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Comment by mmcclure | Hacker News Reader

I was always pretty skeptical of CarPlay, honestly. Bluetooth audio + maps on a phone holder seemed like it was perfectly fine, and putting myself even further into the Apple ecosystem felt unnecessary. In short, I had always considered an auto's entertainment system/software to be something to ignore.

Renting a car with CarPlay for a week (and a reasonably long "commute" during that time) completely changed my mind. Typically the only reason I ever used a built in car display up to this point was...to set up my phone in Bluetooth. Suddenly I had familiar applications that made that screen useful: Maps, Overcast (podcasts), Messages (read aloud, not displayed, of course), etc. A phone in a holder is, of course, totally acceptable and fine, but as I'm just starting to consider buying my first car in almost a decade I'm suddenly looking at CarPlay as a requirement.

Other notes on this for those that are interested: A lot of cars with CarPlay also support Android Auto, and they always have a base system if you'd prefer not to use either. OP is talking about this from a luxury car perspective, but it's available in a really wide price range from entry to super-luxury.

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Last year I got a rental with CarPlay. It was the first time I had a system in a rental that didn’t seem more intent on downloading my contacts than on displaying nav info or playing music.

The first and last thing I do in every rental car I'm in is delete the stored contacts. You're all welcome.

Same here, but it's often damnably (maybe even purposefully) difficult to figure out how to do it.

It's funny you say that, because last time I had a rental with Android Auto it would not let me even start it without allowing access to my contacts and other details. I ended up not using it because of that.

The normal car bluetooth systems on the other hand don't mind if you don't give them access to things, and you can restrict it to music and calls only.

Maybe they just want to facilitate you by letting you voice your contact and send message or call your friends by voice. I don't have a car with Android Auto, can you deny the permission?

I use LineageOS which has something called PrivacyGuard. I can give the app permission to access my contacts but then deny it at the PrivacyGuard level. I'm pretty sure that it just returns an empty contact list in this case.

Interesting, I thought the PrivacyGuard and permissions were the same thing, except that the former gives you more control. I'll try that next time.

Yup, it is probably something like that. It wouldn't start without being granted the permissions though.

I find Carplay dangerous for my use case: As the interface follows what’s happening on the phone, you often lose the maps and directions as the guy controlling CarPlay need to check his messages

I have no idea how they’ve managed to design it like this, it’s like they only think single driver commuters would use it

In iOS 13 they're conceding that this isn't how it's always used - a passenger might hook their phone to CarPlay, or the driver might hand their phone off for someone else to use.

That's releasing early next month. Probably a gold master build at the event on 9/10, with wide release following after that.

Good, that's one of my biggest pet peeves for CarPlay.

I'm also not a fan of Siri, would love to keep it disabled as I normally do, but CarPlay doesn't even start without it :/

I never thought that anyone other than the driver would want to connect their phone to the head unit in the car, regardless of how many other people might or might not also be in the car.

On further reflection, I think it's still overall not a good idea. If the driver wants to change the music being played, or the volume, or whatever, and there is a passenger in the car with them, then I would think it would be okay for the driver to have the passenger do that on their behalf. And that might affect the display.

But I guess I can wait to see if iOS 13 can change my mind.

You are assuming that the driver's phone is the one connected. The typical use case is a couple, where either can drive. The first one to look up directions is the one who connects the phone. I do this all the time with my wife. Sometimes we have to disconnect one phone and connect the other so the passenger can continue using the phone without killing the map for the driver.

My kids usually manage the music, it's easy at the moment with an AUX lead so no real connection with the car. I can see as things are getting more connected this could have issues.

So glad right now that Apple took the bold step of removing the AUX plug. :)

Anecdote: I have only used CarPlay in rental cars, and every time I start driving while my wife connects her phone and gets directions and music going. It’s annoying that the map disappears when she checks her messages.

I use this all the time with my gf, I drive, she looks up a restaurant or something, opens maps to navigate to it and connects it to the car.

And after that she becomes annoyed she can't play Pokemon go or whatever game anymore :p

I usually have someone driving me, but would strongly prefer to control the music. With Carplay, if I connect my phone in order to control the music I'll lose navigation if I use my phone for anything at all.

