Hacker News Reader

Comment by surds | Hacker News Reader

First time using Apple CarPlay in Honda Civic 2017, and wow!

It's a annoying system at this point. Unless I want to use it as a glorified, big interface for podcast control, it is of no use to me. It cannot run mandatory apps like Google Maps, doesn't have Waze and I am not using Apple Maps.

Also, I cannot play the podcasts when I am using Google Maps for directions. The Maps app is unable to give voice directions, the podcast acts up and soon one or the other of them is stuck.

I gave up and just use a bluetooth based connection to run both of these apps at the same time.

View on HN

I've got CarPlay in my 2016 Golf and it's useless. Why on earth I would want my car to take over the full functionality of my phone is beyond me. The only potential advantage would be running Apple Maps on my in-dash screen if I didn't have a Nav system already, but I do. And frankly, I'd rather just clip my phone to the dash than have all phone controls taken over by my car.

From the folks that use Android Auto with the car, many of the frustrations seem the same. It seems slightly better from a functionality standpoint, but less stable.

Waze may be the game changer. If only I could buy a cheap android phone and add it to my data plan without paying a ton of money extra each month...

So I have none of those frustrations as a 2016 GTI owner. Google Maps is wayyyy better than the built-in nav. If I searched for an address on my phone or even my laptop the address is already in my list of recent addresses in Maps and I don't have to even voice search for it. Although voice searching rocks and I dread having to enter an address in my wife's Odyssey nav interface through their knob interface. Then there is traffic routing which is also way better than what comes with the built-in nav. I can voice search and call a business from the same interface while I'm en-route as well.

I do wish that they would add the ability to have a real weather app in the ecosystem. After moving from the west coast to the midwest where they actually have real weather that can be spotty and fast moving it'd be really nice to be able to pull up an up-to-date weather radar view to see what's coming at me.

Now, there are the bugs....such as occasionally when I call someone it switches to the speaker on my phone vs. my car which is really annoying. It used to crash on a semi-occasional basis but I haven't seen that since I upgraded to a Pixel. Occasionally I do have to reboot the phone when it fails to connect. That is probably the most annoying one.

Huh. I really like the built-in nav. I particularly like having the turn-by-turn in the instrument cluster display, and the ETA across the top of the head unit screen, etc. Though as an iOS user I don't have the option of Google Maps anyway.

Google Fi project.

> Why on earth I would want my car to take over the full functionality of my phone is beyond me.

I've owned several cars thus far in my life, and so far, the functionality of every single head unit has been changed exactly zero times since the car left the line. When CDs became a thing, I had to add a CD player if I wanted to listen to them. When XM and Sirius came out, I had to add something to use them. Who knows what's going to come next? But if my phone is in the driver's seat, so to speak, then I can expect new updates just about every year now going forward, with new features coming this Fall with iOS 11. My 2017 Civic at least has a chance of being updated since the head unit runs Android underneath, but odds of Honda ever updating it are pretty slim.

That's a good argument for the usefulness of these systems, but it would still be best if it didn't turn the phone into a brick while plugged in.

My iPhone doesn't become a brick when I plug it in to my car. CarPlay is basically just a second screen - if I launch an app (while parked safely) that uses CarPlay, the dashboard comes to live with that view. If not, it sits at the home screen. But I can still use the phone however I'd like.

> Why on earth I would want my car to take over the full functionality of my phone is beyond me.

Because it's probably required by law and for good reason - just like the Bluetooth systems disallow visually reading texts.

> The only potential advantage

The other one is that you are not endangering children and other humans alike while fiddling on a tiny phone screen.

Stop it.

Stop the scaremongering and assumptions. Your jumping to conclusions does nobody any favors, and it ignores a whole host of safe and legal uses of a cell phone while it is plugged into a car.

I'm not sure how/why it would be required by law-- I could watch netflix on my cell phone while driving and have the audio stream over bluetooth if I wanted to; I don't see how CarPlay/AndroidAuto changes the legal framework here. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just not sure HOW. Could even just be something so simple as fear of liability I guess. But again, the bluetooth example comes to mind.

i feel the same way, so using navtool i have extended my carplay to full phone mirroring, check it out @ www.navtool.com

Why do you refuse to use Apple Maps? It's really quite good these days.

I agree that it's virtually on feature parity and quality with Google Maps, including getting _really_ good at adjusting directions based upon traffic patterns in real-time...at least in the US. When I travel internationally, even in a big/populated locale like London, I just don't quite trust it just yet.

It's a shame, because on iOS Maps is a pretty polished product and the team deserves credit for where they've come.

Traffic data. Waze closure reports. And of course it's just better maps and routing.

I refuse to use Apple Maps on principal. I prefer Waze, and use it. Yet when I click an address link, I get directed to reinstall the Maps app, and it won't let me open the links in the map of my choice.

I tried to switch back this past fall when I moved to the city. I wanted to be able to get directions using Siri. I thought for sure they had worked out its kinks by end of 2016, years after its initial release.

I lasted less than a day. It had no idea where I was at times, even on major roads. It would more often tell me to turn after the turn than before it.

I don't know anyone who has used both Google Maps and Apple Maps who would call the latter "quite good", so I suppose it's relative. If all I knew were Apple Maps, I'd probably agree with you.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com