.e. it's not about being a fan of particular brands, it's a self-interested desire for a decent UX/platform.
Right, correct, and I understand your position, but the offerings from the automobile manufacturers came with a 1000x markup for stuff that didn't even work half the time ... unless you paid the entire cost of manufacturing an entire head unit all over again.
A premium vehicle I owned (Mercedes Benz) needed the dealer to install the new maps, only had support for BT music on my phone, and cost more than a decent Android tablet each time I wanted new maps.
Honestly, if the automobile manufacturers want to wrest back control from Google/Apple they had better up their game while lowering their greed.
Before Android/iOS was viable, they felt no shame about their display of naked greed when it came to nickle-and-diming the owner.
If they want people to use their system as anything other than an interface to a phone, they need to make the updates free, make the system reliable, and make it so much better than the basic phone interface that people prefer their system to the Android/iOS one.
> It’s interesting how you correctly identify that this is a massive play for control by Apple and Google, and yet you still seem to sympathise with their position!
Apple and Google got to where they are because people actively want to buy and use their stuff. Apple stuff isn’t cheap and for most of Google’s products, their nearest competitors are a click away and have been even when they didn’t completely dominate major product categories.
People have lots of experience with in-car infotainment and navigation, and here’s the real alternative: people would rather mount their phones in their car using an aftermarket kit or literally just hold their phones in their hands while driving than use the in-built infotainment and navigation systems that car makers provide. CarPlay and Android Auto provide them a nicer experience than doing that which is why new car buyers look for these options by name.
Turns out doing it better influences people's preferences. The problem is fundamentally that the carmakers do such a shit job.
If infotainment systems matter at all to consumers, we'd expect to see GM take a hit for this, and get their market share eaten by competitors who don't do so.
Nobody is being held ransom. GM can win this any time by building good software themselves. This is just another example of tech companies gaining a market through the fair competition of building a better product.
I thought, as I got older, that my hearing was slowly deteriorating, but here you are, proving me wrong because somehow I’m able to hear you playing a tune for GM on the smallest violin ever made by humankind.
Nothing stops vehicle manufacturers from making the best entertainment system any customer could wish for. Instead, they’d rather nickel and dime their customers for everything they’ve got.
Subscriptions for connectivity, subscriptions for car features, subscriptions for basic entertainment functionality, fees for current maps, and on and on it goes.
All the while pinching pennies wherever they can by using yesteryear’s computers barely more powerful than a Raspberry Pi (if that) while inflating prices in the US market on cars sold cheaper overseas and lobbying to keep the market as closed off as possible so overseas competitors cannot enter the market.
And make no mistake, this isn’t about being “wary of partnerships”; GM happily licenses Android Automotive.
This is about collecting as much data as possible and capturing revenue by gating as much as possible behind a paywall.
After all, who will pay for connectivity and other features when people can hook up their pocket computers with all that to the screen?
Their play for control hinges on creating a better user experience than car manufacturers have bothered to create. GM could simply claim that their experience is better, but they’d have to back that with privacy guarantees which would cost them recurring revenue, and they’d have to compel overdue improvements to Bluetooth and USB standards regarding in-car uses, which would then benefit their competitors. GM, a for-profit corporation based in the United States, has apparently chosen not to take those essential steps that would undercut and destroy Apple and Google’s current plays for control, as it would similarly threaten the “our system is ours” niche GM dug for themselves.
Vehicle manufacturers are not (edit: end-user/OS) software companies, it doesn't make sense (or for any company for which it's not the core business) to build their own OS. Yes OS builders control the OS by definition. What's next, car manufacturers producing music so they get control back on what drivers listen to?
I sympathize with my need to have a proper car display.
I have a Toyota RAV4 from 2 years ago and the display is straight from the '80s.
I had to use the gps ONCE and I almost crashed into a trashbin because I had to manually follow the car pointer as it was leaving the display. Yes, that's right.
If I was Apple or Google, I would make GM execs use a 15 years old version and make it cash I've a day. Revenge.
> Finally Android Auto and CarPlay gave everyone what they wanted
Bzzt.
What I want is what I have: there's a $10 bluetooth receiver hooked to the car audio input jack, and a $10 phone holder on top of the dash, and a $10 USB charger plugged into the 12V. If phones routinely came with headphone jacks, I could skip the bluetooth intermediate.
So: when I start the car, whatever phone I have paired reconnects with the bluetooth receiver and plays what I want through the dumb speaker system. If I want to run a map app, I do that. If I want to make a call, I can do that. The phone is in charge of muting the music when a call comes in. It's very good at that.
If I change software on my phone, the new things work in the car. If I want to replace the phone with something not tied to Google or Apple, I can.
The car can't report its location, can't be remotely immobilized, can't show me advertising. No new subscription. No bugs in the car system to exploit; no bugs in the car system to brick the system. Easily and cheaply replaceable parts.
I don't understand why any driver would want more integration than this. Somebody suggested that the car should tell the mapping system when I've clicked the turn signal on or off, but if you need that level of detailed support when driving, I think maybe you shouldn't be driving while distracted by a mapping system at all.
I still have a drawer full of phone holders and bluetooth receivers that I used in my previous car with a "dumb" radio. All of the holders were annoyingly rattling when driving over potholes and finicky to insert or remove the phone. From all the bluetooth receivers I tried (3 of them), none of them had a decent microphone, which meant making phone calls a no go, and the first 2 of them had poor power filtering resulting in a high-pitched hum (I suppose it was from the alternator).
Now I have a car with wireless Android Auto and when I start the car I immediately get a google maps view without having to search for the app, including two recommended destinations (usually places I go to frequently, or the last searched place on Gmaps). The whole interface is easier to use while driving, because of the limited feature-set and larger screen than on the phone itself. Same story with calling, it just works - I can answer calls from the buttons on the steering wheel and the mic is decent and in the right place.