Best solution I've found so far was putting my Spotify account on my drivers phone, then I can change the music using my phone without messing up waze.

This is the most infuriating thing. Android Auto does it for some apps also, but it feels baked into the core experience of CarPlay. Given the choice between the two, this UX mishap alone makes me choose AA over CP even when I'm driving alone.

This behavior is changing with iOS 13.

It’s obvious why it’s designed that way: to reduce the distraction of using the phone while driving. If you have the dash showing one thing and you’re doing something else on the phone, you’re now potentially doubly distracted from operating the two ton lethal steel weapon you’re supposed to be paying attention to.

You may not agree with the design choice, but it’s completely obvious why they made it that way.

The case where then passenger needs to do something is rare enough when compared to the safety issues. In design you also need to weigh and make trade offs.

I agree, I can't believe that was overlooked. I used Carplay for the first time a few weeks ago and I was blown away that Apple allowed it to be released - it feels really unpolished and slow, and the experience changes depending on what head unit you're using, just like Android's unpredictability. It doesn't feel like an Apple product at all.

Classic Apple being run by old baby boomers move. Of course everybody in the world is commuting alone by car, why else would you use a car. We’d also all like more U2 forced onto our phones please.

Also being able to control everything via Siri with actually competent speech recognition is a godsend compared to the several minutes of shouting in various accents that most in-built voice control systems require.

The need for internet access is slightly irritating however.

You mean Siri is actually usable while driving? Is there a “trick” to this?

I’ve yet to have it work a single time, and have just given up, after (in your own words) shouting at the car.

In my experience Siri over CarPlay is significantly more reliable (in that it understands me better over road noise) than Siri over Bluetooth audio (in both cases using the mic/speakers built into the car). FWIW phone calls also sound clearer when plugged in via USB. I’m guessing it’s because of poor audio quality for voice over Bluetooth in at least the cars I tried.

Hold the home button briefly (lower-left corner) for Siri on CarPlay. It’s actually fantastic.

Really the only issue I have with carplay is

1. That I can't tell siri to play things on spotify, etc, although apparently siri support for spotify is coming. I'm on the iOS 13.1 beta but it's still not there

2. Carplay limits the listing of bands/albums/songs in the menu. I get that they don't want me visually scrolling through hundreds of albums while I'm driving, but since there's no carplay search, and I can't (yet) control spotify with siri, this means to play the music I want I have to pick up my phone and select my music from there. Much less safe than if they just listed all my music on the screen.

They list far more albums when the car is at a stop, but it's still not all of it. Scrolling through my artists gets me to about G before it stops listing.

Siri support for spotify really can't come soon enough for me.

I think Spotify needs to implement Siri support so I’m not surprised that it doesn’t work on the beta. I’m also excited for this integration because I loathe Apple Music. Spotify is so much better. It’s annoying that Spotify doesn’t work as wel natively. If Apple Music was just a Spotify clone, I’d happily switch to them just for the first party support, but they insist on making it different. Spotify’s interface and music organization is just so much better.

Yeah, after the latest beta release if I ask siri to play on spotify she says "Spotify hasn't set up playing from siri yet" or something along those lines. I'm gonna be a happy camper when it starts working.

The truncated lists are imposed by the car manufacturer, not Apple. I agree it's very annoying.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20833791

Apple provide the API, so this is just the car manufacturer doing "the right thing".

I think the wording may some "certain cars" enforce it because after-market head units may not be connected up to the speedometer and therefore have no way of including this information.

We have a Suzuki that’s supposed to disable most of the touch screen controls when driving (including the TV/DVD and changing any navigation settings aside from zoom), but the used car dealer we bought it from informed us that he had already disconnected that sensor as a routine service to us...

I assume the car companies asked for this functionality. Mazda's UI locks out a bunch of functionality when the car is in motion.

This whole time I thought 2 was just a terrible bug. It was one of the reasons I switched to android.

Really can depend on the car too. I mostly love CarPlay in my Mazda[1]. My wife hates it in her Chevy Volt[2].