Can we stop pretending that every innovation since 2010 is evil? I get it that it locks in you in Google's/Apple's ecosystems, but their solution is simply working well. For me the alternatives don't cut it, and I believe that their shoddy practices (data collection, monopoly etc.) should be fought with legislation and not by refusing to use their stuff on principle.
The major problem I have with software is that there's no commitment to maintaining it once it's sold, and no additional money is there to be made. The old boring button-based radios lasted forever without software updates, and they could also be swapped out for newer devices later on if need be. Now cars are being made with very specific parts that are not easily replaced, and with systems that aren't infinitely upgradeable, even as we've somewhat reached a plateau of hardware performance that can handle most application demands. Now hardware is being bogged down by resource-eating ads and limited/ spotty Internet bandwidth more than by processing power.
As we progress into the future, there needs to be a major pushback on the software upsell practices of companies, especially for cars. Cars need to be reliable, and dependable. My desktop PC has been running for 11 years now, with the power on (with only minor hardware & OS updates), the only thing that has been a constant threat to it's reliability is the drive by software makers to milk me out of my money for updates.... They often push updates under the premise that they are for security, but now most updates are to insert ads and up-sell schemes into the apps and OS.
I miss the old days, because even though you could buy new hardware, you rarely needed to... Now, with each update, I'm worried about my PC being bricked and heavy downtime without any real technical support available, because there are so many different greedy brands of companies making tons of devices that they regularly drop updates for. Something has to change about the software-driven economy, or I'm planning to just go entirely "off grid" for the most part in my retirement from being a developer and consumer myself.
Just an anecdote - I own a Volvo XC60(with Sensus not AAOS) and 99% of the time I'd rather just use the built-in OS than Android Auto - AA is slow to respond and imprecise(clicks are almost always recognized as swipes rather than clicks, problem which doesn't happen in the built-in OS), and every time you need to do something it locks you out for 5 seconds to look at the road, even though it's my passenger using it. The integrated navigation and Spotify work great and don't give me this minimalistic interface of AA that is barely usable.
Like, I get that it's a great solution in a lot of cars. But I don't think it's universally true that "no one" wants to use the built in system - I definitely do.
>>just so they can sell subscriptions for seat heaters and music players.
Yes, that is absolutely horrendous trend that I hope we manage to stop - but I suspect we won't, the genie is out of the bottle now so to speak.
As an observation point - I drive a company car (a BMW) and will be looking for a new car next year. I would not even considers Volvo until they support wireless CarPlay. GM must very much believe in appeal of their car to piss off android and iOS users simultaneously.
> every time you need to do something it locks you out for 5 seconds to look at the road
Whoever came up with that wasn't entirely right in the head: so now people will stare at the device for another five seconds wondering what they did wrong. Sound of impact.
Same here with a BMW and iDrive8.5 I’ve never used CarPlay with it. BMW infotainment system just works, and its navigation system is superior to Google Maps (more up to date and better high traffic alternatives). Said that, I’d still like to have CarPlay in case BMW stops updating its system after 5-10 years.
> decent access to music on their phone, call capabilities that actually work, and program integration with things they actually use with internet service they already have.
I am convinced all of these things are unsafe. I refuse to take calls when driving over bluetooth; distracting yourself with a conversation when you're supposed to be driving is reckless and I think this is doubly true when it's a phone conversation (in which the other participant can't watch the road and know when to stop talking.)
Even music while driving is a nuisance. Nobody talks about the role of music in car accidents because almost everybody likes it, but it contributes to distracted driving and in some cases reckless driving. It encourages people to continue driving when they are mentally fatigued (take note of how many people say music "helps" them during long drives.)
GPS navigation on a screen is a bad idea too; your eyes cannot read a screen and watch the road at the same time. Pure voice navigation giving brief commands and updates is sufficient and relatively safe. Car integration isn't necessary at all; a phone placed in the center console with the volume turned up and the screen turned off gets the job done. If you need to make adjustments or read a text or take a call, pull over.
I think GPS screen-based nav is safer than voice-based for any complex interchange situation. Showing me at a glance which lane I need to be in and what my overall path/goal will be is better (at least for me, but I think for loads of people) than describing the same over voice commands.
Voice both takes longer and is subject to being pushed to you at the wrong moment where info from a screen can be pulled on demand and quickly.
Yes, and on top of the mediocre infotainment UX, the automakers also have comical/user hostile upgrade cycles.
I bought a new model release BMW which halfway through the 2nd or 3rd year of the models life, they shipped a slightly different head unit. From that point, only the owners with the new head unit get the newest OS/features. Imagine if next year when iOS 18 comes out, we learn that only iPhone 15s made after March 2024 were eligible, and no iPhone 14 or earlier was, lol.
Beyond that, the OTA updates tend to not work and require you to go to the dealer. No one quite knows the rhyme or reason.
For what it's worth, most vehicles still have aftermarket dash panels and wiring harnesses so you can install whatever you want. Way less of a compromise than buying an older vehicle, but I wouldn't expect some of the control integrations with the steering wheel and other displays to work though.
Really in retrospect nothing has changed from the days double-din was standard apart from some extra steps. Does anyone know if there are projects that reverse engineer these misc integrations for various manufacturers? Is it all just CAN bus or something proprietary?
Nope, isn't as easy as it has been during the 90s.
Ever had to deal with abominations like CAN-but-not-really-CAN like PSAs own VAN? Having to find out which model has which bus? Non-standard size cutouts / bays?
Alone the FW versions i had to test of Alpine / OEM adapter products to get steering wheel controls working. The PDC i couldn't.
Do they really? Most recent cars I've seen have a touchscreen LCD popping up out of the dash and it all looks rather custom. Are there some kind of standards like double-DIN?
The fundamental problem is that once you bought the car, the manufacturer now has a monopoly on everything they can sell you for the car.
In my opinion we should have a "no-tether" law: once you buy a product you should be able to use (and upgrade) it as advertised even if you break all ties with the original vendor. This means that other vendors can supply parts and services. This law could hold for many product categories, including cars and smartphones.
I have like the opposite experience...AA and Carplay have always been cause of issues, having to take the phone in my hand while driving, sluggishness..
In fact I feel the opposite you say: car play has been an excuse for some automakers for subpar infotainment.
That being said removing it completely is madness, because people like you are millions and want it.
None of these issues exist on my Mazda car. Screen is tactile at stops, but I only ever use the rotational+directional knob. Phone stays plugged and untouched. It's snappy.
I bet some other cars have poor HID but here they put the work in and it is good.
Why do you have to take your phone in your hand? You just do all your actions on the screen in the car. I’ve never had to touch my phone in the car once it’s plugged in.
> Automobile companies tried for years to make a decent infotainment system in cars
To expand on your point, both Google and Apple are rumored to be getting into the business of manufacturing cars (e.g. Waymo and the rumored Apple Car). So GM may be looking toward the future where their infotainment systems are owned by rival car manufacturers.
Modern cars are of such high quality that they are largely commodity, even moreso with the switch to electric drivetrains. Margins on the hardware will continue to decrease, and automakers will be desperate to recoup revenue through digital and subscription services. The problem is that traditional automakers are way out of their league. GM has a lot more in common with Foxconn than it does Apple or Google.
Call it what it is.. they like the control of their in car entertainment systems and they don't want external companies taking that part of the pie.
It's okay gm, we understand. Let's hope you are able to make a compelling competition to this, otherwise your sales will suffer.
Traditional car software is very very poor for whatever reason. I don't think that car manufacturers have the mindset and capability to make even passable software, let alone competitive software.
> Call it what it is.. they like the control of their in car entertainment systems and they don't want external companies taking that part of the pie.
they did call it as it is. it's in the article:
> In addition to potentially buying things from GM or GM’s partners through their car’s infotainment system, GM is also looking at subscription services that would be managed through the same interface. GM’s chief digital officer, Edward Kummer, told Reuters as much when the decision to drop CarPlay and Android Auto was announced. Automakers see subscriptions as huge new source of income to be tapped, with GM alone hoping to make as much as $25 billion per year just off subscriptions by 2030.
They didn't call it as it is, that's just the obvious conclusion the author of the article makes based on another source, they make up unverified safety allegations
> though Babbitt admits that GM hasn’t exactly tested this in a controlled setting to see whether or not it’s true.
Good lord the greed just never ends does it? They should look at BMW and see how quickly the heated seat thing fell through for them. At least I know what manufacturers to avoid from now on.
I am dreading the future of cars, where they somehow are worse than a car I could buy right now but also I have to pay a monthly subscription for the worse experience.
The enshittification of everything is making me want to go berserk.
I expect they don't want to pay what great software engineers cost, and even if they did, most such engineers probably wouldn't want to put up with GM's bureaucracy.
It's probably kinda the same story with great mechanical and industrial engineers, which is why approximately nobody finds GM cars exciting.
The tragic aspect is that they spend inordinate amounts of money on this software with nothing to show for it. The money is spent so poorly and ineffectively, while trying to cut every inconsequential cost corner along the way with the output being micromanaged by people that don’t understand software, that if you directed a fraction of that money at a small team of highly paid and experienced software engineers you’d likely get a brilliant product.
Automotive OEMs don’t work that way, they spray money at hundreds of the cheapest engineers they can get away with and hope something good comes out the other side. I’ve seen it over and over. Their problems could be solved by paying a small team of excellent engineers proper Silicon Valley wages. It would be cheaper and produce a better product, but they don’t think that way. The concept of a highly paid software engineer is objectionable to the executives in that industry.
Many years ago, I discussed possible employment with a major head unit manufacturer. They were very excited about modernizing but basically stunned into silence when I mentioned typical senior FAANG pay. I'd be surprised if things have changed much.
It doesn't take much more than not going for the cheapest offshore team possible to make better car media center code than we get. I'm sure most of us could easily do it ourselves in a month or less. It seems like such a simple problem. Play songs and interface with some controls/radio receiver/etc while being at least a tiny bit conscious of efficiency.
A friend of mine has a 2022 Cadillac something. I was actually very impressed with it. Comfortable, quiet, no-nonsense self-driving capability. Seemed like a fine car. If GM can build similar no-nonsense infotainment software they will be fine.
>I expect they don't want to pay what great software engineers cost, and even if they did, most such engineers probably wouldn't want to put up with GM's bureaucracy.
IMO, the bureaucracy isn't that big a problem; all big companies have this problem. The big problem for GM is their locations: who the heck wants to move to Detroit? Or any of the other places their suppliers tend to locate?
My 2010 BMW has excellent infotainment software. Better than any new car I have driven (all rentals).
Navigation is easily controlled with the iDrive knob. Previous destinations are sorted in reverse chronological order. New destinations are easy to enter. Adding destinations works as expected (insert/append). When the fuel gauge reaches 1/8 of a tank the car prompts to add a gas station on the route which can be accepted with a single button press of the main iDrive knob. When a trip is in progress I can search on the route by category for points of interest like rest stops. It picks up traffic information over AM radio and uses that information when routing.
Similarly pleasant experience when operating the radio/built in mp3 player. Everything can be done with iDrive but there are also dedicated buttons on the steering wheel and dashboard.
Climate control is managed by physical knobs.
Bluetooth calling is supported but Bluetooth audio (music) is not.
Overall an excellent experience. It's obviously dated and a little slow but completely serviceable even today. The system is completely self-contained so it does need map updates from time to time. OTA updates, even on wifi would be nice.
From a design perspective I have no complaints at all, it is well integrated with the car and otherwise stays out of the way. A helpful tool.
I hate radio. I don’t listen to much music. When driving I mostly listen to podcasts and audiobooks which sounds like is not really practically possible.