[1] Apple gives the car manufacturer the ability to truncate the length of scrollable lists while the car is in motion, which Mazda does. Nothing like only being able to see the first 15 items in a list of podcasts, or artists, or songs. I hate this. But otherwise the implementation is great, especially the integration between the car's physical controls and CarPlay. There's a steering wheel button to bring up Siri. There's direct physical button access to Maps, Now Playing, and the home screen. It would be nice if Apple allowed me to set Google Maps as the default mapping app, but Apple maps has become good enough most of the time. Aside, my 2016 CX-9 came w/o CarPlay. Mazda made it available as a DIY'able retrofit last year. The parts were a couple hundred dollars and it took a couple hours to retrofit.

[2] Once the entire entertainment system froze up and it didn't fix itself till like the next day. I've been meaning to check if there's an update from Chevy.

I'm an Android user, but have been considering switching to Apple, and it turns out that you can make GMaps or Waze the default mapping app for CarPlay. I was just reading about it as part of this thread.

https://9to5mac.com/2018/09/24/how-to-use-waze-on-carplay/

Yes Waze is great on Apple carplay. Perfect Speed camera warnings are a lifesaver here in Europe.

Dont French cops take away every device showing speed cametad while driving?

You can do this with Android Auto - no need to swap to Apple!

That's just putting a shortcut on the screen. It doesn't change any other defaults. Siri will still only open Apple Maps. Same with Calendar, iMessage, Contacts, etc.

“Give me directions to foo” - gives directions to foo in apple maps

“Give me directions to foo using Waze” - gives directions to do using Waze

This might be new, but it definitely works on the iOS 13 beta, although I’m pretty sure it worked on iOS 12. It would still be nicer if we could just set default apps

Can confirm that this works on iOS 12.

That does not make Waze the default mapping app. 9to5mac is wrong. Changing the order of the apps is only cosmetic.

I had no idea the limiting of lists was at the option of the car maker. Interesting! I hate that aspect of it in my Honda.

Yup. At first I blamed Spotify. Then Apple. Then I learned it was Mazda to blame:

1. "Intelligently filter content when the vehicle is moving. Certain cars may cause CarPlay to truncate lists of content when the vehicle is in motion or has exceeded a certain speed."

2. contentLimitsEnforced: A Boolean value indicating whether contents limits are enforced by the content server.

3. enforcedContentItemsCount: Returns the number of content items that are displayed when content limiting is enforced.

[1] https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...

[2] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/mediaplayer/mpplay...

[3] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/mediaplayer/mpplay...

CarPlay worked fine on my Chevy Volt(s). I owned the later generations. It’s even better on my Bolt since it seems they figured out that everyone will either use CarPlay or Android Auto. The problem with the Volt(s) is that there didn’t seem to be a way to remotely update the HUD. This has changed with newer Bolts

I've been waffling on this, but my biggest concern about the center stack display is that it's far away from looking at the road. I've been using a suction cup RAM mount on the windshield for years with Waze up constantly on my phone, podcasts playing to the bluetooth or wired connection, and most importantly, I have to look slightly to the right to see the directions, not down and far away. Even then, it's refocusing on something close instead of staying with my eye focus on the middle distance. Someday I hope to switch to a HUD, but my 2010 Mazda Miata does not leave a lot of dash room to mount such a thing aftermarket.

I agree, I have Android Auto in my 2019 VW Tiguan. Its awesome but its very easy to spend more time than you think picking a playlist from spotify etc.

With your phone you know not to touch it when driving but the center console feels acceptable.

I had one close call where the car's auto breaking saved me from hitting a car that decided to turn without indicating. now I treat my centre console almost like my phone, I will use the console stopped at lights but not my phone.

Does your VW have a microphone button? My 2017 golf does, and it works reasonably well with Google assistant.

glad to hear you've modified your driving habits!

i use voice control and steering wheel buttons only whilst driving, works well enough!

To me, the size of display outweighs location by far. Also the fact that I don't have to worry about a suction cup or magnet or whatever letting go while I'm driving; also I don't have to glue anything to my dash.

To be clear, I hardly touch the infotainment screen while in motion. I can do almost everything I need to by voice, the only touch command is to choose an option from a list.

It would be nice to have a HUD projected on the windshield, but I don't find it distracting to look at the Infotainment screen.