Tesla is the exception here: they seem to have mastered making a car software experience that doesn’t suck, and they don’t even support CarPlay. But Tesla is a tech/software company that happens to make cars (of dubious build quality), I don’t think conventional automakers can replicate that.
My impression of Tesla (from driving a friend's, who is a massive Tesla fan) is that I get the feeling that the systems aren't as clever as they think they are, and it led to some "interesting" (actually downright scary and dangerous) experiences with the driver assist functions on a long distance drive we did. It wasn't the full Autopilot, just the lane following/adaptive cruise control kind of thing but we almost did go off the road at least once.
But in general with the UI, there was a lot of, "Hey, how do I do [elementary car function]" and he'd be like "Oh I think they changed that [or moved it in the menu] in the last update, uh let me have a look"...
Elon Musk's antics had already basically made me decide my next car wouldn't be a Tesla, but driving one a bit didn't really sell me on it anyway...
No its a car company which writes its own software. Their primary business in not software its cars. Although i agree they are not very good at it, the build quality is obviously dubious. Perhaps the Know how of old car companies + Tesla's battery and Motor tech + Software could result in an overall better product. A merger would be a net positive IMO.
Unfortunately consumers don't really punish companies for doing these kinds of things, at least I presume that's the story since high-end cars often have very shitty in-car computer experiences, like BMW or Porsche.
I've tried Android Auto a couple of times and it was much worse than the BMW's iDrive for navigation and for the entertainment. Perhaps different consumers have different preferences?
I'm guessing that when buying a car most people can't afford to be picky with the infotainment system and will prioritize buying a better car over infotainment quality.
Worst-case scenario these days is not too bad either, you'll get an aux connector or somewhat stable Bluetooth (if you set it up once and avoid doing anything other than play/pause/next). Yeah, from the software engineering point of view it's slow unreliable crap, but as a consumer you have little power to fix things.
with there being a limited number of auto manufacturers, with the general consensus seeming to be that consumers should own increasingly nothing and increasingly like it, there aren’t many alternatives.
which is why it becomes less and less crazy to imagine apple offering a car subscription - might as well, they have the payment platform and the customers have already spent their anger on the incumbents. not that apple is alone.
I bought a 2017 Mercedes a few months ago and was disgusted to find that I was unable to update my map data beyond 2020. In the first week of ownership I had driven on to roads that didn't exist in their map.
Also, it appeared to have no network connection so would not pick routes according to traffic.
I spent $600 on an aftermarket CarPlay and Android Auto device and couldn't be happier.
I want abandonware in my car. Don't include alpha-grade software in a mid-five-figure product. If you can't get it right don't ship it.
The navigation/infotainment space is a thoroughly solved domain. We don't need biweekly OTA updates to add the latest trendy thing. I don't want controls moving around or menus changing based on a perverted engagement metric.
BMW "pathced" several mechanical features of my car. This is called a "recall". Auto manufacturers try to avoid them.
I mean, GM doesn’t seem to have a reputation for building the best, most reliable vehicles as it is — even just looking at domestics (factor in imports, and there’s no comparison). Every time I shop for a vehicle, it’s crazy how GMs are almost universally lower rated than all other vehicles.
I mean, maybe they have cost on their side, but they better hope that and brand loyalty is all they need.
Maybe this was once not a major factor, and maybe it’s still not for some. But I’d say the number of people that don’t care about CarPlay or Android Auto is shrinking.
I've never owned a car made by GM, but a decision like this guarantees I never will.
I don't buy their take that the safety issues are because Android Auto and CarPlay are buggy and have connection issues and other crap that cause people to use their phone directly. I've only had a new enough car to use Android Auto for a year and half now, but I've literally never encountered a bug that required me to touch my phone. If there are bugs on GM's cars, I expect that's an issue with the car's software, not Google's or Apple's.
Obviously GM is putting forth a bad-faith argument to justify their real reason, which is that they just want full control over the experience, and likely want to find ways to monetize things that people can do with their own interface.
Good luck with that, GM. Even if GM somehow manages to build a nice, performant, featureful, non-buggy infotainment system (yeah, right), guaranteed they're going to stop releasing updates for each car's version of it within 5-10 years of the car's release. Meanwhile, as long as my phone keeps getting updates, Android Auto will keep getting updates.
My GM-made car does indeed have connectivity issues with CarPlay at least a few times a month. Turning my phone's Bluetooth off and on again fixes it, which makes me wonder if the problem really is on the phone side.
On the other hand, it happens more often when switching between a built-in car app (like the 360 cameras app) and the Carplay app, which probably implicates the car's software more?
In any case, it is pretty annoying. It sometimes happens at really inopportune times, which can be a distracting safety hazard just from the loss of connectivity/functionality alone (i.e. not even considering needing to touch the phone, which is illegal while driving in many US states.)
> I don't buy their take that the safety issues are because Android Auto and CarPlay are buggy and have connection issues ...
Ack. From my experience, connection issues with Car Play are 100% due to the shitty software on the car's side and never on phone's side.
I regularly have connection problems (i.e. black screen in Car Play when entering the car - a Fiat with UConnect 5). They can _always_ be resolved by rebooting the cars's entertainment system. _Never_ by rebooting the phone.
The major advantage of AA/CP is they are simple screen projection protocols capable of being supported for decades.
The "brains" of the system, namely the phone, can be easily upgraded as technology changes. People will get new phones. Operating systems will be upgraded. Apps will come and go. Maps will update. The system will keep working flawlessly.
This can't happen with fixed hardware in vehicle - the firmware and apps will be promptly outdated.
Yep. I got my first car with CarPlay in 2015. That’s 8 years ago.
iPhones are always faster than the infotainment systems in cars due to development cycles and cost.
Now my iPhone is eight years newer than the one that was already better than my car. So it’s obviously faster. Apple has delivered numerous new features in those eight years, the car never received a single update. That wasn’t even an ability on the car.
As John Gruber is a fan of saying, the phone eats everything. You can’t compete with it. It has better specs, it gets updated more often, it’s more customized to the user. It has better connectivity (I’m not paying $30 a month or whatever to give my car cellular service).
It has the apps I want to use, not the ones who gave the car company a payoff. If I have to get a rental car on a vacation, all my same stuff is right there.
GM will suffer. I’m curious how long it takes them to reverse this. Just one year? Or more? I’m willing to bet a nontrivial number of people just flat walk out of dealerships when they hear the car they’re looking at doesn’t have CarPlay (or Android Auto).
I dunno, I got my first car with Car Play a year ago. I'm not super impressed. It's buggy and slow and the interface is clunky. It's better than using my phone directly, barely, but I still would have bought the car if it didn't have it. All I really want is music and maps anyway, and I can just get a cheap phone mount for my dashboard like I did with my old car so I don't have to look down at it.
> The major advantage of AA/CP is they are simple screen projection protocols capable of being supported for decades.
There's a whole weird gray market for Chinese-manufactured "computers on a stick" that reverse-engineered the CarPlay protocol and use it to display a custom computer/Android interface in your car. You can do things like stream Netflix, use Chrome, install any Android app, play games, etc.
I'm not recommending it as it seems both sketchy and unsafe, but it's a funny niche that exists. For some reason, they are usually marketed on AliExpress as a "Car AI Box" but of course have nothing to do with AI.
To be fair, this kind of redundancy and reducing likelihood of third party changes seems safer to me.
Nothing about “Operating systems will be upgraded. Apps will come and go. Maps will update.” says “The system will keep working flawlessly.” - if anything, the system will accumulate flaws.
On the flip side, the custom weird UI the car manufacturers contracted some cheap outside firm to write at low cost, and is filled with paid product placement and data mining, will be flawed from the start and never fixed.
My car updates every month over the air, so the firmware and apps are never outdated (at least within the life of my ownership of the car, which will be less than 6 years probably)
Wait, so they're saying CarPlay and Android Auto are buggy on their cars, most likely because of their errors in getting the mirroring part right, so instead of fixing the issues, they think switching to their in-house system that they will design from scratch, that'll probably have hundreds of bugs, that's most likely gonna suck, is a better option?
They could've just said we're out of excuses we just want to make money on infotainment system lol.
What makes you think they design it in-house? Automotive companies outsource most of this software to third parties at bottom-feeder rates on a hard delivery deadline. They don’t know how to produce good software like this. Every aspect of the process is the antithesis of what is required to have quality software come out the other side.
I have my issues with CarPlay but the OEM software is hot garbage by comparison.
It's hilarious just how bad OEM car software is. One of those many moments in my day to day that I realize how bad 90% of software we interact with is absolute trash.
ATM machines, credit card readers, parking meters, TVs, microwaves, ovens (really any appliances), phone trees, any kiosks, etc.
If the device registers my touch within 500ms that's usually enough to impress me at this point.
Followed swiftly by the biannual layoffs. It's fine just reapply at the beginning of the fiscal year after they've shown investors how responsible they are.
Not sure how they arrived at the number (maybe only new vehicles), but there was a claim that 79% of US carbuyers would insist on carplay support
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 certainly would insist on it. CarPlay and its Android counterpart are a far sight better than the infotainment systems the majority of cars ship with to begin with, plus they won’t have problems like their navigation data becoming outdated with updates costing money.
My car dash should be the “dumb TV” to my phone’s “streaming box”.
I have to assume they meant 79% of US consumers who use iPhone, since only about 60% of the US uses iPhone, and Carplay specifically is useless to the remaining 40%.
Or perhaps they were grouping in AA under the covers.
I am sure they will be as successful as VW's software revolution, cariad, that's ejected a couple of CEOs and almost brought down the CEO of the parent. Here's a link in English: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/05/volkswagens-troubled-so... but the full story is utterly scandalous.
I've seen zero evidence that GM is even slightly more competent in this area.
The funny part is that while VW's bad software has been the main negative review of their otherwise great EVs, the general perception online is "Carplay/Android Auto works great, so who cares?"
I own a VW EV and use Android Auto with it. It's great. I would not have bought the car if it didn't support that. The real miracle is how well Android Auto/Car Play integrate with the car itself - speakers, microphones, steering wheel controls, heads-up display for directions - it all feels like a native experience.
Their dealers must be furious. This is clearly going to harm sales, and they probably expect they're going to trade up-front revenue for subscription. Auto manufacturers famously produce excellent software so I'm sure they'll rake in the money.
I wonder what this will do to their fleet sales. Rental companies probably won't be thrilled about customers turning up their noses at GM vehicles that don't have Carplay. I wouldn't be surprised if they have to start renting them at a discount.
Readit News
Then manufacturers realized they were losing control to Google and Apple, and want it back. So now I guess we're back to random garbage half-baked solutions that no one likes, just so they can sell subscriptions for seat heaters and music players. Back to the walled gardens everyone, move along.
I'll never buy a new vehicle again, particularly GM now, and simply stick to something older I can either put any standard double-din deck into, or a vehicle with 3rd party mods that then add Android Auto like my Infiniti that shipped with the worst infotainment system ever.
I can completely understand why vehicle manufacturers are so wary. Just look at the history of how Apple, Google, etc companies have behaved when it comes to “partnerships”. Look at the App Store. Look at what Google did to supposedly open source Android.
It begins with some generous offer of allowing access to the UX/platform in exchange for innocent sounding things like control over user data/login. It ends with the platform completely taken over, GM being held to ransom, and no in-house systems or staff left to revert back to their own solution.
I don't want to have an infotainment system in my car I need to spend hundreds of euros to update the software for. Or order a Totally Legit Upgrade DVD from Slovenia via eBay for only 50€. That just happens to require me to insert a CD that says "unlock" on it first :D
Then the upgrade took two hours, 1h 50min of which the device was totally unresponsive and I wasn't sure if it would be OK to turn off the car or not.