100 times this. As nice as the stuff in the center display is, it's too far away from the forward field of view to use. I've been using a suction cup to hold my phone as well but it's very frustrating - it falls off every few months especially during temperature changes.

I came to a compromise of using ~1/4" aluminum rods anchored in the forward vent and around inside the CD player to create a phone holder cradled above and slightly off to the right of the main dashboard. This creates a mechanically sturdy enclosure that I really wish cars would come with built in.

A HUD would be even better but I don't think I could ever trust a display driven by car manufacturers' software stacks.

that suction cup will not hold in the event of an accident and now your phone is a projectile. always put your phone away in a compartment and use handsfree.

no one will follow this advice, but no one will think they will be in an accident until they have a huge welt on their head and can't figure out why.

A projectile going forward, sure.

It might bounce but at that point there's way less energy involved and the accident's intense enough that a welt on my head is the least of my problems.

>that suction cup will not hold in the event of an accident and now your phone is a projectile.

I guess?

What do I do about the legally mandated 2-4lbs steel backed rear-view mirror that's required to be hand-removable without the use of tools in most places?

To be clear, i'm not saying you're wrong -- i'm saying that making a car a safe crash space will drive a person mad. It's practically impossible.

This. People underestimate the amount of force and damage small items can have in your car.

Why not just use CarPlay on your phone with the phone holder? Is it not exactly the same as a car with built in CarPlay? Atleast on android auto I noticed no difference between the App on my phone and connecting my phone to my car's Android Auto.

The whole point of CarPlay is that it’s on the built in screen. Many states have laws now that prohibit operating any sort of handheld device while driving (and yes, a phone or even GPS unit in a mount still counts as handheld)

That's really dumb, phones now have 6"+ screens and are way more powerful than any head unit in a car... "Many states have laws now that prohibit operating any sort of handheld device while driving" I don't believe you, otherwise most uber drivers, food delivery drivers and taxi drivers would be getting pulled over by the police.

https://www.germanautolabs.com/blog/mobile-phone-driving-ban...

Maybe not the authoritative source but interacting with a phone while driving is indeed illegal in all of Europe.

You are wrong, in the ad absurdum extrapolation in this thread that using a phone for navigation is illegal in “all of Europe”.

You presumably meant EU, a part but not all of Europe, but that too is wrong. For example, the law in the Czech Republic, a member state of EU, states that it forbidden to hold a phone (or other handheld device), in hand or otherwise (e.g. between shoulder and ear) while driving (§ 125c / 1f) 1. z. č. 361/2000 Sb.).

Handheld devices probably are illegal to use while driving in all of EU while being (hand)held, but absolutely not when mounted and used in the same manner as car’s builtin display. It may be the case in some country, but is not true generally.

That mode is not available with CarPlay, it is also deprecated on Android Auto (for a voice control setup, I believe).

> CarPlay as a requirement

Why don't you loose your requirement to just 2DIN space to install your favourite Car Play compatible gadget into?

If you really want to you can even get it in 1DIN with a detachable screen such as Pioneer SPH-EVO82DAB-UNI / SPH-EVO62DAB-UNI

For android DIY folks , another route is to build your own open source AndroidAuto receiver with e.g. http://headunit.viktorgino.me/ + https://thepihut.com/products/raspberry-pi-official-7-touchs...

Because a lot of manufacturers put control of the car's settings in the stock head unit. You'd have to swap it out if you want to change a particular setting.

What I'd be willing to compromise on is an external screen that will handle CarPlay or Android Auto. I can't seem to find one out there.

As a counterpoint, my VW in-car navigation integrates with the second screen, so I get glanceable navigation behind the steering wheel.

And, in Australia, it's very easy to lose mobile reception. Having usable maps on device is a must.

In iOS 13, manufacturers will be able to integrate the second screen with CarPlay. Whether or not they will is too be seen.

That feature is my least favourite part of Android Auto - using it on the main display hides the navigation behind the steering wheel. I really hope this can be fixed.

That's the main reason I still use built-in navigation rather than from my phone.

I got a leaf about 6 mo ago and it has carplay/android auto. This makes the infotainment/nav stuff no car maker ever could be arsed to do proper, completely moot.