Oh, and the maps were always out of date. It cost more to get the "update" (which was always old) than it would've been to buy a separate GPS unit.
And this was a premium VW car, albeit a bit older at the time.
I'd much rather use the device in my pocket that has eons more computing power than all the CPUs in all the cars I've ever owned combined, with up to date maps, traffic data and regular free software updates. The device I can upgrade separately from my car at any time I want.
If a car doesn't support CarPlay, I'm not buying it. (One of the top5 reasons I haven't bought a Tesla)
i.e. it's not about being a fan of particular brands, it's a self-interested desire for a decent UX/platform.
A premium vehicle I owned (Mercedes Benz) needed the dealer to install the new maps, only had support for BT music on my phone, and cost more than a decent Android tablet each time I wanted new maps.
Honestly, if the automobile manufacturers want to wrest back control from Google/Apple they had better up their game while lowering their greed.
Before Android/iOS was viable, they felt no shame about their display of naked greed when it came to nickle-and-diming the owner.
If they want people to use their system as anything other than an interface to a phone, they need to make the updates free, make the system reliable, and make it so much better than the basic phone interface that people prefer their system to the Android/iOS one.
Apple and Google got to where they are because people actively want to buy and use their stuff. Apple stuff isn’t cheap and for most of Google’s products, their nearest competitors are a click away and have been even when they didn’t completely dominate major product categories.
People have lots of experience with in-car infotainment and navigation, and here’s the real alternative: people would rather mount their phones in their car using an aftermarket kit or literally just hold their phones in their hands while driving than use the in-built infotainment and navigation systems that car makers provide. CarPlay and Android Auto provide them a nicer experience than doing that which is why new car buyers look for these options by name.
I have little compassion for poor GM not being able to upsell me a touch screen system that doesn’t work
If infotainment systems matter at all to consumers, we'd expect to see GM take a hit for this, and get their market share eaten by competitors who don't do so.
Nothing stops vehicle manufacturers from making the best entertainment system any customer could wish for. Instead, they’d rather nickel and dime their customers for everything they’ve got.
Subscriptions for connectivity, subscriptions for car features, subscriptions for basic entertainment functionality, fees for current maps, and on and on it goes. All the while pinching pennies wherever they can by using yesteryear’s computers barely more powerful than a Raspberry Pi (if that) while inflating prices in the US market on cars sold cheaper overseas and lobbying to keep the market as closed off as possible so overseas competitors cannot enter the market.
And make no mistake, this isn’t about being “wary of partnerships”; GM happily licenses Android Automotive.
This is about collecting as much data as possible and capturing revenue by gating as much as possible behind a paywall.
After all, who will pay for connectivity and other features when people can hook up their pocket computers with all that to the screen?
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I have a Toyota RAV4 from 2 years ago and the display is straight from the '80s.
I had to use the gps ONCE and I almost crashed into a trashbin because I had to manually follow the car pointer as it was leaving the display. Yes, that's right.
If I was Apple or Google, I would make GM execs use a 15 years old version and make it cash I've a day. Revenge.
Bzzt.
What I want is what I have: there's a $10 bluetooth receiver hooked to the car audio input jack, and a $10 phone holder on top of the dash, and a $10 USB charger plugged into the 12V. If phones routinely came with headphone jacks, I could skip the bluetooth intermediate.
So: when I start the car, whatever phone I have paired reconnects with the bluetooth receiver and plays what I want through the dumb speaker system. If I want to run a map app, I do that. If I want to make a call, I can do that. The phone is in charge of muting the music when a call comes in. It's very good at that.
If I change software on my phone, the new things work in the car. If I want to replace the phone with something not tied to Google or Apple, I can.
The car can't report its location, can't be remotely immobilized, can't show me advertising. No new subscription. No bugs in the car system to exploit; no bugs in the car system to brick the system. Easily and cheaply replaceable parts.
I don't understand why any driver would want more integration than this. Somebody suggested that the car should tell the mapping system when I've clicked the turn signal on or off, but if you need that level of detailed support when driving, I think maybe you shouldn't be driving while distracted by a mapping system at all.
Now I have a car with wireless Android Auto and when I start the car I immediately get a google maps view without having to search for the app, including two recommended destinations (usually places I go to frequently, or the last searched place on Gmaps). The whole interface is easier to use while driving, because of the limited feature-set and larger screen than on the phone itself. Same story with calling, it just works - I can answer calls from the buttons on the steering wheel and the mic is decent and in the right place.
Can we stop pretending that every innovation since 2010 is evil? I get it that it locks in you in Google's/Apple's ecosystems, but their solution is simply working well. For me the alternatives don't cut it, and I believe that their shoddy practices (data collection, monopoly etc.) should be fought with legislation and not by refusing to use their stuff on principle.
What I want in a car's "infotainment" center is that it doesn't have one in the first place. I can supply whatever I need on my own.
As we progress into the future, there needs to be a major pushback on the software upsell practices of companies, especially for cars. Cars need to be reliable, and dependable. My desktop PC has been running for 11 years now, with the power on (with only minor hardware & OS updates), the only thing that has been a constant threat to it's reliability is the drive by software makers to milk me out of my money for updates.... They often push updates under the premise that they are for security, but now most updates are to insert ads and up-sell schemes into the apps and OS.
I miss the old days, because even though you could buy new hardware, you rarely needed to... Now, with each update, I'm worried about my PC being bricked and heavy downtime without any real technical support available, because there are so many different greedy brands of companies making tons of devices that they regularly drop updates for. Something has to change about the software-driven economy, or I'm planning to just go entirely "off grid" for the most part in my retirement from being a developer and consumer myself.
Like, I get that it's a great solution in a lot of cars. But I don't think it's universally true that "no one" wants to use the built in system - I definitely do.
>>just so they can sell subscriptions for seat heaters and music players.