It’s a requirement from now on! :)

I keep saying that an EV with carplay has made me look at a car differently - it’s a chassis with a battery. Choose the size of both according to what fits, say, 99.9% of all trips. For someone who lives in a city and have a charger in the garage of course this is a luxury, but to me it just makes so much sense.

This morning I was searching github for carplay projects.

There was one that could spoof an iPad and allow it to be used as the CarPlay display and interface from the iPhone.

Is it this one? https://github.com/b3ll/Ignition

Yes. :)

Did the car you rented have a Play/Pause button on the steering wheel? That’s what I am missing the most: being able to quickly pause (and later resume) whatever I’m listening to through CarPlay because I need to pay attention to something that’s happening inside or outside the car. Reading the CarPlay documentation, it seems that it supports such a button, but it’s hard to find a list of cars that have one.

So on my Mom’s recent Honda we’ve (accidentally) discovered that pressing the volume knob like you would to turn off an old radio plays/pauses what you’re listening to.

Give that a try on any car you look at, you may find it works.

Thanks; I’ll double-check but I think pushing the volume button turns the whole infotainment system off. Which does pause whatever’s playing, but also turns off navigation or whatever else I had on the CarPlay screen.

I believe the steering wheel had some basic media controls, but honestly I didn't end up using them very much. I found myself using Siri more than usual so I wouldn't need to spend too much time looking at buttons to figure out what they did, but I think I could get used to more buttons if it was my own vehicle and not a short term rental.

Yes, this is one of my pet peeves too. The steering wheel has volume controls with press-to-mute, then right next to them are forward and back controls... a press on that control would be perfect for play/pause, but alas— no.

My volvo's big central volume control has a large play/pause button in the middle and it works to pause anything that Carplay is playing. There's also a play/pause control on the steering wheel. Overall, my 2016 Volvo does a pretty good job with Carplay integration, though it also has a bunch of native software that mostly sucks in comparison, such as a voice control that I've never been able to use.

So it turns out that if you turn the volume all the way down to zero, it pauses playback. And if you turn it up again, it starts playing. I didn’t test whether navigation messages from Maps can still be heard. Not perfect as it takes a few seconds to do when you might need an immediate pause to avoid distraction, but it’s probably good enough for me.

I really liked Android Auto, but I think a recent update has screwed it up, so that any audio app frequently switches to Amazon Music. (https://support.google.com/androidauto/thread/8646291?hl=en)

Add to the LOOOONG list of "I really liked X but a recent update has screwed it up". It's amazing how often this happens.

This was happening to me (and many others). I disabled notifications in the Amazon Music app and the switching has stopped.

I still get an occasional dropout where the song gets really quiet for a few seconds but my Spotify app keeps running and no longer switches to Amazon Music randomly.

I really just want my car to drive and to last a long time.

Aren’t these screens almost entirely bad? In 10 years, screens in cars will be the new smoking, except that they kill other people, and the NYT will be full of editorials about how they snuck up on society and caused so many accidents - who could have known?

I hope we have self driving cars in 10 years...

You can always add a CarPlay compatible aftermarket infotainment panel.

But then you lose the ability to control various parts of your car, because these are often controlled through the entertainment system...

I think most cars with CarPlay support Android Auto because most systems are essentially Android tablets.

And that's one thing I have noticed, Android pretty much owns the industrial market. Every touchscreen device you see in the wild is basically an Android device. Those payment kiosk things in restaurants, CarPlay, etc.

Well there’s a good reason for this: In this day and age it’s pretty much the ideal option. In fact I think android makes a horrible phone OS (not because it has no good features) but I’ve never had an android phone that didn’t become a battery sucking and unmanageable nightmare. And are high quality audio APIs available (I gave up caring a few years ago)

AFAIC, Android is best suited as an industrial OS. Before android it was Windows CE, which was even bigger garbage than Android, and of course now it is dead.

Alternatives are things like custom rolled Linux (and really why?) and RTOS/GUI platforms like vxworks, qnx.. they have their place. 90% of shit can just use stock android and whatever mods you need.

I love Android as a mobile OS on my Pixel 2; especially with apps like MiXplorer (fully featured file manager). I can't count the number of times being able to plug in a flash drive and copy files to it has saved me.