Yes, that is absolutely horrendous trend that I hope we manage to stop - but I suspect we won't, the genie is out of the bottle now so to speak.
Whoever came up with that wasn't entirely right in the head: so now people will stare at the device for another five seconds wondering what they did wrong. Sound of impact.
I am convinced all of these things are unsafe. I refuse to take calls when driving over bluetooth; distracting yourself with a conversation when you're supposed to be driving is reckless and I think this is doubly true when it's a phone conversation (in which the other participant can't watch the road and know when to stop talking.)
Even music while driving is a nuisance. Nobody talks about the role of music in car accidents because almost everybody likes it, but it contributes to distracted driving and in some cases reckless driving. It encourages people to continue driving when they are mentally fatigued (take note of how many people say music "helps" them during long drives.)
GPS navigation on a screen is a bad idea too; your eyes cannot read a screen and watch the road at the same time. Pure voice navigation giving brief commands and updates is sufficient and relatively safe. Car integration isn't necessary at all; a phone placed in the center console with the volume turned up and the screen turned off gets the job done. If you need to make adjustments or read a text or take a call, pull over.
Voice both takes longer and is subject to being pushed to you at the wrong moment where info from a screen can be pulled on demand and quickly.
I bought a new model release BMW which halfway through the 2nd or 3rd year of the models life, they shipped a slightly different head unit. From that point, only the owners with the new head unit get the newest OS/features. Imagine if next year when iOS 18 comes out, we learn that only iPhone 15s made after March 2024 were eligible, and no iPhone 14 or earlier was, lol.
Beyond that, the OTA updates tend to not work and require you to go to the dealer. No one quite knows the rhyme or reason.
Really in retrospect nothing has changed from the days double-din was standard apart from some extra steps. Does anyone know if there are projects that reverse engineer these misc integrations for various manufacturers? Is it all just CAN bus or something proprietary?
Ever had to deal with abominations like CAN-but-not-really-CAN like PSAs own VAN? Having to find out which model has which bus? Non-standard size cutouts / bays? Alone the FW versions i had to test of Alpine / OEM adapter products to get steering wheel controls working. The PDC i couldn't.
And MOST is a different topic.
In my opinion we should have a "no-tether" law: once you buy a product you should be able to use (and upgrade) it as advertised even if you break all ties with the original vendor. This means that other vendors can supply parts and services. This law could hold for many product categories, including cars and smartphones.
In fact I feel the opposite you say: car play has been an excuse for some automakers for subpar infotainment.
That being said removing it completely is madness, because people like you are millions and want it.
I bet some other cars have poor HID but here they put the work in and it is good.
On the other hand I will only buy a car where the car is a BT audio unit and control head and nothing else. Everything more than that sucks.
To expand on your point, both Google and Apple are rumored to be getting into the business of manufacturing cars (e.g. Waymo and the rumored Apple Car). So GM may be looking toward the future where their infotainment systems are owned by rival car manufacturers.
It's okay gm, we understand. Let's hope you are able to make a compelling competition to this, otherwise your sales will suffer.
Traditional car software is very very poor for whatever reason. I don't think that car manufacturers have the mindset and capability to make even passable software, let alone competitive software.
they did call it as it is. it's in the article:
> In addition to potentially buying things from GM or GM’s partners through their car’s infotainment system, GM is also looking at subscription services that would be managed through the same interface. GM’s chief digital officer, Edward Kummer, told Reuters as much when the decision to drop CarPlay and Android Auto was announced. Automakers see subscriptions as huge new source of income to be tapped, with GM alone hoping to make as much as $25 billion per year just off subscriptions by 2030.
> though Babbitt admits that GM hasn’t exactly tested this in a controlled setting to see whether or not it’s true.
The enshittification of everything is making me want to go berserk.
It's probably kinda the same story with great mechanical and industrial engineers, which is why approximately nobody finds GM cars exciting.
Automotive OEMs don’t work that way, they spray money at hundreds of the cheapest engineers they can get away with and hope something good comes out the other side. I’ve seen it over and over. Their problems could be solved by paying a small team of excellent engineers proper Silicon Valley wages. It would be cheaper and produce a better product, but they don’t think that way. The concept of a highly paid software engineer is objectionable to the executives in that industry.
IMO, the bureaucracy isn't that big a problem; all big companies have this problem. The big problem for GM is their locations: who the heck wants to move to Detroit? Or any of the other places their suppliers tend to locate?
Navigation is easily controlled with the iDrive knob. Previous destinations are sorted in reverse chronological order. New destinations are easy to enter. Adding destinations works as expected (insert/append). When the fuel gauge reaches 1/8 of a tank the car prompts to add a gas station on the route which can be accepted with a single button press of the main iDrive knob. When a trip is in progress I can search on the route by category for points of interest like rest stops. It picks up traffic information over AM radio and uses that information when routing.
Similarly pleasant experience when operating the radio/built in mp3 player. Everything can be done with iDrive but there are also dedicated buttons on the steering wheel and dashboard.
Climate control is managed by physical knobs.
Bluetooth calling is supported but Bluetooth audio (music) is not.
Overall an excellent experience. It's obviously dated and a little slow but completely serviceable even today. The system is completely self-contained so it does need map updates from time to time. OTA updates, even on wifi would be nice.
From a design perspective I have no complaints at all, it is well integrated with the car and otherwise stays out of the way. A helpful tool.
I hate radio. I don’t listen to much music. When driving I mostly listen to podcasts and audiobooks which sounds like is not really practically possible.
But in general with the UI, there was a lot of, "Hey, how do I do [elementary car function]" and he'd be like "Oh I think they changed that [or moved it in the menu] in the last update, uh let me have a look"...
Elon Musk's antics had already basically made me decide my next car wouldn't be a Tesla, but driving one a bit didn't really sell me on it anyway...
Worst-case scenario these days is not too bad either, you'll get an aux connector or somewhat stable Bluetooth (if you set it up once and avoid doing anything other than play/pause/next). Yeah, from the software engineering point of view it's slow unreliable crap, but as a consumer you have little power to fix things.
which is why it becomes less and less crazy to imagine apple offering a car subscription - might as well, they have the payment platform and the customers have already spent their anger on the incumbents. not that apple is alone.
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Also, it appeared to have no network connection so would not pick routes according to traffic.
I spent $600 on an aftermarket CarPlay and Android Auto device and couldn't be happier.
The navigation/infotainment space is a thoroughly solved domain. We don't need biweekly OTA updates to add the latest trendy thing. I don't want controls moving around or menus changing based on a perverted engagement metric.
BMW "pathced" several mechanical features of my car. This is called a "recall". Auto manufacturers try to avoid them.
I mean, GM doesn’t seem to have a reputation for building the best, most reliable vehicles as it is — even just looking at domestics (factor in imports, and there’s no comparison). Every time I shop for a vehicle, it’s crazy how GMs are almost universally lower rated than all other vehicles.
I mean, maybe they have cost on their side, but they better hope that and brand loyalty is all they need.
Maybe this was once not a major factor, and maybe it’s still not for some. But I’d say the number of people that don’t care about CarPlay or Android Auto is shrinking.
I don't buy their take that the safety issues are because Android Auto and CarPlay are buggy and have connection issues and other crap that cause people to use their phone directly. I've only had a new enough car to use Android Auto for a year and half now, but I've literally never encountered a bug that required me to touch my phone. If there are bugs on GM's cars, I expect that's an issue with the car's software, not Google's or Apple's.
Obviously GM is putting forth a bad-faith argument to justify their real reason, which is that they just want full control over the experience, and likely want to find ways to monetize things that people can do with their own interface.
Good luck with that, GM. Even if GM somehow manages to build a nice, performant, featureful, non-buggy infotainment system (yeah, right), guaranteed they're going to stop releasing updates for each car's version of it within 5-10 years of the car's release. Meanwhile, as long as my phone keeps getting updates, Android Auto will keep getting updates.
On the other hand, it happens more often when switching between a built-in car app (like the 360 cameras app) and the Carplay app, which probably implicates the car's software more?
In any case, it is pretty annoying. It sometimes happens at really inopportune times, which can be a distracting safety hazard just from the loss of connectivity/functionality alone (i.e. not even considering needing to touch the phone, which is illegal while driving in many US states.)
That's probably a feature and not a bug to them, since it damages the value or desirability of used vehicles.
Ack. From my experience, connection issues with Car Play are 100% due to the shitty software on the car's side and never on phone's side.
I regularly have connection problems (i.e. black screen in Car Play when entering the car - a Fiat with UConnect 5). They can _always_ be resolved by rebooting the cars's entertainment system. _Never_ by rebooting the phone.
There's no "likely" about it: they've publicly said that they intend to be making $25B/yr in subscription revenue from this.
The "brains" of the system, namely the phone, can be easily upgraded as technology changes. People will get new phones. Operating systems will be upgraded. Apps will come and go. Maps will update. The system will keep working flawlessly.
This can't happen with fixed hardware in vehicle - the firmware and apps will be promptly outdated.
iPhones are always faster than the infotainment systems in cars due to development cycles and cost.
Now my iPhone is eight years newer than the one that was already better than my car. So it’s obviously faster. Apple has delivered numerous new features in those eight years, the car never received a single update. That wasn’t even an ability on the car.
As John Gruber is a fan of saying, the phone eats everything. You can’t compete with it. It has better specs, it gets updated more often, it’s more customized to the user. It has better connectivity (I’m not paying $30 a month or whatever to give my car cellular service).
It has the apps I want to use, not the ones who gave the car company a payoff. If I have to get a rental car on a vacation, all my same stuff is right there.
GM will suffer. I’m curious how long it takes them to reverse this. Just one year? Or more? I’m willing to bet a nontrivial number of people just flat walk out of dealerships when they hear the car they’re looking at doesn’t have CarPlay (or Android Auto).
There's a whole weird gray market for Chinese-manufactured "computers on a stick" that reverse-engineered the CarPlay protocol and use it to display a custom computer/Android interface in your car. You can do things like stream Netflix, use Chrome, install any Android app, play games, etc.
I'm not recommending it as it seems both sketchy and unsafe, but it's a funny niche that exists. For some reason, they are usually marketed on AliExpress as a "Car AI Box" but of course have nothing to do with AI.
Here's a random example video of what they look like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrFHjrYnoDE
Nothing about “Operating systems will be upgraded. Apps will come and go. Maps will update.” says “The system will keep working flawlessly.” - if anything, the system will accumulate flaws.
They could've just said we're out of excuses we just want to make money on infotainment system lol.
I have my issues with CarPlay but the OEM software is hot garbage by comparison.
ATM machines, credit card readers, parking meters, TVs, microwaves, ovens (really any appliances), phone trees, any kiosks, etc.
If the device registers my touch within 500ms that's usually enough to impress me at this point.
Boom - error free code!
On Error Resume Next.
No need to wrap anything. You declare it once and cruise to your solution.
https://source.android.com/docs/automotive/start/what_automo...
Not sure how they arrived at the number (maybe only new vehicles), but there was a claim that 79% of US carbuyers would insist on carplay support
My car dash should be the “dumb TV” to my phone’s “streaming box”.
Or perhaps they were grouping in AA under the covers.
I've seen zero evidence that GM is even slightly more competent in this area.
I own a VW EV and use Android Auto with it. It's great. I would not have bought the car if it didn't support that. The real miracle is how well Android Auto/Car Play integrate with the car itself - speakers, microphones, steering wheel controls, heads-up display for directions - it all feels like a native experience.
I wonder what this will do to their fleet sales. Rental companies probably won't be thrilled about customers turning up their noses at GM vehicles that don't have Carplay. I wouldn't be surprised if they have to start renting them at a discount.