Subjectively, running Android 10 on a Pixel 2, battery life has never been better, and apps running in the background sucking up my battery hasn't been a problem.

I've used the ubiquitous cheap Huawei and Xiaomi phones, and while they get the job done, the experience isn't nearly as good, as you have to deal with their UI and clutter. Unfortunate.

Linux serves as the hardware abstraction layer for Android. You’re going to need a “custom rolled” kernel for whatever platform you decide to launch in the car.

Yeah, I was just making the observation.

It does make sense, it's pretty customizable and a lot of the legwork is done for you.

I had trouble updating the console in our 2017 Suzuki[0] and extracted the update file - it was QNX

[0] the update instructions say to put the update file on a FAT32-formatted USB drive and plug in. The update file is 6GB and FAT32 has a 4 GB file size limit. Tried exFAT, UFS, and a few other file systems QNX has support for, no go with those.

Last I knew, most of these stereos supporting CarPlay and Android Auto were running QNX, not Android.

Which manufacturer?

I have a Honda Civic and it's definitely an Android tablet shoved into the dash.

Yes, but that has no bearing on the ability of your car to run Android Auto. You cannot run it on the hardware that's built into the car. If you want Android Auto you must project it from a phone or tablet onto the display.

Yes, but the core system is an Android tablet in my car. That is my point. I would imagine that it's the same across Honda's entire fleet.

I was wondering which manufacturer was going QNX instead.

Yep. Honda has been shipping Android based systems since at least ‘16.

Most of the airplane seat-back media centers I’ve used seem to be running Android. Although I was just on an Air China flight that appeared to be using either Windows CE or QNX or something non-standard.

Last time I was on a flight and the infotainment screens all rebooted I saw the familiar Linux boot screen, Tux and all.

Yeah every time I've seen a IFE screen reboot it's been Linux. Some, like on a Singapore Air A380 even had Star Office available for use

You don't need car play it is a crap comparing to, for example, Teala's infotament.

I actually couldn't disagree more, I deeply dislike Tesla's infotainment center. It's a much larger version of "traditional" manufacturer's displays with more functionality that I want shoved into it.

I'd much prefer that display be an extension of my personal device. I don't want a new infotainment ecosystem with the manufacturer's choices baked in, I want the an extension of the one I'm going to keep using when I get out of the car, replete with my personal preferences for things like map applications, music, etc.

This is interesting because I rather like Tesla's nav system and music. The browser is kinda lame but I have a phone for that.

Perhaps it was my coming from the crime against humanity that is CarWings in my old Nissan Leaf. I liked my Leaf, but there was nothing on the center console that wasn't better on my iPhone.

New Nissan Leafs support both CarPlay and Android Auto, thankfully.

From what I’ve seen most cars that support one support the other. It seems to be rare for a car to only support one of the two. Must be easy to implement both of you do one of them.

Most of the systems in-car are android based, so android-auto support is pretty much free; and iThings are so common that not supporting them would likely cost sales.

yeah, I've used Tesla's software, it's garbage compared to android auto.

i prefer my wife's Android Auto ('18 Nissan Rogue) to my '18 Model S :(

Huh, someone else with an '18 rogue.

Does your wife's have an issue where once in a while it refuses to go into AA, and you have to hard-reboot the infotainment system? Mine does this thing where AA icon shows up, touching it does does the click animation, but doesn't actually launch AA.

That's my only real complaint with the system, actually. Once in a while it just really doesn't want to launch AA. Once I'm in though... works great. (Okay, maybe the steering wheel could use a play/pause button, but that's minor)

Definitely has a similar issue now and then.

AA is a different beast than CarPlay.

They're both miles ahead of what you get from Tesla.

How?

good luck figuring out how to turn on your a/c without looking. I loved my old Ford Fusion because it was a touch interface but with raised and lowered plastic so you knew what you were pressing.

https://st.motortrend.com/uploads/sites/10/2015/11/2015-ford...

the newer fusions replaced controls with actual buttons which looks cheaper and doesn't make it any easier to figure out without looking. probably due to increased failures or simply cost savings

You can use the menu button and scroll wheel on the steering wheel and see the response in the dashboard.

It comes on automatically when needed but thanks.

Cool, so it has an IR camera to sense my body temperature?

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